Mass Planting Ground Covers

You're getting the idea by aren't you ? Weekend gardeners are finding delightful ways to lessen the work load that a lawn presents us with. By choosing some of these alternatives you greatly enhance your esthetic view and considerably reduce the painstaking care that wrings hours out of your weekend.

Another weay to accomplish this is to 'go for ground covers.'

Lawns can be totally replaced or reduced in size in many landscapes by mass-planting ground covers. When planted in qauntity, in great swirls beneath shrubs and trees, a groundcover adds texture and interest without overpowering the more dominant plants and serves as a backdrop for the changing flowers and foliage in your garden paradise.

The term ground cover applies to many kinds of plants. Most are nonwoody plants. Some, like periwinkle are evergreen, while others, such as leadwort are deciduous and lose their foliage in winter. Some ground covers such as sweet woodruff, die back to the ground, disappearing after the growing season. You can use rock cotoneaster which are leafless in winter but provide an interesting branch structure all year. Other choices include creeping juniper, that are evergreen. Some are less than an inch in height such as wooly thyme and others grow to several feet like gardeners garters.

One thing all ground covers are capable of doing is spreading horizontally to blanket the ground. They are often vining or creeping plants or spread rapidly by underground roots or stems. Though turf grasses meet the definition of a ground cover, usually the term is used to mean alternatives to turf grass.