Choosing Ground Cover Plants for Your Yard

Low-growing ground cover plants are a nice addition to any flower bed and landscaping design. Besides being beautiful plants in themselves, they also provide a great foundation for other colorful plantings in their midst. Ground cover is also helpful to the homeowner because it helps to choke out weed growth in the flower beds. Low-growing ground cover is also great to plant on steep hills and slopes and will prevent ground erosion. Ground cover is also excellent around the base of trees or in shady areas where nothing else will grow. Just be careful to choose less aggressive ground cover plants for these areas.

Before you choose the ground cover plants for your bed, be sure you have prepared the soil by amending it. Amending the soil provides better nutrition for the plants, better aeration of the soil, as well as helping the soil retain moisture. All of these soil improvements provide a much better environment for the roots of your plants. When the roots are healthy, so is the top of your bedding plants.

There are a wide variety of things you can add to your soil, such as grass clippings, mulch, compost, manure, etc. If you want to learn more about amending the soil, you can visit Choosing A Soil Amendment.

Once your soil is prepared, you will need to choose plants based on the size of your area, the desired height of plants, and the amount of shade and sun in the area. Some plants thrive in sunny areas and some plants simply can't tolerate much direct sunlight.

Here is a link to a website with sun-loving ground covers based upon your hardiness zone:
The Garden Helper. You will also find a link on this site for ground cover plants that thrive in shady areas, as well as plants that thrive in full shade, again based upon hardiness zones.

Speaking of hardiness zones, if you aren't sure about the zone in your area, you can find it here:
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

Something good to know about a lot of ground covers is, "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year, they leap."

Some of the more popular ground covers are:

1) Vinca Minor - This is an evergreen, low-growing plant which produces tiny flowers in the spring and fall of the year. Because it is evergreen, you have something green all year long. This is, however, a more aggressive ground cover, so be sure you plant it within a well-contained area.

2) Creeping Phlox - This little plant is always a favorite. It grows to a height of about 6 inches and comes in a variety of colors.

3) Sedum - This plant is much larger, with heights from 6-24 inches. This is one of the most maintenance free plants I have found. It is a perennial which starts producing new growth each spring. Just break off the dried growth from last season and allow the new plant to shoot out. Sedum blooms in the fall and is very easy to create new plants, simply by breaking off a piece (including root) and sticking it in the ground. I love the Stone Crop Sedum because of its pretty color in the fall and because it attracts butterflies. My hummingbirds also seem to love it.

4) Creeping Thyme - This is an herbaceous ground cover. It is also low-growing and evergreen and it produces blooms in late spring to early summer.

As you can see, it takes a lot of planning and preparation to begin a new flower bed in your yard, but the time spent in preparation and planning will pay you back in huge rewards. You will find fewer weeds, healthier plants and because you won't need to replace your plants, it will be less costly in the long run.

Happy Gardening!

Sources:
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/groundcovers/about.html
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/suncovers.html
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/Pubs/Garden/07235.html