COVER-UPS
It is spring and everything looks healthy—especially chickweed, wild onion and dandelions. As all gardeners know, Nature abhors bare ground and works hard to cover it as soon as possible. Unfortunately the plants that cover the quickest are the aforementioned weeds. Dandelions are nice if you want to make salad from the young greens or wine from the blossoms, but most of us spend our time cursing rather than consuming them. Wild onion is also edible, but I don’t know anyone who uses the bulbs as a scallion substitute. It is ironic that food foragers, high-end chefs and hipster-gourmets go crazy for ramps–Allium tricoccum—a spring onion, but not for wild onion or Allium canadense. Perhaps the plant needs a better publicist.
In any event, as I look around at my still wild-looking garden, I am reminded of the fact that the more I cover bare earth, the less time I have to spend digging out noxious invaders. I hear a voice in my head saying, “more mulch, more mulch”, and I want to heed it as quickly as possible. However, I am also mindful of the fact that the last time I had a half truckload of mulch delivered, it took two years to get it shoveled off the driveway and into the garden. Practicality dictates that I buy bags of mulch. Fortunately, the trunk of my car will only hold about five bags at once—the exact number that I can haul and spread before I feel twinges in my lower back.
So, I will get to the garden center this weekend and buy all the mulch I can handle, but I will also commit myself to dividing plants that can cover some of that naked ground. The numbers of such plants are legion and I have many already growing about the place. Some of them, like spiderwort or Tradescantia, practically trip me as I go about chores like eradicating
another ton or two of English ivy. Descendants of native North American plants, the trandescantia currently impeding my garden progress are all offspring of about three mixed-color variety packs that I bought an indeterminate number of years ago. Redistributed into the bare spots, these horticultural “spiders” can do the good work of crawling over and colonizing lightly shaded spots. They bloom wonderfully in mid to late spring in shades of white, purple, blue-purple and pink. In fact tradescantia’s only downside is a tendency to develop the uglies in very hot weather. If you deal with the uglies by lopping the plants down to about four inches tall, they will regenerate nicely and happily rebloom later on.
You can’t beat ‘Biokovo’ hardy geranium for good looks, non-invasive vigor and ability to get along in just about any landscape setting. I have a healthy patch of it in my lower back garden and it is begging to be allowed to set up shop in other beds and borders. Its roots are very shallow and it is ridiculously easy to transplant to areas in full sun or light shade. I love the pale pink flowers in the spring; the dainty, lobed foliage is pleasing all the time. It was the Perennial Plant Association’s Plant of the Year in 2015 and is more formally known as Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’. Because of its recent rise to stardom, ‘Biokovo’ is now widely available. If you are strapped for cash, buy one plant. Within three years, it will have multiplied enough to be divided.
Sometimes the nicest plants have the most horrible common names. “Spotted dead nettle” is an excellent example. Better known to its friends as lamium, the plants spread quickly to form ground-covering mats. The late spring or early summer flowers look like small snapdragons and the leaves are often marked with white, gold or silver. Probably the best known lamium is Lamium maculatum, which is available in varieties including white-flowered ‘White Nancy’ and rosy ‘Pink Pewter’. The closely related—and much better named–yellow archangel is also great at weed suppression. Now known botanically as Lamium galeobdolon, yellow archangel used to go by Lamiastrum galeobdolon, proving yet again that those responsible for botanical nomenclature changes do not have enough to do with their time.
Yellow archangel blooms in spring and makes a nice companion for another ground-coverer, ajuga or bugleweed. Be a bit careful with both, as in some situations they may be vigorous to the point of being invasive. On the flip side, those other invasive nuisances, deer, tend to shy away from them.
If you are threatened by bare ground that beckons weeds to make themselves at home, you can do a quick diagnostic in your own garden. Look around you and note plants that grow the best, spread the quickest and are easiest to maintain. Nine chances out of ten, you can divide those plants or collect their offspring and relocate them to bare spots. Whatever you do, do not fall back on that ground-covering thug, English ivy. It will rampage over your entire property, and merrily obliterate anything in its path, including your trees and your house. It will also make future owners of your property curse you. If you even think of English ivy, repeat the following words: “there are better ways.”
Mulch a little and transplant a lot. Your garden will be a showplace.