A lush, green expanse of grass used to be wonderful. It was every suburban homeowner’s dream lawn, but now that image isn’t so dreamy. Some locales face water restrictions, or owners choose to be water-conscious. Other homeowners may not want to invest in the energy-guzzling mowers that emit harmful fumes. Time and expenses may be other factors. Face it, maintaining a beautiful, thick, green lawn isn’t easy. For homeowners looking to replace all or part of their traditional grass-covered lawns with something different, they might want to look no further than an ordinary herb that has been gracing rock gardens and shady patches for countless generations: sweet woodruff.
The plant sounds much better by its common name than its Latin one, Galium odoratum, because it is indeed a sweet option for anyone thinking of making a change to all or part of their landscape. Sweet woodruff is a low-maintenance, weed-resistant lawn alternative you’ll want to consider because the flowering perennial with dark green leaves is considered an evergreen, so it offers some year-round color, not to mention that it sports jaunty little white flowers in mid-spring. The flowers appear right around the time that gardeners will be seeing their hosta leaves poking through the ground, so a lawn of sweet woodruff running up against a hosta-lined edging is a perfect pairing and a hosta’s best friend. There’s even more about this little herb to sweeten the pot on why it is a good alternative to a traditional lawn.
Sweet woodruff is special for lawns and in other ways
It isn’t just that replacing grass with sweet woodruff will be an alternative that’s easier to maintain and keeps weeds away. The evergreen herb is also a wonderful addition for a host of other reasons, with very few negatives. First, the plant truly is low-maintenance; with a low growing height, it doesn’t need to be mowed. It naturalizes in USDA zones 4 to 8 and doesn’t need a lot of special pruning or care. It is drought-tolerant and doesn’t require watering unless the temperatures become extreme. Because it spreads quickly and thickly in the lawn, it will choke out weeds more easily.
As if all that isn’t enough, sweet woodruff is the herb that has been traditionally used to flavor May wine and many other recipes surrounding May Day celebrations. It’s also often part of some herbal notes added to spirits, such as gin, and was mentioned as one of the 47 botanicals that made Monkey 47 Gin one of the 20 best sipping gins of 2024. So with all the extra time you’ll have because you aren’t mowing the lawn and all the extra money you have because you don’t have to reseed the lawn or buy fertilizer, you can pick flowers from your sweet woodruff lawn and try your hand at flavoring spirits or doing some eclectic cooking!
