Coprosma Green Rocks has big, glossy leaves and a vigorous habit.
Coprosma Green Rocks has big, glossy leaves and a vigorous habit.
Don’t turn your back on the not-so-popular plants, they can turn into heroes in a gappy garden
It's funny how you can loathe a particular plant for a long time and then see it in a different situation and discover its merit. A bit like young love, I suppose, when one day you see the boy with the stick-out ears and scabby knees rescuing a cat from a tree and suddenly he's your hero.
My equivalent of the stick-out-ears boy is Coprosma Green Rocks. I've never been a fan of any kind of coprosma and when The Landscaper presented me with a couple of these glossy green ground covers he had left over from a job, I gave him a withering look and threw them grumpily down behind the railway sleeper wall.
A few weeks later they had taken root, had spread out to about 50cm and sent a few tendrils cautiously over the sleeper.
Quite fetching, I thought. Certainly more fetching than their cousin Coprosma Hawera, which always looks as if it's on death's door, and worse, is apparently attractive to rats.
It's not easy to find the perfect ground cover and I often wonder why we make new garden beds which, once the soil is exposed, require immediate planting to stop them filling themselves with weeds.
While I'm pleased to have made my peace with Green Rocks, it's not ideal for every situation.
It's quite an in-your-face sort of plant with quite big, glossy green leaves, and it's semi-prostrate so it doesn't just lie on the soil like a mat.
So I wouldn't plant it with anything subtle or delicate, or it'll steal the show.
Give it a crappy old bank, though, and it'll do the job beautifully. It's vigorous and hardy, tolerates poor, dry or sandy conditions, coastal spray, sun or shade.
How could I not have seen beyond its stick-out-ears before now, I'll never know.
I've never loved that good old favourite Grevillea Bronze Rambler either, probably because, like Coprosma Hawera, it tends to look dried up and ready to check out.
On the contrary though, it's a real survivor.
It's used to making do with little food, poor soil and drought and it's incredibly adaptable. It's got great coverage and when it's in flower, which is a lot of the time, you can forgive it anything.
One of my real favourites, and I hesitate to admit this because my eco-warrior friend has threatened all sorts of dire consequences if I plant any more, is agapanthus.
No, not the naughty one, but a beautiful dwarf that provides sky blue blooms for months. It grows in most conditions, sun to semi-shade and is hardy to frost, and it really is a minimum-effort, maximum-impact plant to grow. I can vouch for it whole-heartedly because it's planted around the perimeter of our carpark area, where it's completely shaded by a gang of rampant acmena and only sees the sun during their annual pruning. Even such a dreary location doesn't stop it from flowering with enthusiasm.
Star Jasmine is truly a star ground cover, it grows quickly, flowers for ages and has a lovely scent.
Star Jasmine is another ground cover whose name makes people nervous, but it's not related to the true jasmine, which is known for its invasive behaviour.
This one is Trachelospermum jasminoides, which grows into rather disorganised clumps and sends out lots of long tendrils which you can either train or snip off. It likes sun but will tolerate shade. If you give it plenty of water in summer and serve it up some good organic fertiliser it should stay nice and lush.
We used to have a ground cover in Dunedin called aluminium plant which covered a multitude of sins, but I think it's on the naughty list now.
No, it's not the naughty aluminium plant but Lamium maculatum, which has pink/lavender flowers and very delicate grey-green foliage.
However, it has a lookalike called Lamium maculatum, a tough, evergreen perennial that forms a spreading patch of small silver leaves with a narrow green edge.
Happily it has pink flowers, not yellow like the aluminium plant, and it flowers off and on from spring until autumn. Once established it's good for dry shade, and the stems will root into the ground where they touch. New plants that form can be easily moved elsewhere.
That's my idea of the perfect ground cover. Why it would have the common name of deadnettle I really can't imagine.
Spreading herbs fill the gaps
Typically, I bought a whole box of herbs a while ago in the expectation that the vegetable garden would miraculously weed and prepare itself for planting while I was doing something else. It didn't.
Also typically, I couldn't bear to waste them so I planted them in the still slightly gappy front garden - a work in progress - and they've excelled themselves as ground covers. Four different kinds of thyme have covered about 30sq cm each so far, and the oregano is going mad.
I've also slotted in a few parsley plants, having been inspired by a mass (and massive) planting of them at the Dunedin railway station a few years ago. They like the front garden far better than the herb garden and they're really pretty.
Herbs are great ground covers and gap fillers. They're cheap, they grow quickly, they're not invasive, they smell good, they flower, you can eat them, and give bits of them away. Now I'm planting chives, dill, chamomile, marjoram, sorrel and sage in the gaps all over the garden. The Landscaper is hopeful that this may lead to more inspired cooking.
