I think you can definitely have a beautiful yard without a lawn. It's a really big thing on the West coast right now. Sunset has a lot of pictures to draw inspiration from.

http://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-friendly/lose-the-lawn-low-water-landscaping

Here is my lawn-free yard. Not the best-looking yard, but it's fun to work with and I like the look more than when it was all lawn. My lawn-alternatives are succulents - which are still filling in. By mid-summer they should cover up most of the empty space. One thing I will recommend for you will be to cover up all bare ground with mulch. If you don't, weeds will take over really quickly!

Had a grass-less front yard at my previous residence (sorry, no photos). Had a fair amount of hardscaping and the rest filled with mixed planting beds. And while I did have some lawn in the back to accommodate my dogs, I kept shrinking it year by year :-) Connecting side yard also had no lawn.

Oh wow so they do exist. Josue your lawn looks from a conifer garden to a tropical garden! It looks as if your zone changed from 5 to 10 lol. But I don't really like grass too much since you have to mow them and they spread all over the place so I was thinking of alternatives. But dogs.. I love dogs so I guess I will have a little bit of grass for them. Maybe a zoysia japonica grass..

Heruga, thanks! it definitely was big change. I do have a small lawn in the back that my dogs love. It's a native carex pansa lawn though, so i don't ever mow it and I'm ok with the messy look.

Oh if carex can take foot traffic then can liriopes also take foot traffic?

I'm not sure actually. I've never grown liriopes but they seem, to be, a bit brittle. Carex is very aggressive and very tough

Hmm I see... any other grass alternatives that you know of that can tolerate foot traffic?

I'm not too familiar with what would grow well where you are but lippia repens is one I'm familiar with here. It can take considerable foot traffic and drought.

Oh ok will take a look at that. Thanks!

I, too, have a yard with no lawn grass so can confirm it's do-able. In former yards, I had small lawns and large areas of groundcover (English ivy) in the shade areas. It was very low maintenance. Currently, my shade is not established so all the groundcover is in sun areas where it takes more effort to control weeds. I use Preen (pre-emergent herbicide and it is the difference between the weeds being manageable, and not. I look forward to shade developing and hope I won't even need to use Preen. (I didn't use it in my other shady yards.) I go though the yard about once every 3 weeks and pry out what weeds I find. It usually takes 45 minutes and results in a half dishpan's worth of very small starts. It takes that long because they are small and hard to find. One of the main reasons weeds are so successful and can be so difficult to combat if one doesn't use a good strategy is because they sprout easily from seed and about 14 days later they are flowering and then in another 5 days producing seed themselves! One must be diligent about their eradication or they will prevail. It is babies having babies! The back yard is not large and now a lot of the space is devoted to patio. Originally, I had about 200 s.f. of Zoysia at one area. The first year it was spectacularly gorgeous, like a putting green. But the second year it got a fungus that swept over it in less than a week. After that, no matter what I treated it with, it never improved. About that time I was getting the idea of expanding the patio with a dance floor so that's what it became. Another thing, the yard is separated all around from the neighbors' yards by a mowing strip, which helps (moderately) to keep their grass and weeds out of my yard.

I should also mention that while I have no grass, I use one low groundcover predominantly as a lawn substitute. It is perennial peanut (it's Florida). It can be walked on, is generally durable and has the added benefit of flowering during all the warm months. While I don't mow it in a routine way like one does lawns, I do cut it a couple of times a summer as I like it shorter and like to keep it uniform. In some areas it grows a little faster so will get a little taller.

I carpeted mine!

(It's a work in progress, will be native grasses and wildflowers)

In New Jersey, with everything that can grow so lush there, your yard will be splendid!

Last year, I converted almost all of our previously-lawn front yard to mostly landscape bed. I am hoping to keep a narrow band of lawn (assuming I can coax it to grow, otherwise probably some ground cover or pea gravel) closer to the house where we sometimes sit outside. We were away for some years, and in the meantime, the trees got bigger and denser and the soil acidified and what lawn had been there before we left had mostly disappeared by the time we returned. With a lot of lawn advice from neighbors and nurserymen, we did make a half-hearted attempt to re-establish lawn, but with little success. So, we decided that a lawn now, in that spot, requires too much coddling. I started damage-control by just planting shrubs in the bare dirt spots so that the spots wouldn't look so ugly, but my husband found it annoying to twist and turn the lawn-mower through what had become a maze of shrubs, so I connected the shrub spots with more garden bed. Before I knew it, most of our yard had become garden bed.

Selecting what to plant was pretty easy because there were hostas and sedums and day lilies and grasses already around the house that desperately needed division and were looking for new homes. And, I found plenty of ground covers hiding here and there, too, as I explored. Now, our front yard has rhododendrons, native and evergreen azaleas, hydrangeas, viburnums, and lilacs. Interspersed, there are peonies, hostas, sedums, irises, day lilies, and bleeding hearts and ferns. In lower patches, small hostas and heucheras. Creeping phlox, ajuga, and vinca minor are covering the ground in between. Where there is some sun, there are pennisetums and golden euonymous, too. And, there are daffodils, crocuses, grape hyacinths, and some other new spring bulbs that will hopefully come up soon for early color. Except for some of the shrubs and the bulbs, the rest of the plants were all things that were already here when we moved in. And, even some of the shrubs were from branches that had layered. Well, it is an experiment, so the plantings may change, but for now, the front yard has gone from lawn with some trees to a sort of deeply textured woodland garden.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but I myself think the no-lawn front yards are very beautiful, ours as well as those at other houses. I do not miss the lawn one little bit. The landscaped expanse is prettier, with something in bloom from early spring until the fall, a bit of privacy from the street without isolation, and more interesting to look at than turf grass and easier to maintain. No one in our family misses pushing the mower around every weekend not to mention the other lawn care. No-lawn yards are not common around here, but front yards that are almost entirely landscape beds with only tiny accents of lawn are not uncommon. -- Especially in older neighborhoods with mature trees and lots of shade. The houses in the city sometimes have such little bits of land around them that they only have gardens and no lawn.

An added bonus of going no-lawn is that the neighbors out for their walks will often stop to look. If I'm outside, they will stop to chat and are often curious to know the names of plants or about their habits, or what the final design plan is. And, a few of them have even invited me to their gardens to give me some of their perennials that needed to be thinned. So, I have made some new friends and scored some nice plants as a direct result of replacing our lawn.

Good luck with yours! Your description sounds like your front yard will be lovely.

My lawn is about the square footage of a large living room and not anywhere near the house. an Arborist drops off woodchips on a regular basis and I use that as an alternative. I don't have to edge or mow it, plus it's good for the ground and absorbs our winter rains.

I like all three. They're very neat and clean looking, and more lush than any lawn! They probably use less water too. Upkeep looks easy. I get a relaxed feeling. As simple as they appear, they all look like they were professionally done...and done well too.

Not a gardener's landscape though. I think most of us would mix it up a bit.

When we first created our yard and had a young dog and not much landscaping/gardening experience, we had lots of grass in our front and back yards. In the 12 years since we've been in our house, LOTS of grass has been replaced with garden beds and other landscaping and hardscaping. My husband hated the weekly mowing during the warmer seasons when we had so much lawn in our yards. While there's much less of that now that we only have two small patches of lawn, there's still plenty of yard work with our current yard, but it's more often pruning, weeding, perennial clean up, etc. I've also spent countless hours planting out the yard with trees, shrubs, perennials, and groundcovers where we used to have grass, but I like tinkering in the yard so that's not so much a complaint as an observation.

If you're looking for lower maintenance, there are lots of options. There's a book, The American Meadow Garden, by John Greenlee, that I'd recommend if you're wanting to replace lawn grass with something more natural that doesn't need regular mowing. We planted buffalo grass (from seed purchased at a local seed company) along with street trees and dwarf spring bulbs in our hell strip areas (between the sidewalk and street) that only gets raked and mowed once in the spring and otherwise requires no maintenance. I wish we had a meadow grass in our yard too, but at this point I'm not motivated to kill off the lawn grass and start over from scratch.

I think it was Yardvaark who said, a few years ago, that traditional lawn only looks good when it is green and lush. And that's the bottom line truth. But, in many climates, keeping lawn green and lush requires too much care and far too much water. My yard has almost no grass left--I would rather have trees, shrubs, and perennials. I used to have groundcovers, but have ripped most of it out as other things have grown in size. All non-grass areas are mulched. I don't have much trouble with weeds, but I live in a low precip area.

On Saturday mornings, when all of the neighborhood lawn mowers fire up, I just wander around the yard with a cup of coffee.

I wonder if cutting down on lawn first would help us get over some of our bad habits, such as planting too close to the house or the fence or the other plants because the grass has to take precedence over all else.

Thanks to those who posted pictures--very enjoyable, including the carpeting.

For those of you who are enjoying your grassless yard, do you have dogs? Eastautumn, you said you had a dog. Do you still have one as of now? If so, how do you let them free in your yards? I love dogs and they I will definitely have one in my future home but worried about them not being able to freely roam around in the yard, as they should be.

I don't have a dog. If I did I would have to have it transgendered into a cat so it wouldn't require so much work.

Heruga, one practical note from someone who is not a lawn fan but who lives in the NE US. I want you to notice that no one who responded here and has their location labeled has their grassless yard in the mid-Atlantic or New England. Our climax plant community is hardwood forest, and we have ample rainfall to help them get started, so one of the pluses for having lawn in this part of the country is that regular mowing kills seedling trees and shrubs. Lawn is by far the easiest maintenance in this part of the country IME, though my preference is more garden and less lawn. I am not saying it can't be done, but even with mulch and dense ground covers, a lot of removal of baby trees will be needed to keep up the maintenance if you don't want a thicket of young trees. Every year I remove tens of thousands of tree seedlings - cherries, buckthorn, and oak courtesy of squirrels and voles, and maple, birch, and elm seedlings courtesy of the wind are the most prominent in my garden. The trick is to stay on top of them and get to them early, even before they have a full pair of leaves so that removal is quick and easy. Some folks use preemergent herbicides to help with suppression as well.

I have no dogs, but my neighbors have two big dogs and no grass in their fenced side and back yards. That whole area is either hardscape, mulch, or raised beds. The dogs seem to stay out of the raised beds.

Hmm.... You know what I think I should probably have grass then. Maybe a small patch so I dont have to mow often. I was thinking of a moss lawn but they can't take sun and they tend to crumble easily and especially with critters digging holes and stuff I don't think it's a good idea. Anyway I am gonna go with the zoysia grass I think.

I have dogs and no lawn. They go on or near the pathways, no more difficult to clean up than on a lawn. Pathways should be wide, so two people can walk side by side comfortably.

With groundcovers instead of a lawn it's good to have flagstone pathways so you don't have to walk on the groundcover. If you find yourself walking on the groundcover, just add some more flagstones.

You might want to do some more research on zoysia. It is NOT a very well regarded grass and will not survive well or look good in a cool season grass climate, which definitely includes NJ!!

Great ideas on this thread. We are considering getting rid of what little grass we have so I will be following with interest!

Small patches of grass look too small because of the fine leaf texture of the grass - small lots aren't usually big enough to have lawns that are big enough to look the part. And where lawn exists as a strip or patch often there is shading from trees, shrubs or buildings that results in much of the lawn being bare or thin.

Ditto GG's comment about zoysia. It's a warm season grass that turns straw brown in the winter. If there are perennial weeds in it, the weeds will remain green--it's an odd effect. Unfortunately, I think many of the newer, low-water fescues are also warm season grasses, but I may be making that up.

If the straw brown expanse is balanced by hefty evergreen plants, the overall winter straw effect is not so bad.

Also, ditto Embothrium's comments.

I really don't mind a yellow colored lawn in the winter. I actually see a couple of brown/yellowish lawn these days and it actually looks quite attractive to me. Unless zoysia japonica will not survive in my zone? It says zone 5 hardy.

I can's say anything about Zoysia in Z5. There were quite a few Z lawns in Atlanta (Z 7/8) and during the winter when it went dormant, if it was well tended and weed free, it was spectacular. It would be a uniform, gorgeous blond color that looked especially good with Christmas decorations .... evergreenery, lights, wreaths and all that, because it set them off with a dramatic color contrast ... almost as dramatic as if one had come to a yard where it had snowed. Zoysia that had green weeds in it, though, looked nasty.

Zoysia has issues in zone 5, and the colder parts of zone 6. It doesn't die, but it also isn't vigorous enough to choke out anything, let alone weeds. It doesn't wake up until late, so has a very short growing season. I don't know how far south that goes, but I'd ask locally before putting it in.

I'd also like to second NHBabs on regional information. You need to weed out the advice from drier climates because it isn't applicable. Once you've done that, there isn't a lot left.

Here's my 'lawn'. It's been this way for several years. It just needs a raking once in awhile. Beats cutting and edging it every week during the growing season. My wife wants a lawn and I keep telling her "I'm working on it". ;-) She never goes outside anyway, the road is 1/4 mile away and I have no close neighbors. to impress.

It will probably get planted this spring. I don't want to push it too far.

Nice croc!

Something bit off his foot. I don't what it was, but it musta been big. ;-)

Here's an updated photo of my yard, 9 months from the first photo above. Gardens are much more fun to care for than lawns, in my opinion.

Clover & annual Rye are good choices for NJ...I grew up there.