Flower Gardening, Food Gardening, Gardening, Making

Ground Cover: Design, Choose and Plant the Best

A ground cover, whether plant, mulch or stone, sets the foundation for a garden design. It is often the floorboards on which our feature plants and trees can take center stage. It also has important practical benefits, such as retaining moisture in the soil, keeping unwanted weeds at bay, and even helping to stop or slow erosion.

A well thought through ground cover can make a feature of difficult slopes, bring color into a heavily shaded area, and make a standard garden spectacular.

Ground cover can be beautiful and functional. Here Pachysandra cover a slope providing a lovely green texture transition between a path and the woods. It also provides erosion protection for a slope. — Pachysandra ground cover provide both a lovely transition from a home yard into the woods and erosion control down a slope.

Best Ground Cover Plants for You

With all the choices out there, what are the best ground cover plants for you? Consider these three areas:

What are your garden focal points? And what role will the ground cover play?
In what function and climate must the ground cover thrive?
With full creativity in mind, what specific ground cover should I choose?

And then, once the design and ground cover is chosen, implementing for long-term sustainability is key to its ongoing beauty and health year after year. What tips should you know if you want to plant from seed? From seedlings or plugs? Or from bedding or sod?

Garden design around a fountain formal and English styles with forrest surrounding — Garden focal points provide a structure on which the garden design can radiate from and support. Evaluate your focal points and how your ground cover will complement it.

1. Landscape Design Focal Points and Role of Ground Cover

Critical to great landscape garden design is having key focal points. This can change throughout the seasons, so it is important to think about the garden and how it changes throughout the year.

Ask yourself, what will the role of the ground cover be? Will it be a neutral backdrop to dramatic focal points? Will it draw the eye to your focal point? Or perhaps will it be a focal point all or part of the year?

Your answer to those questions, will determine the type and features of your ground cover. A neutral backdrop may lend it self to a mulch or lawn. A feature lends itself to a flowering ground cover or even thinking creatively about how to cover a large area, such as using a mass of flowers.

Another key consideration is the height of your focal point and other plantings. You may require very low lying ground cover to ensure small flowers or plants can be seen. Or alternatively, a flat planting bed may need plants with some height to be able to be seen and appreciated from viewpoints around it.

Section 3 will help you explore which ground covers will meet your needs for display vs. backdrop and examples of great ground cover at differing heights.

Bright daffodils set off nicely against a neutral cedar mulch ground cover. — Dramatic focal points such as flowers can stand out even more when placed within a neutral ground cover area. Here cedar mulch provides a neat and minimalist backdrop to feature the flowers as the star of the show.

2. Best Ground Cover for Function and Climate

Ground cover is meant to thrive and last for years and years. Choosing a ground cover that is right for your environment is critical.

Choose Well Considering Your Climate, Sun, Soil, Water and Animals

The two most important factors are:

Climate, what is your year round weather
Sun exposure, there are lovely shade and scorching sun varieties, but neither are happy in the other’s preferred environment

All good garden centers will provide this information about plants and seeds. Make sure that you have the right climate and sun exposure preference for anything you plant.

Also, consider if you need drought resistant or have a moist environment, as well. And, do your plants need to resist animals such as deer, rabbits or others that may decimate your non-resistant plants.

Make sure your soil will be a healthy home for your ground cover. If it is not naturally so, then you can amend it with the type of soil that will help it have a long and healthy life.

Practical Benefits of Ground Cover

Ground cover also has many functional benefits. Most cultivated ground covers will serve all of these functions, but some better than others. Consider which functions you want to lean into (or avoid) when choosing your ground cover.

Common benefits of ground cover include:

Weed suppression
Erosion control
Moisture retention
Beauty – neutral or feature
Ecosystem habitat

3. Explore Ground Cover Options and Choose

Ground Cover Plants, Perennial, Robust and Designed for Practical Function as well as Beauty

Ice plant is a wonderful drought resistant ground cover. Many flower with dramatic bright colors such as this magenta flowering variety. Some of different color leaves and unique textures that provide wonderful variety. It can also be great erosion control even in sandy soils. — Flowering Ice Plant, variety of flower colors and leaf colors and textures, drought resistant, erosion control

Lambs ears are perennial ground cover with silver fur covered thick leaves. In summer they bloom with lavender flowers on tall spikes — Lamb’s Ear, silver furry leaves, lavender flowers in Summer

Periwinkle is a myrtle variety vine that is a great ground cover for shade having lovely small periwinkle flowers — Periwinkle (Myrtle), shade loving, spreading vine, periwinkle flowers in Spring

Pachysandra ground cover blooming with white flowers in early Spring, evergreen plush green plant with nice height — Pachysandra, 8 inch / 20 cm tall lush evergreen, spreading, white flowers in early Spring

Herbs can Give Fragrant and Edible Ground Cover

Mother of Thyme planted from seed as a flowering ground cover — Thyme, perennial, animal resistant, fast spreading creeping varieties, provide fragrant, flowering ground cover, many color flowers available

Mint is a resilient fragrant ground cover — Mint, resilient and perennial, spreading, animal resistant, comes in many colors and some with lovely flowers

Grasses and Lawn are Multi-Function Ground Covers

Lawn can provide a foundation leading to your focal points like here where an art garden is well framed by grass — Lawn as neutral foundation in art garden

Lawn field can be a feature in a landscape garden that is also functional for people and pets to enjoy — Lawns provide recreation areas for people and pets

Ornamental grasses — Ornamental grass comes in a wide variety of types and can be a feature or neutral ground cover

Peach tree bright flowers set off against beautiful backdrop of a green lawn — Lawns can form a lovely backdrop to showcase your focal point plantings

Mulches and Stone are Low Maintenance and Colorful Ground Cover Adding Structure and Neatness to a Garden

Mulch showcasing flowers and lovely landscape design — Mulch can showcase beautiful feature plantings

use rock as a color blocking way to add structure to your garden — Using stone can provide beautiful color blocking and pathways to add low maintenance structure to your garden

Wood, concrete and lawn form structure to a garden — Wood, gravel and lawn at formal structure to a modern garde

Be Creative! Consider using Color Blocks of Flowers, Shrubs or Small Trees as Ground Covers

Beautiful flowers providing a full block of colors completely filling an area — En Masse Flowers can provide exceptional beauty to a garden

Juniper tree and Forsythia covering a slope — Juniper Bush (green) and Forsythia (yellow) can cover large areas with a lovely display

Iris as short ground cover — Dwarf Iris providing ground cover feature of color block of purples

Purple crocus blooms in Regent's Park lawn — Crocus blooms provide a very early Spring feature of a lawn. Consider combining ground covers to give interest at different times of year

Ground Cover Video Tutorial

Choose the best plants for your garden design and climate. Watch the video tutorial. Think through landscape design considerations. Explore ground cover options such as flowering, evergreen, drought resistant, erosion control and more. And learn how to plant from seed, seedling or pots successfully and sustainably.

Growing Ground Cover Successfully

Most cultivated ground cover is designed to spread and fill an area. This is a great benefit for your garden. It does, however, mean that you need to plant it to allow it to have the space to spread and thrive.

With the exception of grasses and lawn, most ground cover is best planted with a good amount of spacing between seeds, seedlings or plugs. You will be rewarded with healthy plants that fill in and thrive year after year. Be patient the first year with small patches that are yet to fill in.

Grasses and lawn are the exception. They like to be densely seeded and grown close together. The lawn will be dense and healthy if planted this way. It also can help to blot out weeds when planted densely.

For all living ground covers, you can choose to plant from seed, seedlings / plugs, or mats / sod.

Growing Ground Cover from Seed

Seeds are normally the most cost effective, but generally require patience and attention to ensure success.

Growing ground cover often means spreading seeds evenly across a wide area. This can be tricky.

Video tutorial on planting tiny or small seeds across a wide area of land. It is a garden hack that you will use over and over for ground cover, herb gardens, flower gardens and more. Helps you to plant from seed quicker and easier for sustainable and budget friendly landscape garden design and fresh food gardening

To plant a lot of seeds very densely, it can be good to use a lawn seeding tool. It helps to spread the right amount of seeds for a dense and healthy lawn.

For other ground covers, I recommend combining your seed with dry soil, sand or fertilizer. This will extend the seeds across a larger volume, helping you to spread it more evenly. Below is a one minute video tutorial on how I did this for my mother of thyme ground cover, which worked beautifully.

Planting Ground Cover from Seedlings or Plugs

Seedlings or plugs work exceptionally well for creeping, vine or other spreading ground cover, as they provide strong healthy plants from which to radiate from.

Showing Creeping Thyme plugs with 32 plants per package. With two packages, an entire hillside can be effectively planted as ground cover — Seedling plugs can be an excellent way to plant spreading types of ground cover, like this Creeping Thyme.

Choosing Sod or Full Mat Ground Cover

Sod for lawn grass and seed mats for other ground cover can be an easy way to cover an area densely the first year, usually at higher cost but with quickest impact.

What’s Next?

Complete Landscape Garden Design can be broken down into 3 steps. Follow these and develop healthy, beautiful, sustainable gardens. Find the 3 steps and follow them through fruition in a bulb garden design under a tree.

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Prepare Well. Live Well.

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