
I had a similar thought. So, I do that with my "Wildflower Meadow" garden. Partly because I never actually eliminated the lawn grass before planting it. I just make pockets -- dug up, turned sod, or mini-sheet mulched -- to plant in. Somebody has to be the deer/bison around here and "eat" tall grass to the ground

So to allow self-seeded and scattered seeds/seedballs to grow, I go around snatching hand(mouth)fuls of grass -- breaking off some, yanking out some (which are used in compost pile or as mulch) and scratch around/dethatch with my hand sickle. (I actually imagine myself as a grass-eating animal, to try to imagine the kind of unpatterned, random defoliation that might occur.) I tried with a hand rake, but that seems to cause too much wholesale damage.