Choosing the right Ground Covering for your landscape design
Let’s talk ground covers.
Leaving your soil uncovered in the garden can be asking for trouble. Bare soil is a magnet for weeds, their seeds blown into your garden by the wind or dropped by birds. Also, any landscaper worth their soil (see what we did there?) will tell you that planting ground covers will help to insulate soil when temperatures get very hot or cold, thereby protecting your garden, and that they build up humus levels in the soil, providing an inviting habitat for beneficial insects. Aside from the landscape-nerd stuff, we love ground covers because they make your garden look fuller and denser, they soften hard pathway edges, most are pretty durable sitting in the sun all day and will tolerate drought conditions, and they’re a lot less maintenance than grass, so they’re great to plant them in tricky spots like in between steppers.
Wait, what exactly is a ground cover, you ask? Basically any plant that will hug the soil leaving very little bare soil exposed can be classed as a ground cover, whether it’s a herb, perennial or a very low-growing shrub. It’s easy to appreciate why ground covers are becoming such a popular inclusion in landscape design.
Some of our favourites at the moment are:
‘Ground cover Rosemary’. Rosemary makes your garden smell great, and softens junctions between garden beds and paving.
‘Blue star creeper’. This ground cover grows a lovely bluey-purple flower and establishes quickly, so you don’t have to wait too long for your garden to come to life!
Low growing succulents. For hot, sunny, bare areas in the garden, low growing succulents are becoming ever popular. They look ideal planted with taller showcase plants such as dracaena, yucca and aloe. Most have attractive foliage and are very low maintenance, needing little water, pruning or feeding. Tick, tick, tick.
Mondo grass. Mondo grass is ideally placed along paths, between pavers or to section off areas in your garden and features low-growing grass-like leaves. Dwarf varieties grow up to 10cm. For something different, black mondo grass has dark purple foliage and produces pink flowers.
Pictured: Ground cover Rosemary
There you have it! Some of our favourite ground covers that not only improve the aesthetic quality of landscape design, but serve a few very important purposes. Ready to get cracking on your own dream backyard? We’ve been helping backyard visions come to life in Sydney and beyond for 25 years. As well as concrete pool builders, we’re also licensed landscapers and can plan and execute your landscaping from concept, to install and maintenance. Contact our team to begin your pool or landscape project this year.