Jaci Dawn

Sometimes, you choose your ground cover at the nursery or the garden show. Here are a few I have loved.

Creeping thyme – Thymus serpyllum.  Slow growing, best in rocky places or between stepping stones. I have seeds to plant more. There are several varieties and I have at least three of them. Holds up to light foot traffic, flowers are pretty and range from yellow to a light purple (my favorite).

Gold Moss stonecrop – Sedum acre. This is everywhere in my yard now. I only bought one little plant years ago. It’s so easy to maintain, loves to creep over rocks, and flowers mid-summer.

Flowering phlox/moss phlox – Phlox subulate. Mine doesn’t look too healthy in the pot, but I will be moving it to the ground somewhere so it can spread. It grows thick and only blooms in the spring.

Rock Soapwort – Saponaria ocymoides. So lovely and will bloom all summer if I dead head the first bloom. It does get leggy, and spreads easily. Doesn’t seem to crowd out other plants (in face, the geraniums might crowd it out a bit).

Sweet woodruff – Galium odoratum A polite ground cover. I love this shade-loving herb. It does not take well to foot traffic but it fills in empty spaces and doesn’t compete too much with the other plants. It is simply a polite ground cover.

Coral bells – Heuchera. I have a love/hate relationship with them. They spread easily and densely, but never where I want them to spread. There are soooo many species. I have no idea the exact species I have, but I have ripped it out, replanted it in different areas, and ignored it.

Sticky Geranium – Geranium viscosissimum.  I don’t remember when I first bought this and planted it in a little wooden box. It has overgrown the box multiple times, and like the coral bells, I have ripped it out and replanted it elsewhere. In fact, ripping half of it out is an annual end to summer. It also happens to be a native to North America. I may soon move some plants to an area I would like my husband to *not* have to mow.

Lithodora ‘Heavenly Blue’ – Lithodora diffusa. This has gone through many changes and two dogs that tried to kill it by loving it too much. Yet here it is. And I just learned it is also called “Purple Gromwell”. Huh. And it is in the Boraginaceae family, along with borage and forget-me-nots.

The dog in the middle of it is a bonus feature: that’s our epileptic, mostly blind, emotional support Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, Ruger.Ruger is five and the second dog to love the lithodora.