Ground Cover Ideas For The Garden

One of the many problems for a new garden is the glaring space between young plants. A new garden can be a little sparse sometimes as you wait for the young plants to mature-which can take about three years when you live in a northern climate. Get busy and plant some ground cover! Go nuts. Use ground cover to help fill in between plants, fountains and garden decor, or around stepping stones.
Choose your ground cover with care by considering the water, shade/light, and foot traffic in your garden. Here are just a few of the many ground cover ideas a gardener in a northern climate garden might want to consider.
Plant some sedum if you have a very sunnylandscape. It comes in many different foliage and flower colors ranging from yellow and white and bright green to pink and burgundy. Because sedum is drought tolerant it will do great 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! Sedum is not a good choice if it is going to get stepped on.
Thyme, the beloved kitchen herb, is another excellent ground cover choice for a sunny garden. Thyme is great for an area that gets some foot traffic because it smells good when you step on it. Give your landscape a cottage garden feel with this herb that also comes in a variety of growth habits and color choices such as creeping thyme, woolly thyme or lemon thyme…to name a few.
If you have a shade garden you really should consider some pachysandra. Pachysandr is a good choice for an area that gets very little sun or an area that gets some dappled sun. Pachysandra is nice because it will hide the ugly browning leaves of spring bulbs which you are not supposed to remove. It always looks nice and clean and is easy to control.And it is less invasive than it’s popular nemesis called vinca: vinca is a garden no no because of its rampant invasiveness into woodland areas-so when in doubt choose pachysandra.
If you have a native plant garden and a lot of shade then wild ginger is the ground cover you have been looking for. It has handsome dark green circular leaves and forms a dense matte with little ground hugging flowers that are popular with toads and woodland critters. 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.
No matter what the conditions in your garden, the right ground cover will improve the look of your garden. Ground covers help cool the roots of plants in your garden and hide unsightly looking detraction. Unify your garden design with ground cover. Put some [recycled glass gazing globes|gazing balls] in a patch of ground cover for an easy garden decoration idea and just enjoy!