Low maintenance
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With careful selection, ground
cover plants will give a glorious and constantly changing year-round display.
Think of all four seasons when creating your planting plan. If you want nothing
more than a thick, green cover which needs virtually no attention, go for a
single planting of extra-vigorous varieties. Examples would be:
Rubus tricolor - a
relative of the blackberry with shiny green leaves
Lamium galeobdelon
- a creeping deadnettle with silvery foliage and yellow blooms
Hypericum
calycinum - densely suckering dwarf shrub with big yellow
flowers
Heathers - all kinds
Hedera helix -
ivy
Junipers - creeping kinds (J. 'horizontalis')
Symphytum
grandiflorum - a creeping comfrey with cream tubular flowers
If you prefer variety, choose
ground cover plants that will grow well together. The plants below are divided
into seasons so select something for every month!
Spring
Epimedium
versicolor - yellow blooms. Well-marked foliage.
Trachystemon
orientalis - blue, shooting star flowers followed by big green
leaves.
Vinca minor (periwinkles) - evergreen creeping plants with
blue or white flowers.
Viola labradorica - purple foliage, little
violet flowers.
Pulmonaria (Lungworts) - decorative, spotted foliage;
blue or pink spring flowers.
Doronicum (Leopardsbane) - easy
perennials with big yellow daisy flowers.
Summer
Artemisia
ludoviciana - felty white foliage over a spreading
rootstock.
Geranium 'Russell Pritchard' - endless succession of pink
blooms above greenery.
Heuchera 'Palace Purple' - gorgeous evergreen
bronze foliage.
Holcus mollis 'Albovariegatus' - mat-forming grass
with green and white leaves.
Hostasa huge choice of gorgeous foliage
in gold, blue-green, cream etc.
Ligularia clivorum - huge, rounded
leaves, orange daisy flowers on giant plants.
Autumn
Anemone
hybrida (Japanese anemones) - tall perennials with pink or white
flowers.
Cotoneaster dammeri- red berries on prostrate, creeping
stems of shiny evergreen foliage
Geranium macrorrhizum - pink spring
flowers. Rusty autumn foliage.
Liriope muscari - tufty grasslike
plants with beaded purple flowers.
Persicaria affine- leathery
foliage, pretty red seed capsules follow pink flowers.
Rodgersia
podophylla- big bronze leaves that emerge on stems direct from the
ground.
Winter
Bergenia
cordifolia- leathery evergreen leaves; pink, purple or white flowers in
spring.
Euphorbia amygdaloides ssp robbiae - evergreen spurge with
greenish flowers.
Galanthus nivalis - Snowdrops.
White carpets of
winter delight, delicately fragrant.
Sarcococca humilis - Christmas
Box.
Low, evergreen shrub with winter fragrance.
Helleborus foetidus
- dark, distinctive leaves, pale green flowers with red petal
edges.
Lamium maculatum - silvery foliage which often persists
through cold weather.
Plant bulbs among your ground cover plants: daffodils or
narcissus, crocuses and tulips for spring, followed by allium varieties. Allium
christophii and the closely related Nectaroscordium bulgaricum will seed around
and naturalise. You could even have lilies for late summer colour and
colchicums for autumn.
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