Selecting Ground Cover Plants

Mossy or flowering ground cover? Deciduous or evergreen ground cover? The most important consideration in selecting your ground cover plant is its suitability to the conditions. Carefully evaluate the area you are planting in before you lay ground cover and check all the conditions that will effect plant growth; the climate, soil and available light and water. If you understand the conditions you will be able to find the right ground cover plants for areas that receive too much or too little sun, wide areas, slopes, and wet or dry soil.

Typical Ground Cover Plants in a Garden Landscape

You must also select your ground cover plant according to its growing patterns, rather than its height, colour or density. Some will need full shade and others full sun. Some ground covers will take any conditions you give them!

Another attribute that helps to make ground cover plants so popular is they're ability to phase out weeds. Once correctly established, ground cover plants will provide simply too much competition for weeds to survive. A good ground cover plant will both strangle weeds and prevent germination of weed seeds. But your chosen cover will only act as weed-suppressor once it is established, and for this reason it is important to lay the groundwork correctly. Ground cover plants may take several seasons to establish itself but if done right the first time, only minimum maintenance will be needed in the future.

The most useful ground cover plants are low-growing, hardy perennials. Perennial ground cover plants require the least maintenance and do not have to be replaced in the winter by ground cover plants better suited to the cold. Deciduous ground cover will decorate the garden by adding colour and interest with the flowers it produces, but will die back to the soil in winter leaving bare ground to be covered. For this reason, most gardeners prefer to use evergreen ground cover plants in their landscape.

Laying the Ground for your Ground Cover Plants

In preparation for the laying of your ground cover you must first ready the soil by removing all debris tilling, weeding and then fertilising with organic matter such as compost and manure. Most ground covers spread by offshoots or runners so if the soil is good the cover will be even. Ground cover seeds are usually planted about one foot apart but for quick coverage, place them closer together. This will also mean less weeding in the long run. If there is no hurry you can lay your plants up to one metre apart, but this tends to give weeds room to grow and the area must be kept weed-free until the ground cover is fully established.

Ground cover seeds should be planted in the same manner as other plants and shrubs - in spring or early summer, when the plants will have the longest chance to establish themselves before the unfavourable weather conditions set in. Once your low maintenance ground cover is established and weed-free, all that is required is just minimum watering and care!

Ground cover plants come in many varieties. Some of the most popular are: