Get This Look: How To Grow A Tapestry Lawn

A tapestry lawn features low-growing groundcover plants with lush foliage and colorful flowers. Sometimes called a meadow lawn or a patchwork lawn, tapestry lawns are ideal for replacing traditional turf lawns. They look beautiful year round, attract pollinators, and they never need mowing. Here are 7 great tapestry lawn ideas for both sunny and shaded parts of your yard. 

Creeping Thyme is an ideal groundcover for tapestry lawns. Its foliage has fine, fragrant leaves that form a dense mat for year-round interest, even after flowers have passed. Blooms will carpet your yard in color and attract pollinators. Creeping Thyme is great for gravelly soil and is drought-tolerant once established.

• Choose perennials with purple, pink, and blue blooms for a cool and coordinated color palette
• Mix a variety of Creeping Thyme plants with other low-growing perennials for an interesting display of textures

Creeping Phlox is one of the most beloved groundcover perennials, and its carpet of early season blooms is ideal for tapestry lawn plantings. This plant family includes native species as well as native cultivars. It's a low-maintenance plant with mats of fine foliage that fill in your yard beautifully, even when flowers have passed.

• Mix Creeping Phlox with low-growing succulents, grasses, and sedges for a beautiful tapestry of textures
• Planting in and around stones in your landscape will add to the interesting textures and provide year-round interest

Yes, planting a tapestry lawn is a great solution for full shade or part shade! In fact, shade-loving groundcovers are an ideal alternative to traditional turf grass, which is often patchy and difficult to grow in shade or beneath trees. There are many native ferns and woodland plants ideal for shade. Hostas and Lamium are also popular groundcovers for shade. 

• Mixing deep greens, bright greens, variegated foliage with pops of white, and silvery foliage provides a soothing color palette
• Microclover is a part-shade tolerant groundcover that needs little to no mowing - it's a great option for filling in areas of your lawn that border your tapestry lawn planting

Learn More: How To Design A Shade Garden

Learn More: All About Microclover 

One of the easiest ways to replace your lawn with flowers is to grow from seeds! Our Alternative Lawn Wildflower Seed Mix creates a tapestry lawn with a mix of easy-to-grow clover, grasses, and low-growing flowers with subtle colors. You'll save time with a low-maintenance alternative lawn - and the bees, butterflies, and beneficial bugs will love the bountiful blooms in your yard.

• When you want the look of a meadow, but need the curb appeal of lower-growing plants, our alternative lawn seed mixes are a perfect solution. 

Learn More: Compare Our Alternative Lawn Seed Mixes

Learn More: How To Grow Wildflower Seeds

Choosing groundcovers with pink flowers is an easy way to ensure a cohesive and coordinated look with your tapestry lawn planting. Creeping Thyme, Creeping Phlox, and Lamium are three popular groundcovers with many shades of pink blooms. 

• Keep your color palette simple and cheerful by choosing plants with pink blooms
• In addition to groundcovers, incorporate stones or boulders for year round interest
• Medium-height perennials and grasses with a mounding habit are perfect for adding more color and texture into your planting

This tapestry-style planting features lush foliage that is made for the shade. Incorporating a wide range of plant types, including a number of native cultivars, is an ideal way to create a tapestry of textures. Foliage plants like these feature broad, attractive leaves for year-round visual interest. Be sure to include Sedges, Ferns, Hostas, and Coral Bells for their beautiful foliage.

• Plant your perennials with gradually increasing height - shortest creeping perennials are planted in the front, and taller perennials such as shrubs and ferns are planted in the back
• Plant densely for a close-knit tapestry of colors and textures - as an added perk, the plants will shade out any weeds that try to grow
• Add pops of purple to your planting, such as deep plum foliage or purple flowers

Known for sweeping carpets of color in the spring, Creeping Phlox is ideal for tapestry lawns and mass planting. Planting Creeping Phlox is a great way to enjoy early blooms before many other plants - even the trees- have woken up for the season. With many colorful cultivars available, it's easy to design an interesting patchwork of plants. You can go with soft white colors and pastels, or go with bold and bright blooms.

• Creeping Phlox will naturalize and spread over the years. When planting, you can space them closer together to achieve a dense, tight-knit look more quickly. 
• When planting along a stone wall or a raised bed, creeping phlox will spread and cascade over the edges, giving your planting a soft, attractive look

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