Hi everyone. I need ideas for a thick ground cover for a long steep slope, facing the east. It's full sun so will get hot and dry. I'd like something I can plant and forget, so it needs to be almost invasive. And it'd be even better if I can get the variety in seeds, as plants to cover the whole area would be way too expensive. I want it thick so we don't need to risk life and limb to get the slope mowed.
Ideas anyone? I'm in Zone 6.
Need ideas for ground cover for a slope
Hi Cathy,
Snow in summer worked great for us on a steep slope behind our septic mound. Spreads like wildfire and needs no special care after it takes off.
http://onlinepremiergardenplants.co.uk/store/ProdImages/snow%20in%20summer.jpg
Regards,
Teri
Thanks Teri, I will check it out!!!
Full sun, hot and dry begs for using spreading sedums. Bad news is that I never heard of them started from seeds. Good news is that they root from any piece of the original plant and if you know of anyone with a patch, you can break off pieces and stick them in the ground to root. There are different colors, and they are evergreen.
How big of an area do you need covered?
Here's a green type, blooms yellow.
With all the interest in green roofs and walls, you could probably get a good deal with a local nursery (or online source) to special order small peatpots of sedums designed for green roofs. OR if you have a large area, start with just a smaller part planted and keep enlarging the area by using starts from the original plants. With sedums, you will never have to rake off die-back foliage, water, or mow.
Wild flowers and Xeroscape mixtures do well on dry slopes.
Caroline zone 3 Calgary
What about pachysandra? The disadvantage is that you may have to weed a bit until it gets established. It looks odd when tall grass grows thru it. I deadhead mine before it goes to seed (It is not on a hill, just under shrubs). I can try to save some seeds in the spring. I got mine as starts from a friend. I am not certain if you can start it from seed. Purchasing plants is expensive, but a friend may have established plants in need of thinning. I have seen it growing well in sun and shade here, although it has a reputation as a shade plant. We may get more rain here than you do. There are probably also more trees so that even sunny areas typically have shade from buildings or trees part of the day.
You can try several things in different parts of the hill and let them "fight it out." It could be very striking if you plant them in staggered ovals so they look naturalized. If you have several things growing and ground in between, it will look as if you planned it that way, not like you ran out of plants/seeds.
I am trying to get ground covers growing between paving stones. I got some pots of irish moss on clearance last summer. They didn't grow very fast, but formed slightly larger blobs. A neglected yard of a rented property on a hill here has some creeping sedum among the weeds. I pinched a little bit, but it didn't transplant well. I may try again. People recommended creeping thyme. I requested some seeds in a swap. I also requested snow on the mountain seeds. Someone else recommended creeping mint (which I haven't found yet). My stones are in a sunny flat spot that I am able to water. I don't mind if there are several colors. I think it will be an interesting experiment.
I am using sedums where ever I can instead of mulch. Of course this would be so expensive if I were to buy all the plants so I start them from seed then put them out when it's warm enough. They are not as invasive as the snow in summer, but snow in summer grows quickly so that the weeding can stop sooner. (Weeds grow thru ground cover until it is REALLY thick.
This is where I get my seed:
http://www.outsidepride.com/seed/ground-cover-seed/sedum-dragons-blood-groundcover-seed.html
I also grow ice plant (delosperma cooperi) and Sedum kamtschaticum from seed.
So many to choose from. My favorite is Ajuga Black Scallop, so far, these cannot be grown from seed. Too bad, because the plants are so dense that nothing can grow thru them.
The slope is pretty steep and maybe 300 - 350 ft long, so it would take way too many plants. We are planning on building an earth home at the top of a hill, and the slope has to be mowed or it looks awful. I hold my breath every time he gets on that tractor. Dangerous!!! So I'd like to eventually (as quick as possible!! :-) get it to where it doesn't have to be mowed at all.
Thanks for the ideas everyone. I will check them all out. Still hoping for something I can start with seeds though
The snow in summer is so easy to grow from seed and is actually an invasive plant if you put it into a garden. As with all seed projects, you will have to weed until the desired plants thicken. A good way to start these seeds is in an old kiddie pool. I scatter thousands of seeds and as they germinate and grow stronger, I scoop out a shovelful of soil from where I want to plant them and then replace the divot with a shovelful of the seedlings. We did this sort of thing on the back slopes of our septic mound because it is much too steep to mow.
And I just happen to have an old kiddie pool in a storage shed!! :-)
Hi - Thought I'd do a little follow-up for you on the Snow in Summer - as far as sowing from seed, it's the best ground cover I've seen. In the first pic, it is early April, and it is the bluish white ground cover in the center. I have it in at least half shade, where its creeping is easy to control as I want it to stay put. It blooms in Spring, but the foliage stays nice throughout the season.
And here it is at the end of the season -- as you can see, I have other plants in the bed, but I've let the "Snow" creep throughout the bed more. Considering that it's in high shade, I think you will like the impact it will make on a large slope, where you can just let it go to town! Dax
Thanks for the pics Dax. I'm liking snow in the summer more and more! I looked it up yesterday and it seems there are several varieties. Do you know which one you have in the picture?
Hi Cathy - Sometimes it's easier for me to see what a plant will look like in a real garden, so I take lots of pics -- hope it helped. Below is the link to the site where I got the seeds - it is Silver Carpet. Each packet includes 750 seeds so I thought it was a good deal -- frankly, I didn't use all of them for the small area I have.
Dax
http://www.swallowtailgardenseeds.com/perennials/snowinsummer.html
Thanks!
Another idea, and a compromise on the above ideas, would be to plant Creeping Thyme. Not as invasive, in my experience, as I have a large patch which barely doubled in five years and now maintain it rather easily. You could purchase seed in bulk and broadcast it, not sure if it's cost prohibitive or not. Or grow or purchase a few flats, and then plant the seedlings evenly over the area. Depending on how much you plant they will soon take over. And like anything else, it will take some maintenance until it fills in. Hopefully you won't mind all the bees and butterflys it will attract! Another part of the compromise is you may want to mow it once or twice a year to keep it compact. It gets a little scraggly otherwise, though you may not mind that.
Here's a pic just before I created a buffer around the perimeter to control it's spread. I've since turned it into a large herb garden adding a number of other, taller perennial herbs this past fall. Can't wait till spring to see what developes.
I would suggest, that since you have such a large area to cover, you consider using spreading shrubs instead of smaller groundcover plants. They would cover just as rapidly, and possibly more quickly, and be less of a chore to keep weeded. After a few years, you wouldn't have to be concerned with weeding at all. There are many low-growing shrubs you could use, including groundcover varieties of juniper, 'GroLow' sumac, spireas, Russian Arborvitae, and barberry.
You could also just go ahead and heavily mulch the slope with shredded bark (or whatever is cheapest in your area) to hold the soil, eliminate weeding and mowing, and help enrich the soil before planting. It would be a chunk of cash to cover, but it would be an investment in improving the soil, getting it ready for eventual planting.
Since it's such a long area (how wide, by the way?), I think GardenQuilts suggestion is excellent. Try different plants in different areas to see what does best.
Here's a photo of a great spreading juniper, 'Blue Pacific'. There are so many to choose from and you can choose the height of the growth too, from 2" to 3'-4'. They all spread to at least six feet square, so you even though the price of one plant is more than a plant plug, the value is greater and the result is quicker.
I'll post some more photos to give you an idea of some of the choices you have.
Here's a photo of one of the lowest-growing junipers, the old workhorse 'Blue Rug'. Can take poor, dry soil and full sun.
This is Russian Arborvitae (not a real arborvitae), Microbiota decussata. Ferny foliage, spreads to at least 6' square, but stays under 18".
For more height and interest, this is 'Daub's Frosted' juniper. Beautiful color and growth is low, about 3', but wide.
Here's a nice blue-green foliaged juniper, 'Holger'. 'Grey Owl' and 'Kallay's Compact' are similar. 2'-3' X 6'-8'
You can get a good idea of how spreading junipers can effectively cover large areas, smothering out weeds, from this shot of a commercial area. They get to a certain height and stop growing (upwards) except for spreading outwards.
I'd never even thought of small shrubs like junipers. it would ahve to be something like blue rug as the soil is VERY poor there.
I'm guessing the steepest part of the slope is maybe 20 - 25 feet. Can't afford to buy all the plants it would take to cover it, that's why I was thinking seeds.
As for bees, they will be more than welcome! I am planting several fruit trees at the top of the hill this spring!! :-)
Here's another shot of junipers on a very steep slope (somewhat hidden now) that had a severe erosion problem.
Check Musser Forests, Inc. They have small starts of juniper and other plants for reasonable prices. Probably the best prices you'll find unless someone on DG has another source.
www.musserforests.com
Will do. Thanks so much everyone, for all the ideas.
Ajuga is an excellent ground cover and spreads fast. It can tolerate sun/shade or dappled sun and most soil.
I agree with Pirl about the ajuga. I just wish that the Black Scallop would come from seed. The cost of buying any plants for a large area could really get out of control. I have one area where I bought thousands of Ice Plant Delosperma Cooperi for 10.00. They are beautiful and have flowers all summer. I will find out if they are as sturdy as the snow in summer (which you cannot kill), or the ajuga (which might have to be watered and a problem if not near water).
You can increase the ajuga by cuttings and by layering.
I know about the cuttings and layering. I have only 3 clumps right nowabout 12" by12" each. How much of each could I take off and spread around. How long will they take to fill in the spaces (so that weeds will be crowded out).
Once spring really arrives you can lift the entire square foot area and separate them so they're a few inches apart in every direction. They fill in rather fast for me and each year I rip out several huge trash bags of them. If they traveled well I'd offer them to you but they don't.
Pirl,
Thanks for the info and the offer. Can't wait to spread them around and make a total border with them between the lawn and the garden beds.
They will fill in and faster than you might think possible. All of a sudden you'll be the one ripping them out when they get into the lawn so TRY to keep that from happening by dividing when they get too close for comfort.
Any idea how long it would take ajuga or snow in summer to spread enough that I wouldn't have to weed? And there is no water on or close to that slope so watering is going to be a major undertaking.
What I did with my snow in summer:
Before we planted, we did some weed pulling and round-up application to the area that we would soon cover with snow in summer. I wanted to put down newspaper and cover with a shallow layer of topsoil but my DH did not agree, so we didn't (As a result we had to do some weeding between the new plants for the first year.
I chose snow in summer seeds because the mature plant needs less water than many other plants...and because I didn't want to keep running far from the house to moisten the seeds....I sowed the thousands that I purchased (from Outside Pride, I think) into 2 old hard plastic baby swimming pools with some holes cut in the bottom for drainage.
When the "plugs" seemed large enough to survive without CONSTANT watering, I took divots out of the hill that I wanted to cover and placed small clumps from the pools into their new home.
I did put together about 400 feet of hose just to make sure that they could continue to thrive. I did weed as much as I could until the next year when they spread like crazy and didn't need any more help from me.
So you think 1 year of weeding would get it? There isn't an water source close to this slope so any watering would have to be carried in in 5 gallon buckets
If you put enough plugs in initially, they would spread for the next year to touch each other. If we have the rain that we had (here) last year, you would never have to water.
Thanks. Going to look at seeds! :-)
Look at outsidepride.com for seed
and
classygroundcovers.com for little plant plugs (more expensive