| This is at least three questions in one, but here goes. My sprinkler system burst a pipe under the driveway. It's too expensive to repair especially considering the system is quite old. So I'm rethinking my garden and getting rid of the lawn. It's kind of an adventure because now I can have plants wherever I want instead of worrying about not blocking the flow of the sprinkler. I'll be using soaker hoses on part, but not in the parking strips (I'm on a corner).
First, I want the groundcovers to be evergreen, and to be green, not, say, silvery like lamium, or bronzy like some adjugas. What I'm trying to do is just have the peacefulness of green where the lawn used to be. It makes for continuity and seems to give the same effect the lawn did.
Question 1: I need a green, evergreen groundcover for the parking strip in front. It's south-facing. I'd like something that is drought tolerant although I will be giving it some water in the worst heat of summer. It should be able to take a very occasional footstep, or just to recover fairly fast from one.
Question 2: I need a green, evergreen groundcover for the parking strip on the side of my house. The strip is under fir trees so it's quite shady even though it has a western exposure. I thought about trying a green ajuga (not a bronzy one or multicolor), but I read somewhere that they need to be divided every few years to prevent some sort of disease. That's way too much work to divide all of the plants in a parking strip! Also I don't want the groundcover to overwhelm the shrubs I have planted there:
choisya ternata 'Aztec Pearl', a Coral Bells azalea, and a Frances Mason abelia. Since whatever I plant in the strip will be contained by cement, I'm not so concerned about how vigorous the plants are. (By the way, the same is true of the south-facing parking strip above--the plants are contained by the strip).
Question 3: I want to plant a groundcover where I have my flower beds, something evergreen and green, which will not overwhelm plants I have there--like omphalodes, and other smaller perennials like that. I want the groundcover just to grow around everything to knit it all together. This area will receive regular watering.
This was a long post! I've been poring over books to try to decide what to put where and thought I'd pose the questions here.
Thanks!
Judy |
