When I started thinking about native plant and how they fit into our gardens, I couldn’t decide between three. And since they all were ground covers, I thought it might be good to feature them all as a unit. Ground covers can become very important when we have warm, dry summers as this past one has been. They help to keep the soil from drying out and many are thick enough to crowd out weeds, making our gardening easier. The native ground covers are mostly draught-tolerant and yet they survive heavy winter rains. So let’s remove all that invasive English ivy and plant these natives instead.
First on the list is false lily-of-the-valley (Maianthemum dilatatum). This is an easy to grow, spreading low plant that unfurls green, shiny, heart-shaped leaves from spiral stems in the late winter. A tall, flowering stem appears in April and a cluster of waxy, white flowers form in a tassel on the end of the spike. Once the flowers are finished in summer, berries form that change from green to mottled brown to transparent red by fall. False lily-of-the-valley is a true member of the lily family and grows from rhizomes in moist, full to semi-shade. It likes the nitrogen-rich areas of the forest. Use this plant with caution, though, as it can spread aggressively and take over an area very quickly. Where you can let it grow unfettered – in a wood-like setting - it becomes a beautiful carpet-like plant. It does fade away almost entirely in the winter after the berries disappear, so keep that in mind when deciding where to plant it. You may need to mark their area in the fall so you aren’t tempted to replant something else come spring before it sprouts from the ground.
Second on my list is wild ginger (Asarum caudatum). This plant is not edible as it is not a true ginger but instead gets its name from the slight scent of ginger that arises when the leaves are crushed. Wild ginger is an evergreen perennial that forms thick mats from an extensive system of rhizomes. They have a more rounded heart-shaped leaf than the false lily-of-the-valley, and their leaves are a deep, shiny green with pronounced veining. Wild ginger flowers in mid-April with a small, pitcher-shaped, purple-brown flower that forms under the leaves. There are no petals on this flower, but instead it has long, narrow sepals. The flowers do have a slight scent, but you have to be crawling on the ground with your nose into the center to detect the scent. This is another forest plant that prefers part shade, but if kept well-watered it will do okay in some sun. It does like a fertile, humus-rich soil that is moist but well-drained. Slugs and snails like the fleshy leaves, though. Wild ginger can be a touchy plant to transplant and may take a while – up to a year - to settle into a new environment. But its lovely leaves make it worth the effort.
Wood sorrel (Oxalis oregano) is the third on my list of ground covers. Wood sorrel is another shade-lover, and grows in large, mounded colonies on the forest floors. The leaves a very pretty, soft green and look like that of shamrocks, three-petaled and a sort of reverse heart-shaped, or like that of clover. Oxalis will bloom from February to July, depending on their location, but the flowers are small, white or pink, and are tucked between the leaves so you have to be looking for them. This plant loves the humus-rich forest floor, so try to give them that condition in your garden. It will spread rapidly in moist conditions, less so in drier shade. Because it doesn’t mind low light conditions, the wood sorrel would make a very pretty houseplant in a north or east-facing window.
All these native ground covers thrive in the Pacific Northwest forests, so replicating those forest-like conditions are a must for success. By nature, they all prefer shade, be it moist, well-drained or dry, and will do less well in full sun when their leaves will scorch easily.
Also keep in mind that ground covers are naturally aggressive and need to be thinned once in a while to keep them under control.
But in the long run, they can make our gardening lives much easier by preventing the weeds from sprouting and holding in moisture when the rains don’t come for months in the summer. These three would also look nice interspersed with each other. Pick the ones that fit your growing conditions best and give them a try.
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