Hi everyone,

I must admit that I know absolutely nothing about groundcovers, which is why after 3 months of staring at the dirt, I still don't know what to do.

Please help if you can.

Here's the situation.

I have a silver maple in my front yard at the corner of where my concrete driveway meets the concrete walkway to the front door. The tree is fairly large and due to its nature has created quite a mound around itself. The previous owners had planted some kind of spurge there, but when we moved in we got rid of it as it looked terrible in winter and early spring (very weedy looking and yellow). However, now every time we get a heavy rain it runs down the tree trunk and over the mound and creates a trail of sandy soil down my driveway (which of course looks alot worse than the spurge).

The front yard faces east, so the area under the tree gets morning sun, but is then shaded by the tree and the house in the afternoon. Also, the soil is very sandy and fast draining.

I was initially thinking of vinca minor, it doesn't seem to get too crazy around here (I don't think) and it's evergreen, which makes it a good choice for the front yard...but will it hold the slope?

Acutally, I am very open to suggestions as I would rather plant something native and potentially less invasive if I could. However, I want something that will spread quickly, so I would opt for something that is potentially invasive if it's at least easy to remove if it gets into the lawn.

I was looking at bearberry (Arctostaphylos) the other day but I read that it won't look its best in part shade and I don't know about it's spreading ability. It seems that it has some rather tenacious rooting tendencies. But otherwise I really liked the idea that it's evergreen, native, gets red berries and loves sandy soils.

I was also looking at an endless selection of sedums...and before that I was thinking ajuga...on so on..etc.

So, in summary, I need an evergreen groundcover that will hold a slope in very sandy soil under a tree and not end up 50 feet away in the front lawn.

Or is this just wishful thinking?

As always, thanks to anyone that takes the time to share their thoughts. This site has already helped me enormously in my gardening quest.

Cheers