Some Really Great Ground Covers For Your Northern Garden
One of the problems that a new northern landscape may encounter is a lack of plant material to fill the landscape with. Young gardens need time to grow and fill in and in the meanwhile can look pretty barren. Plant some ground cover! The more the merrier. Use ground cover to help fill in between plants, fountains and garden decor, or around stepping stones.
Before you start planting just anything you need to choose your ground cover based on the light, water, and traffic conditions in your garden. The following are some excellent ground cover suggestions that should accommodate most garden challenges.
Sunny and hot gardens will find that sedum thrives and beautifies. It comes in a variety of color shades and growth habits. Sedum is great for a garden that does not receive a lot of water as it is drought tolerant and actually thrives in poor soil conditions. It is often used on a lot of those new fangled green roof tops to give you an idea of what kind of environment it likes. Hot, hot and hot! It is not a good choice around a path, though, as it can't take being disturbed at great length.
Another good choice for a sunny garden with a path and some stepping stones, is the kitchen herb called thyme. It is good for an area that gets walked on, such as a path, because of it's aromatic qualities. Your garden will have an English Cottage feeling with this kitchen herb that comes in many different varieties to suit your needs...to name a few.
A shaded garden will definitely enjoy a touch of pachysandra. Pachysandra is a good deep shade ground cover that can handle some partial sun. Pachysandra is nice because it will hide the ugly browning leaves of spring bulbs which you are not supposed to remove. Pachysandra always looks good and is easy to maintain.It is always better to have an easy to control ground cover than an invasive ground cover, like perrywinkle for example which has been implicated in destroying woodland areas.
Wild ginger is a great choice for the shady woodland garden. Wild ginger has handsome dark green and round leaves that woodland animals love to hide under because of the ground hugging flowers. Plant it around the base of a [bird feeder|recycled glass bird feeder] to hide the cast off seeds. Supposedly there are some evergreen varieties.
The proper ground cover selection is always going to enhance the look of your landscape. Ground covers help cool the roots of plants in your garden and hide unsightly looking detraction. Use ground cover to pull all the elements of your garden together. Put some [recycled glass gazing globes|gazing balls] in a patch of ground cover for an easy garden decoration idea and just enjoy!
