Ellis - Covering Ground: Unexpected Ideas for Landscaping with Colorful, Low-Maintenance Ground Covers

My appreciation for ground covers increases with every growing season. Adaptable and utilitarian, they perform a multitude of landscape tasks. These low-maintenance garden plants can be used to smooth out the edges of flower beds, carpet pathways, smother weeds, and fill in under trees and shrubs. They receive far less respect than they deserve, though. Commonly relegated to waste areas and sites where not much else will grow, they are often viewed as little more than plants of last resort. Granted, the ability to grow where little else will is a valuable characteristic not to be taken lightly, but ground covers are handsome and immensely satisfying plants to grow. They are worthy of more creative uses.

GROUND COVERS APPEAL TO ME on many levels and for many reasons. Since all of my own gardens have started out as little more than large stretches of lawn, I especially appreciate their labor-saving features. Ive used them to reduce overall mowing time, replace grass on hard-to-mow slopes, eliminate lawn on sites that require lots of fussy trimming, and create island beds by underplanting, and thus connecting, scattered trees and shrubs. Ive also used ground covers to create naturalistic plantings that are more wildlife friendly than lawn grass.

Plantings of ground cover also appeal to me because theyre more environmentally friendly than lawn, provided they dont include nonnative invasive selections that can escape and blanket natural areas. Since ground covers dont need regular mowing, they dont require fossil fuel for maintenance. Less mowing also means fewer fumes and less noise. Well-chosen ground covers those selected to thrive in the conditions available also require less water and need fewer pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals than lawn does to keep them healthy. Ground covers also help manage stormwater runoff, an environmental problem in many areas. They are permeable, meaning they allow stormwater to percolate down into the soil instead of causing it to run off into storm drains as asphalt and other hardscape surfaces do.

Since spreading is one of the things good ground covers do best, careful selection is the key to creating really successful ground cover plantings ones that grow well, require minimal maintenance, and fill the spaces theyve been allotted without getting out of hand. Many of the most commonly available ground covers are big-time travelers that will annex large chunks of real estate if given half a chance. The spreading tendencies of English ivy (Hedera helix) are apparent to anyone who has grown it for even a few seasons: its vining stems blanket and smother anything and also quickly scale trees, fences, and buildings. Common periwinkle (Vinca minor) seems more benign, but established plants can cover woodland sites so densely they crowd out native species. Plants also are surprisingly difficult to remove. See Aggressive & Invasive Ground Covers on page 50 for more on coping with problem plants and The Dirty Dozen starting on page 52 for a list of the major offenders.

I ADD MORE GROUND COVERS to my garden every year. About the time I started writing this book, my husband and I moved to Maryland, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. I left behind a garden with all manner of ground cover plantings, and today, Im digging beds and installing plants on a landscape that was managed solely by lawn mower and string trimmer for 30 years. Nonnative invasives first planted as ground covers are a major feature of what passes for landscaping at our current house. As I slowly eliminate lawn and carve out gardens, I chop away at blankets of English ivy and common periwinkle, to name only two of the worst offenders.

One day Ill have a moss garden decorated with patches of partridgeberry (