native plants
Ground Covers—What To Do with Your Garden’s Bare Spots by Carol Bales
This is the eighth of a series of Cape Fear area native plant articles to appear in Going Green. The articles will include stories about common native plants that would enhance any coastal North Carolina garden or landscape. Our lawn is full of bare spots where nothing seems to grow. To remedy those spots, we use native plants that love to grow in areas inhospitable to ornamentals. The native plants we use as ground cover provide color and variety to our flower beds.
bought four straggly plants that honestly looked questionable, but in good faith, we planted them in an area where nothing else grew. Two years later, that bed is covered with dark green foliage and bright yellow flowers, and is trying to creep past its border into our lawn. This plant can be easily propagated from runners. It grows in partial to full shade, in sandy well-drained soil, and looks lovely in the spring when it blooms. Wild ginger (Asarum canadense): Woodland perennial, in the family Aristolochiae (like Dutchman’s pipe). This plant has interesting veined, glossy, dark green leaves no more than 3" wide and long. It grows only about 4–5" tall, and
What is considered to be a ground cover? Plants that hover close to the soil, no more than 8" tall, trailing or vining, perennials that require little in the way of pruning, fertilizing, insecticides, and protection from foraging animals. Oh, yes, we only use those plants that are native to North Carolina and our coastline areas. Here are a few examples of ground covers that we have tried successfully in our landscape. Green and Gold (Chrysogonum virginianum): We first saw this plant in the New Hanover County Arboretum’s native plant demonstration garden, and fell in love with the intense color of this native ground cover. We looked for it in plant catalogs, nurseries, and in the woods but were unable to find it. Fortunately, Joyce Huguelet, proprietor of Going Native Gardens, had a handful of plants to sell. We
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Chrisogonum virginianum, or Green and Gold
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Asarum canadens, or Wild Ginger
could be used as a potted plant placed on a deck or patio. We started ours in a pot, where it bloomed happily for two years until we transplanted it into our bed of Green and Gold. The flowers can be found in the spring by looking under the leaves for tiny brown bell shaped flowers that hug the ground—thus the nickname, “Little Brown Jug” plant. It has also been called “Piggy ginger” due to the shape of the leaves that resemble pig feet. The plant requires little in the way of watering, weeding, fertilizing or pruning. It spreads slowly by stolons* and vines. In the wild, the plant grows well in the shady forest with sandy soil. Herbalists used to use the plant as a labor inducer, but due to its toxicity that use has been discontinued.
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Lippia nodiflora, or Frog Fruit
Frog fruit (Lippia nodiflora): We first saw this darling little plant in Austin, Texas, where it was planted as a rock garden plant in the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I fell in love with the tiny white flowers, and after hearing its common name, I could just envision little frogs coming to eat a bite of the plants. I never saw the frogs, but I was delighted to find it growing like a weed here in New Hanover County. It grows well in poor, sandy, wellAdobe stock photo drained soil. It is in the verbena family, and is native to our county (New Hanover County). The foliage is dark green in the spring and summer, turning dark purple in the fall. It is easy to propagate from its runners that root readily wherever you want a rapidly growing ground cover. It dies back to nothing in the winter, but reemerges in the spring when the soil is warmed up. There is a patch of this plant growing in the Arboretum’s Native Plant Demonstration Garden, happily creeping along its stone paths. (continued on page 13) * Stolons: In botany a stolon—also called a runner—is a slender stem that grows horizontally along the ground, giving rise to roots and aerial (vertical) branches at specialized points called nodes.
