The other day I happened upon a bumblebee making a racket inside a newly opened rose blossom. I bent down for a closer look...only to discover that the little bugger was in great distress! The rose petals had opened, but not wide enough for the bumble, anxious to get at the sweet nectar in the bud's center. As a result, his round, fuzzy body became trapped in the lush flower, imprisoning him in the very place he most desired to be!
As I gently pulled back a few petals with my index fingers, and watched him buzz away from his plush prison, I thought about his predicament--a universal one, to be sure. I realized that, at one time or another, we're all caught up in situations of our own making, but not necessarily of our choosing. This is a common conundrum for garden lovers. We yearn for outdoor spaces worthy of the glossy magazine covers--and often spend tremendous amounts of money and effort to achieve the effect--only to discover that we need to hire full-time gardening help or carve out an extra forty hours a week to devote to flowerbed upkeep. We made those landscaping decisions, but miscalculated a bit. We sure didn't choose to spend all our free time working in the yard.
Fortunately, you can have a lovely landscape and a life outside the garden gate. How to achieve this? With groundcovers. These subtle layers of greenery act like a canvas to a great painting, outlining garden beds, highlighting hard-scaped areas, and providing the cohesion needed to pull together other plantings for a pleasing, unified look.
Groundcovers define the different "rooms" in your outdoor living space--and they do it effortlessly. Below, I've listed my favorite groundcovers--and the reasons I think they are so good. Read through this list and try to find some that might work in your garden:
* Pachysandra: Whether you choose to go with the traditional shiny-leafed Pachysandra terminalis (Japanese Spurge), the creamy tipped Pachysandra variegata or the native Pachysandra procumbens (whose leaves have a more matte finish), this plant is perfect in areas of part- or even deep shade. All forms grow rapidly in average soil and spread quickly through rhizomes; a perfect plant for covering large areas.
*Wild ginger: technically called Asarum canadense, is indigenous to the northeast United States, so is pretty much guaranteed to thrive in my little area of paradise. The heart-shaped leaves add interest to shady spaces. It doesn't spread as quickly as other groundcovers (each clump grows about 6-8 inches in all directions per year), so incorporate a few extra plants into flowerbeds at their inception and in just a few years you'll have a healthy, heart-shaped crop of bright green underfoot.
*Artemisia: this large and diverse genus of 200-400 species spreads very much like the wild daisies of the fields. The results are just as delightful. The most common form, called Artemisia absinthium (common name: wormwood) makes an excellent groundcover in sunny and shady spots (see photo, above). It rapidly coats the ground in delightful spikes of grayish green--a perfect complement to just about any flower color planted near it. Although it grows 2-3 feet, I cut mine back before it hits a foot high, which helps spread the seed heads (this plant is usually wind-pollinated) and keeps it looking like a groundcover. Another plus: it's highly aromatic, which discourages wildlife foraging on and around it.
*Phlox subulata: this divine plant--one of my favorites--spends 90% of its time as a thick, highly textured groundcover, but come Spring, it has a surprise for anyone who grows it: masses of long-lasting flowers of lavender, magenta, and even white. It thrives in sunny spots, but will get along in shadier spaces (just don't expect as much flowering). Here's a well-kept secret: if you mow the plant after flowers fade (just like you'd mow grass), you just may spur the plant into flowering again!
Any one of these groundcovers can replace your lawn. Over the years I've given mine permission to grow and expand. Each year I have a bit more groundcover and a little less grass and, let me tell you, it makes for a much more interesting effect in the yard!
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