Award-winning gardener, author and broadcaster, Liz Zorab explains how creeping plants are the gardener’s friends
If you leave a patch of ground uncovered, nature will fill the gaps with plants. Whether that’s from seeds that have floated through the air and then lain dormant in the soil, or plants spreading themselves across the ground. These are usually wildflowers, that we might refer to as weeds.
There are two great ways to reduce the likelihood of unwanted weeds germinating all over our gardens. One is to place a layer of organic matter, a mulch, over the soil to block light from the seeds, and the other is to use ground cover plants. These are lowgrowing, spreading plants that blanket the area with leaves and flowers. While they dutifully afford protection to the soil and fill the gaps, below ground their roots help increase microbial activity, enhancing the soil-life and nutrient exchange.
While ground cover plants are establishing, it may be necessary to use a layer of mulch around them to reduce weed growth and add nutrients to the soil. I love using ground cover plants, not just from an aesthetic viewpoint, but mostly because they save me from the task of weeding out the unwanted!
As with so many things, different ground cover plants come in and out of fashion, but I think some are classics, deserving of considerationn regardless of current trends in the garden centre. It’s worth experimenting with them to see how they grow in different situations in your garden and to find the ones that appeal to you most.
Here are some of my favourite spring flowering ground cover plants
Hardy cyclamens make excellent ground cover. Very low-growing, the leaves form a mat and the colourful flowers appear before the foliage, often at a time of year when little else is blooming. By careful selection of different cultivars, cyclamen can provide a flower display over a long period.
Although they generally prefer the light shade offered by a deciduous tree, I have them growing between, and among, herbaceous perennials on our northfacing garden and they are thriving.
Cyclamen purpurascens flowers from late summer. It has very fragrant flowers and dark green and silver leaves.
For flowers in autumn, choose Cyclamen hederifolium, the ivy-shaped leaves provide ground cover throughout winter and spring. It self-sows and new plants grow readily from seed.
Winter flowers are provided by Cyclamen coum. This very hardy cultivar will usually survive the harshest of winter weather.
Lily of the Valley forms a thick, spreading clump of leaves in spring, providing great ground cover. During May, dainty white flowers open with their unmistakable fragr
