In US, most townships prohibit unmowed lawn, so having an unmowed meadow is off limit. Most homeowners here consider all non turf plants weed and try to get rid of all, but most fail. Weed are like algae, opportunistic, and are made up of thousands varieties that will always find conditions to thrive.
Since the war to eliminate weed can never be won, why not accommodate weed in good way. Since I started my planted tanks, I look at lawn weed differently and see them more like aquatic plants with resemblance in foliage, texture and color. If arranged in neat patterns, they can be beautiful. Tom Barr used to call his dutch garden set up a weed farm.
I started to identify weed in my lawn, research their characteristic and life cycle, and distinguish good weed to keep, and bad weed to eliminate. Clovers are beneficial weed because they are legumes that add nitrogen to soil. Vinca minor invasion in the lawn is a beautiful weed that bloom with blue flowers in spring and the deep green foliage blend in with turf grass. Purple Dead Nettle is a good ground cover in the flower beds as they are uniform low growing and bloom with purple flowers in spring. Common Vetch in the flower bed is fern like and a legume that adds nitrogen to the soil. There are many bad weed that must be eliminated including all tree seedlings that grow tall and form deep tap roots, horse nettle and weed in the Solanum family that are thorny, grow tall and give me dermatitis.
