by Glory Lennon

Created on: May 26, 2009

The wonderful thing about ground covers is once planted they pretty much do things on their own. They literally have it covered leaving you, the gardener, time to do so many other things. The ground cover can provide a low maintenance landscape keeping weeds from invading, keeping the soil from quickly drying out so you won't have to constantly water and they keep the soil together preventing erosion. With all this going for these plants it's a wonder why more gardeners don't take advantage of them to make life easier for them. Perhaps all you need is a useful guide to growing ground covers to get them started. Well, since you've asked here it is.

A ground cover can be any plants grown closely together to form a uniform mat to cover most if not all of the soil. This would make your lawn just as much a ground cover as a large patch of native daylilies covering a hillside and the prolific and nice smelling weed Crown Vetch filling the median along the highway. Lawns, however, are labor intensive unlike the easygoing ground cover. Native daylilies which grow upwards of 6 feet might be too tall to be called your usual ground cover though they work perfectly well as such. Crown Vetch, though pretty and nicely scented should be enjoyed from a distance. As it is particularly invasive it would not do for the well ordered landscape.

What most people consider true ground covers are low growing plants which spread quickly for complete coverage. There is a ground cover for every situation, wet soil, dry climate, too much or too little sun. The adventurous gardener should experiment with all sorts of plants to find unique ground covers for their landscape. The best are those with runner type roots which spread very rapidly or those like the Carpet Rose which provide a constant flower show up until frost.

For shade you might want the extremely likable Lily-Of-The-Valley (Convallaria Majalis) , Periwinkle (Vince Minor) which comes alive with tons of starry blue blossoms in mid spring or Ajuga Reptans also bursting into bloom come spring with dark purple-blue 5 inch tall spikes. All of these grow profusely to the point of being a bit invasive if allowed free reign but they make the most solid ground cover for sloping banks in the deep shade.

These ground cover plants are often used around trees to cover protruding roots. That way there is no need to mow around them risking damage to the tree roots and also eliminating the need to weed-whack. Removing any weeds and

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