Sounds like it's the wrong site conditions for most of the plants that might be in such a mix. Maybe just settle for buttercup etc., jazzed up with some camas bulbs inserted into the existing turf where possible in autumn. Deep blue ones might look great with the yellow buttercup flowers.

I don't think I'd want to let the buttercup run rampant. I've been battling it for 14 years already, and if I let it get the lawn area I'd also lose my flowerbeds which are adjacent.

It's not really a swamp/wetland. We got a 100-year-flood last November, which was actually pretty unexpected. It rained something like 7-8" in 3 days, which not only melted the early snow, but added to the river's flow (did I mention it's a riverside lot?!

Grass grows just fine, I just don't want to go the weed-n-feed route like some of my neighbors have done (and go back to mowing every week!)

The eco-lawn Fleur De Lawn comes in very very slowly. But it does come in, and if you water it with sprinklers every day the first year (when it isn't raining) the clover will definitely establish! The strawberry clover is very pretty. But the smarter thing to do is buy their erosion control 702 which is the same as Fleur De Lawn minus the flowers at a very inexpensive price. The flowers get devoured by slugs immediately anyway. The perennial rye dwarf grass is beautiful.

The horsetails are the worst possible weed and the only way to get rid of them is pull them the minute they show for 3 years to deprive the root system of nutrients. If your neighbors don't pull them you're sunk.

Groundcovers we've had good luck with: vinca minor, creeping jenny, baby blue eyes, heather, miniature ivies (can hear the screaming now), red thyme, mazus reptans purple, and strawberry lipstick ornamental. We put groundcovers in our raised beds for variety. Of course the birds poop all the other seeds there too so it's constant weeding through the establishing groundcover. Using Scotch & Irish moss & chocolate ajuga but those aren't as vigorous. Also phlox and different exotic grass mounds in some beds which are pretty but get overtaken by clover easily.

Got buttercup coming in along streamlets, very pretty, glad to see something able to grow in all that water, may change my mind and start battling it if it displaces something I prefer. Some sort of wild sweet pea weedy thing coming up in stream too, also pretty.

Gotta take pictures and start a weed ID thread since lots of stuff not in my 2 weed books.

Variety is fun. Try groundcovers instead of lawn wherever you can.

thanks, cascadians. I'll look into reseeding the bare spots with the erosion control (I assume it's marketed under the name Fleur de Lawn?)

the main reason I didn't just do ground cover in that area is that it's harder to control in the places where it borders the beds (a long strip on each side of lawn). Also, it's such a big area that it would be very expensive to buy all those plants.

One ground cover I've had a lot of good luck with (maybe too much -- check with me later this summer) is the small strawberry (might be the same one you mentioned: it's very low-growing, has a few little white flowers but no fruit). I pulled some that had spread into the driveway and planted it on my sloping beds.

My favorite lawn flower is a wild Bellis ? I dug up from a parking lot. It is slowly spreading in my yard, has cute little blooms with a pinkish cast, and stays very low. Self-heal, Prunella, is also able to bloom in lawns with purple spikes and stays low. I also like to encourage white clover by not mowing the blooms and collecting seeds to broadcast.

We tried not mowing to encourage a meadow and got hundreds of dock plants trying to seed, thistles and blackberries galore in addition to the wild grasses bboy mentions, so we mow to keep it all in check.