My Experience With Kurapia: Why I Planted It — and Why I Eventually Removed It

A couple years ago, I posted a short video on TikTok of my daughter twirling around our newly planted Kurapia lawn. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it ended up becoming my most popular post ever — and, years later, I still get questions about the Kurapia.

Did we like it? Was it really drought tolerant? What about the bees? Would I plant it again?

The short answer is that I absolutely loved it at first. The longer answer is a little more complicated.

So, after living with Kurapia for over three years — and eventually removing it — I thought it was finally time to share our experience.

This was right before the Kurapia was installed - I can't believe how little my son was

Why I Chose Kurapia

In 2022, after a lot of research, I decided it was time to do something about our front lawn.

At the time, we had St. Augustine grass that was patchy, full of weeds and generally not looking very good. We were also in the middle of a large-scale renovation and expansion of our home, so the water had been turned off for the grass and it had been extensively trampled on. It felt like the right time to rethink the landscaping in the front.

I wanted something other than grass that would still give us a soft, green front yard but would be more drought tolerant and hopefully a little easier to maintain. The California drought that started around 2016 was still in the back of my mind, and I was trying to be water wise while also thinking about aesthetics for our front yard - what could look lush even if water was reduced?

That was when I found Kurapia.

This was the day after the Kurapia sod was first installed in May of 2022

I loved the way it looked. It stays very low to the ground, has tiny white flowers when it blooms, and has a softer, more natural look than a traditional lawn.

Our front yard is west facing and gets a tremendous amount of afternoon sun, so I was also looking for something that could handle heat. In my research, I came across examples of Kurapia growing successfully in very hot climates like Arizona as well as along the cooler, foggier Southern California coastlines. I was even told about a planting in Malibu that, once established, was watered only about once a year.

That sounded pretty incredible.

What Exactly Is Kurapia?

One thing I didn't fully understand when I first started researching it is that Kurapia isn't actually a grass.

It's a low-growing perennial broadleaf groundcover derived from Phyla nodiflora, also known as Lippia nodiflora. The Kurapia cultivar was selected and developed in Japan specifically for use as a durable, low-water groundcover.

This was when the Kurapia was looking so lush and beautiful

Unlike regular Lippia, Kurapia is sterile, which means it doesn't produce viable seed. Instead, it spreads through stolons — essentially creeping stems that travel along the surface of the soil, root as they go and eventually form a dense mat.

That sterile part is important because the regular species can spread aggressively. Kurapia was developed to give you many of the benefits of the plant without having it seed itself throughout the landscape.

And although it's sterile, it still flowers.

Lots of flowers, actually.

Yes, Kurapia Attracts Bees

This is probably one of the questions I've received most often because you could see bees buzzing around the little white flowers in some of my videos.

Yes, Kurapia definitely attracts bees.

When ours was in bloom, there were usually bees somewhere in it. The flowers produce nectar, which makes them attractive to honeybees, butterflies and other pollinators.

That honestly never bothered me.

We had two little kids and a dog regularly walking and playing around the yard, and we never had an issue with anyone being stung. Obviously, everyone's comfort level with bees is different, but in our experience they were much more interested in the flowers than they were in us.

I also have a vegetable garden, so I actually liked having another source of food for pollinators close by.

If the bees are a concern, Kurapia can also be mowed periodically to remove the flowers and reduce pollinator activity. I personally liked the flowering look, so we mostly let ours bloom.

Planting Our Kurapia

We decided to install Kurapia sod in May 2022.

It was definitely an investment — I ordered 650 ft of Kurapia and the price was $3.05/sqft (so just almost $2,000 worth of sod) — but because we were already putting so much work into the house, I was excited to finish the front with landscaping that felt a little different.

Along the border of the Kurapia, I planted Pennisetum 'Fairy Tails,' one of my favorite ornamental grasses and a selection associated with famed grass and meadow garden designer John Greenlee.

I have a bit of a sentimental connection to John Greenlee's work. Years ago, he created a meadow garden plan for my parents' home in Marin County, and I've had his book, The American Meadow Garden, for a long time. His approach to naturalistic meadow planting has always stuck with me.

I found the Fairy Tails at SiteOne Village Nursery in Huntington Beach and planted them along the Kurapia to give the front yard a softer, meadow-like edge.

And initially, I absolutely loved the result.

During the winter - no flowers, a little browner, but still looking okay

The First Two Years

The sod went in during May of 2022, and by the end of June it looked beautiful.

It filled in quickly, the tiny white flowers appeared, and paired with the grasses around it, it was exactly the softer, more natural front lawn I had envisioned.

For quite a while, it continued to grow well and look great.

Ours did change quite a bit seasonally. During the winter it would become somewhat brown and dormant looking. I knew there would be some seasonal change going into it, and honestly, it didn't bother me very much. Once the weather warmed up, it would green up again.

For the first couple of years, I was overall very happy with the decision.

Then, in the summer of 2024, things started to change.

The patchiness started and seemed to be spreading...

When the Problems Started

Large brown patches began appearing throughout the Kurapia.

At first, I was told it wasn't getting enough water.

So I watered it more.

Then I was told I was watering it too much and that the brown areas were probably being caused by fungus.

So I watered it less.

As it continued to look worse and worse each month, we tried different things to revive it - like this layer of nitrogen rich manure

It became one of those incredibly frustrating landscaping situations where every piece of advice seemed to contradict the piece of advice before it.

Not watering it made it look terrible.

Watering it more also seemed to make it look terrible.

And no matter what I tried, the brown areas continued to spread.

At around the same time, torpedo grass and clover began making its way through the Kurapia.

This may have been the most frustrating part of the entire experiment.

I spent hours hand pulling it, trying to stay ahead of it. Because Kurapia itself is a broadleaf groundcover, many of the herbicides you might otherwise consider for weed control aren't compatible with it.

I was already trying to avoid herbicides, but by that point I was getting desperate enough that I at least wanted to know what my options were.

There really weren't many.

And once the torpedo grass became established inside that dense mat of Kurapia, keeping up with it by hand became exhausting.

This was how it was looking right before we replaced it

The Conversation That Helped Me Make My Decision

Eventually, I spoke on the phone with someone who was very knowledgeable about Kurapia and explained everything that had been happening in our yard.

During that conversation, I was told that the Kurapia plant material being grown and sold had changed over the years and that some of the newer material wasn't proving to be as resilient as some earlier installations. Or possibly mine was an older variety that was not as resilient as the newer strains. It was kind of guesswork at this point to be honest.

I haven't been able to independently verify that, so I don't want to state it as a fact or suggest that it explains every problem someone might have with Kurapia.

But after two years of watching ours decline despite trying different watering schedules and approaches, the conversation made me feel a little less like I was somehow doing everything wrong.

More importantly, it helped me make a decision I had already been considering.

It was time to take it out.

Our lawn now

Going Back to Grass

In the winter of 2025, we removed all of the Kurapia and reseeded the front yard with Marathon II grass.

There is some irony in ending up back at a traditional lawn after this entire experiment.

And Marathon II is admittedly more water thirsty than Kurapia, which was one of the things I had originally hoped to avoid.

But so far, I've been incredibly happy with it.

It looks fantastic. It does a much better job of keeping weeds at bay. And it's soft enough that the kids can walk, lie and play on it comfortably.

There is obviously a trade-off. I'm using more water than I had hoped to when I started this entire experiment in 2022.

But I've also learned that a theoretically lower-water landscape isn't necessarily lower maintenance if you're constantly fighting weeds, brown patches or other problems.

For our yard, a traditional lawn has simply been the better fit.

Would I Plant Kurapia Again?

Probably not — at least not as a large replacement for a front lawn.

That doesn't mean I think Kurapia is a bad plant.

I actually still think it's beautiful. When it was healthy and covered in those tiny white flowers, I loved the way our front yard looked. And I can understand exactly why people are drawn to it.

I really wish it could have worked out because it really was so beautiful at it's peak

For the first two years, ours really did look wonderful.

But based on my own experience, I would be hesitant to make the same investment again without first seeing an established Kurapia lawn growing successfully under very similar conditions nearby.

I would also spend a lot more time thinking about weed control before planting it. That was something I hadn't fully appreciated when we installed ours, and once an aggressive grass worked its way into the Kurapia, controlling it became extremely difficult.

So, four years after starting this little lawn experiment, I've essentially come full circle — back to grass.

Just a much better version of it.

It wasn't exactly where I expected this experiment to end when I watched my daughter twirling across that little green Kurapia lawn back in 2022, but I'm very happy with how our front yard looks today.