Dog Friendly Ground Cover
Help!!! I just moved in a small house with my 3 very large dogs. The backyard is dirt and is half sun and half shade. I am wondering if anyone can suggest a hearty ground cover that is inexpensive and can withstand Tuman, Lola, and Cyrano’s rather lively antics. Thanks so much!
Help!!! I just moved in a small house with my 3 very large dogs. The backyard is dirt and is half sun and half shade. I am wondering if anyone can suggest a hearty ground cover that is inexpensive and can withstand Tuman, Lola, and Cyrano’s rather lively antics. Thanks so much!
try mother of thyme or any thyme. its wonderful acts like a low growing “grass” wood chips can be ok but occasionally be a sort of potato chip for rover and well may pass or not…. thyme is wonderful, the smell is all year round because it is an evergreen like grass
if you decide to go with mulch, be careful, as the dark brown ‘cocoa’ mulches can be poisonous to canines. be sure to research the type you think you might use before buying it.
RE: wood shavings or “pieces” of things….Just make sure they don’t clog up your drain if you have one in the backyard. We put shavings in an old house years ago and had terrible flooding problems.
We’re building ourselves a nice deck. Let the pets mess up the backyard.
I would recommend wood shavings and mulch. plant things in raised beds or fenced in areas. Pachysandra is slow-growing and fickle although some think it is a weed -it ain’t. English ivy is invasive and has to be kept in check. Grass will never grow unless you get lots of sun and keep the dogs off it for the first season.
Sports turf seems to work in public venues, may be worth a look.
I’ve seen “stones” in catalogues that supposedly get dogs to focus on a small area for urine & dumping – it might help.
Throw down a mix of around 20% grass seed with about 80% dutch clover. Once the clover is established, it will fill in like a lawn and it’s more drought and urine tolerant than the grass. it will fill in it’s own divots.
We did half our yard with that, and the other half in pea gravel with weed fabric underneath-
seems to work fine with our active and somewhat destructive lab.
Have been fighting this battle for several years with two medium dogs. Tried english ivy, pachysandra, bugleweed, and various grasses, none of them really made it. We admitted defeat, planted a tree, built some raised beds, and put a thick layer of mulch on everything else.
will hide the poop but not the smell. If they are going to shit all over the place…better put down concrete or slate or some surface can rinse off.
English Ivy will grow the fastest. Pachysandra looks good too. Both stay green over the winter. You can buy cheap flats of both at HD and broolyn terminal market. Besides, both hide any poop that these three dogs will leave (and large ones at that!)