Biodiversity plays an important role in lawn care and gardening. Although a perfect carpet of uniform green grass may be appealing, a mixture of grasses can strengthen your lawn against pests and disease.

In southern California during the 1960s, dichondra lawns were all the rage. Dichondra (Dichondra repens) is not actually grass, but a warm season ground cover that was originally considered a weed. Dichondra’s round leaves provide a springy, “cushy” feel underfoot; there’s nothing like going barefoot on a dichondra lawn. Our neighborhood lawn warriors worked constantly to maintain well manicured carpets of dichondra without intrusion by grass or other interlopers. Hardy in the Southland’s warm and dry climate, dichondra lawns looked great, although they suffered from over watering and constant trampling by kids and dogs.

Then came the flea beetles, which decimated dichondra lawns. The once emerald “king” quickly lost favor as a lawn cover, and grass soon returned. Isolated populations of a single organism are vulnerable to failure. Mixing dichondra with other types of less appetizing grass might have slowed the ravenous flea beetles–plants are designed to be part of a diverse ecosystem. Gardeners know that planting certain flowers among their vegetables can help reduce pests. The dichondra lawns of my childhood failed due to a lack of “community support.”

These days, my lawn is mostly rye with a few other types of grass, and it sure doesn’t have uniform texture or color (never mind the trails the dogs have run through it), but the grass grows fast and looks healthy.

Biodiversity works for my lawn.