23 stunning ground cover plants to create a tapestry of colour in difficult-to-plant areas
Ground cover plants are low-growing plants that spread easily to cover areas where nothing much wants to grow.
For example, do you have bare patches under trees? Are you tired of weeding them and trying to keep them clear?
Ground cover plants will help prevent weed seeds germinating in the soil. And they’re more beautiful to look at than bare earth.
I’ve recently visited Copton Ash, a specialist nursery and garden created by Tim and Gillian Ingram. They have created a tapestry of texture and colour with ground cover plants, so I asked Tim to tell us how.
Copton Ash is in Kent and it opens for the National Garden Scheme.
And Tim and Gillian sell alpine and woodland plants at the Plant Fairs Roadshow, a co-operative of independent nurseries selling plants in beautiful gardens around South East England.
The secret to successful ground cover plants
Choose plants that are happy to grow, spread or self-seed. Tim and Gillian have a large garden so they don’t have time to be constantly weeding or manicuring all of it.
So a light hand with the weeding gives self-seeding plants choice as to where they want to grow. This is often much more successful than trying to force plants to grow where they don’t want to.
Plants that spread and self-seed will intermingle, creating what Tim calls a ‘tapestry of planting’. Some of the self-seeders aren’t ‘low growing’ but they dot happily around the other ground cover plants to add texture and colour.
‘Woodland plants’ are particularly good in difficult spots. They’re used to dealing with shady or dry conditions.
The following plants are widely available, although a few are more unusual. Most are also very hardy, many withstanding winters in USDA zones 3,4 or 5 and any UK winter.
