PLANT PROFILES: EVERGREEN GROUNDCOVER

Layering different plant varieties…

…creates a multi-tier garden with interest year-round. And using EVERGREEN GROUNDCOVER is a great way to bring a peek of green to the horizontal plane when other plants leave the ground bare in the winter. There are even a few varieties that bloom for additional ornamental interest. Some species are quite hardy to the Chicagoland area so are great for planting in monocultural swaths to cover large designs with soft, even texture. Or they can be mixed into and in front of a tiered design to hide plants that grow stalky.

If you’re missing an evergreen presence after assembling your plant list, bringing in a row of EVERGREEN GROUNDCOVER ensures there’s still some interest during the winter. Groundcover is also a great way of suppressing weeds in a planting design if given enough time to mature. If planting for this reason we recommend confirming the desired plants growth rate to see if it is better to install at 6 inch, 8 inch, or 12 inch centers. The slower the growth rate, the closer each plant should be.

KEMORA PICKS	English Ivy, Lilyturf, Pachysandra, Periwinkle, Wintercreeper
SUN	Full Sun to Partial Shade
ORNAMENTAL INTERESTS	EVERGREEN GROUNDCOVER is great for adding a low level of green to a design for year-round interest. A few even flower for a double punch of interest.
DESIGN USE	Use EVERGREEN GROUNDCOVER as the foremost layer in planting design to help hide undesirable foliage. If using a vigorous variety, use as a calm sea of texture throughout the landscape where it has room to spread.
ALTERNATIVES	Like the height of EVERGREEN GROUNDCOVER but need floral pops? FLOWERING GROUNDCOVER stays low to the ground to hide taller plants while providing ornamental pops of color.
Pachysandra Photo Credit: Leonora (Ellie) Enking via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]; English Ivy Photo Credit: Cultivar413 via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]; Creeping Lilyturf Photo Credit: Cultivar413 via Flickr [CC BY 2.0].

Plant info found on Google is not always precise as it is an aggregate of information from around the world—so we want to share our observations from years of getting our hands dirty in the Second City. This post is the latest in one of our newest series, PLANT PROFILES, where we explore each plant category as well as the preferred species of Kemora. We love plants which in turn gives us a trained eye for trouble-shooting them. And it is our hope you will come to love them too!

Kemora Landscapes is a full-service design, build, and maintenance company based in Chicago.