Better Groundcover

What Are Ground Cover Plants?

Any plants, if growing well enough, will be, to some extent, ground covering and weed suppressing. However, some that have a particularly dense or vigorous and generally short-growing habit have been picked out to come under the term ground cover. Mainly those ground cover plants that are herbaceous are found in this list.

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What Is the Key to Success?
Most importantly, soil preparation and the removal of all roots of any existing perennial weeds. The clearing of any of the thick white roots of these is essential; otherwise, weeds that are hard to control later can re-emerge competing with and spoiling the desired cover. If such roots are still believed to be present (this is most more likely in clay soils where they are hard to remove), it may be better to keep the plants in pots or in a clean patch of ground until you are confident all are eradicated.

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Soil Preparation and Planting
Fork or dig in some garden or bought-in planting compost over the whole area to be planted, or mix some good compost with the soil under and around the roots of each plant as it is put in. Set them in the garden soil close to the level they were in their pots if pot-grown.

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Establishing a Solid Cover
Garden soil contains weed seeds, so in the space between the plants, a mulch layer of sterile material can be placed over the bare soil. Ensure that the plant leaves are not buried under this until the ground cover has knitted together to form a complete carpet. Alternatively, the ground can be periodically hand-weeded or hoed to get rid of any emerging weed seedlings. 

Watering is likely to be needed for the first few weeks after planting, with a thorough weekly soaking (perhaps every 2 or 3 days in a heatwave) to reach below the base of the roots. This encourages them to go deeper and search out moisture for themselves. 

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Plant Choice and When to Relax
If you have selected plants that like your existing natural soil conditions and they have joined together, an area can then largely take care of itself. With some evergreen planting, this can mean no attention from one year to the next. With others, there will be some routine maintenance. 

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Aftercare
For a tidy carpet, some plants will benefit from a shearing over after flowering or if the leaves are looking tired. Herbaceous plants will mostly require cutting down of any dead stems in winter. Over large areas, this can be done with a strimmer or even a rotary mower, and the cuttings, if fine enough, left on the surface as a mulch or raked off if preferred.

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Timescale to Form a Full Carpet
This is partly dependent on your budget and how closely or densely you can space the plants initially, and how vigorous the plants are that you have chosen. In the listings, each plant will have an average height and spread measurement given. The spread figure should be the maximum spacing you should use between plants. In most cases (nb: not all), with herbaceous plants this will be achieved in the second season of growth, and for the most economical approach this is the distance between plants we recommend. You might halve this if not on a tight budget, and want a full cover, perhaps within the first season.

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Can ground cover plants overrun weeds? 
Notwithstanding what is written above about the importance of initially removing weeds, there are ground cover plants that can overgrow, or by being more competitive, even many strong growing weeds. There is an element here, though, of effectively setting a weed to catch a weed. So the introduced plant can itself in time need curbing. With a problem weed, our recommendation (NB normally in areas with ample space) is sometimes with something like ground elder or stinging nettle to change your view of the plant from being a weed to a welcome wildflower. Often such plants, though normally negatively perceived, are actually potentially very beautiful in their own right. And the spin-off benefit of retaining, in this case the stinging nettle, is that it is the caterpillar food plant of many of our native butterflies. The development of a dense shrub or tree layer will also in time act as a weed-restricting canopy. This is simply ground cover on a higher level.

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Why to grass or why not to grass? 
Putting an area to lawn is often regarded as a labour-saving solution to managing an area. But for large areas this will sometimes be the case because of the relatively low creation costs, plus it can have huge amenity value. A mown grass setting is arguably the best foreground or context for our beds and borders, as well as being usable for access. A key reason to put an area to lawn is that it can routinely be walked on and still remain attractive ;No other plants can withstand this use to the same extent, although some ground cover will bear light foot traffic. However, if you are dealing with a small garden area, the level of work required to keep it mown and tidy, (there are lower maintenance wildflower meadow approaches involving less care) can mean it may be better to scrap the lawn and use gravel or paving in its place with areas of planting including ground cover to make it attractive. Drought experienced in recent summers and likely to occur more often has meant lawns have become brown and less appealing for much of recent summers. To provide the option of a grassy look, though not as short as a conventional lawn requiring mowing we offer a number of low-growing grasses and grass-like plants as an alternative cover.

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Some hints on the visuals
We often suggest sticking to only one kind of ground cover plant in an area, perhaps punctured by carefully spaced trees, shrubs, or taller herbaceous plants, (see the sister list to this one www.betterplanting.co.uk ). As a general rule try to get, some contrast in colour, texture, and form, and perhaps heights.

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Keep in mind foliage more than flowers, as this is what you live with at least all summer, if not all year, whereas most flowers are only present for a very few weeks. We supply normally a minimum of five plants of a kind, which will ensure a good-sized group of each. Mixing smaller numbers can be satisfying in small gardens, but ensuring all remain well-groomed (removing spent flowers and cutting back when leaves are looking tired) is more necessary to avoid risk of a messy effect. While grouping plants of a kind may generally be desirable, it is by no means an unbreakable rule to do so. An interesting pattern can be made using two, three, or more varieties of different character, but similar vigour randomly mixed over a large area.

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When better not to bother?
Mature surface-feeding trees may make it difficult to grow anything, and the dignified approach here may be to let bare soil prevail, perhaps covered with just fallen leaves. There are plants that tolerate dry shade, but there are limits, and no plants is better than sad-looking, struggling ones. If you are trying to establish plants in a tree root-filled soil. It will be necessary to clear some roots (without damaging main roots) and make planting pockets. If the roots are dense you may need more than a standard spade or fork; perhaps a pickaxe or mattock.

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Odd Spots
The above looks at more generously sized areas but every garden has lots of odd corners or strips that could be enriched by planting and reduce the need for hand weeding or the use of potentially harmful chemicals. Such places include the gap or sometimes just a crack between the house wall and adjoining paving, between paving stones themselves (all joints or just dotted occasionally) to break up the area with some green relief, the area on a drive between the car wheel tracks; a verge strip between a front garden boundary and the pavement or road; this to mention just a very few;

 

In summary before or even after committing to unnecessarily large and possibly dull areas of expensive hard landscaping or actually quite high maintenance lawn, think about what benefit can be had from more use of verdant ground coverers.