By the time I began noticing the grass wear in my town it was too little too late--it was already on its way to desertification.
I ended up creating an elaborate brick sidewalk pattern which I placed on the ground all around town. The sidewalk can take me from any point A to any point B (house, Nook's, gate, neighbors, etc).
At first I wasn't too keen on having patterns lying all over town, but once I tweaked my pattern to the point where it looked good, I got used to seeing the brick paths everywhere--now, I can't imagine my town without them. @_@
I was nazi about nobody deviating from the paths. LOL I only stray from the paths to dig up a dig spot or to check on hybrids or any other daily tasks. Other than that, I stick to the path.
My strategy was to buy out Nook's flowers and plant them around town like crazy. The first places I planted them were along the edge of my paths. I also planted trees along or near the edge of my paths. In other areas, I planted trees like crazy. Trees act like band-aids for the ground. You cannot walk on the ground below them, therefore that area is protected against further wear.
Every few days I walk around town and press the up arrow to look up at the sky--when I do this behind a tree, they will temporarily become transparent (I'm sure you all know this), and I check to see the progress the grass is making below it. When there is enough grass regrown below the tree to my satisfaction, I then chop down the tree and plant a new one beside the grass spot left behind by the old one. I plant flowers on the old tree-sites to preserve the new grown grass.
To be honest with you, for the first two weeks of this I was seeing no improvement at all. In fact, I was sure that the grass was STILL thinning out, despite my not walking on it.
I kept with my routine, though, just because there was nothing else I could really do.
About a week ago, I started noticing a difference.... There are now larger and larger spots of grass emerging in the flower/tree rich areas. The tiny flecks of grass eventually get bigger and bigger. I'm beginning to think grass wear/growth occurs at an exponential rate.... Once you start growing grass around flowers and trees--provided YOU DON'T KILL THE TEENSY 1ST DAY FLECKS--the grass starts getting happy.
Keep in mind, the tiny flecks of grass that appear WILL DIE WHEN YOU WALK OVER THEM. If you keep killing them, grass will never grow there. If you give those tiny little flecks of new grass a few days to grow, they will be more resilient to being stepped on (not that you should go around stepping on grass just for the hell of it).
It might seem like a lot of effort to go through, but it's pretty much just become my daily routine--along with checking dig spots, watering wilting flowers, etc. What else are you gonna do?
I just sucked it up and bought an Orange Jumpsuit and construction helmet from the Able Sisters and declared myself supreme town caretaker, lmao.
