Plant of the Month
Ground covers and lawn substitutes that don’t use a lot of water can handle some foot traffic and don’t require regular care and feeding, sometimes come with a little baggage. We want a tough plant that can take some foot traffic and has low water needs. But for a plant to fill that bill, it’s likely going to have certain characteristics the gardener does not want. The family of Star Creeper groundcovers, known as Isotoma or Pratia, brings much of the desirable traits we seek in a groundcover without being invasive, unsightly, or require intensive care.
Blue Star Creeper can be added to containers to provide a cascading show of small blue flowers in Spring and Summer. It can also be grown between steppingstone walkways to fill in joints and provide lush texture in hardscapes, or it can be planted as a lawn substitute. It is considered mildly invasive but can be easily controlled by hand weeding once or twice a year. The plants don’t root deeply and come out of the soil with little effort. Creepers won’t dominate the garden unless watered and fertilized excessively. In moderate to good soil, no fertilization is necessary, and so this groundcover is compatible with other plant types that don’t require much fertilizer and water.
When used as a lawn substitute, a high mowing of four to six inches above ground level once a year will keep the groundcover dense, as will cutting back container plants and trimming walkway fillers. Blue Star Creeper blooms in spring, so trimming work should be done in the fall. This and other ground cover ideas can be found at watersavingplants.org.
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