Ground cover plants - your summer cottage revival

For some dacha - a place where you can come with your family or friends a couple of times a year for the May holidaysor on vacation, and for others - the second house, where a lot of time is spent and much attention is paid to the arrangement. But no matter how she was perceived, any summer resident wants his “home” to look beautiful and well-groomed. Often there is not enough money and time to create a full-fledged design project for the summer cottage and to put it into practice, but there are quite budget ways to decorate the plot on your own so that it looks like a real designer's work. The use of ground cover plants in landscape design is one such way.

. Types of ground cover plants.

. Ground cover plants are a group of low-growing ornamental plants that have a tendency to grow and occupy large areas of land. They are divided into many species, each of which is distinguished by unpretentiousness.

The most popular and growing in our conditions types of ground cover:

1. Sedum is a low plant with small white leaves( hexagonal stonecrop), yellow( Carpathian stonecrop), pink( prominent stonecrop), purple( Cedarhead stonecrop) or red( Kamchatka stonecrop)collected in inflorescence.
2. Peschanka - undersized plant with white rather large flowers.
3. Periwinkle is a shrub plant with dense green leaves and large white, purple or lilac flowers. Reaches growth up to 20 cm.
4. The hoof is a plant with large round leaves, forming a kind of shrub. It does not have flowers, but it is no less beautiful.
5. Primula - representative of ground cover, numbering over 500 varieties. It is a short growing plant with evergreen leaves and umbrella flowers of violet, yellow, pink, white or red. The primrose is fine-toothed with spherical white or bright purple flowers.
6. Iberis - distinguished by its incredible aroma. The most popular variety is umbrella iberis with white or purple flowers in the shape of an umbrella.

Ground Cover Plants in Landscape Design

Thanks to their decorative and beneficial properties, ground cover plants can be used at the dacha for various applications.

Mulch Material .They will not become full-fledged mulch, but they will be able to provide decent protection of the earth from the bright sun, slight precipitation and wind. In addition, live mulch looks much more beautiful than just covering the ground with sawdust or straw.
Different types of stonecrop and periwinkle are excellent as mulch. But it is better to leave creeping zhivuchku, recruits and thyme for the lawn, as they grow too much and can fill with themselves by no means the only site that they are intended to protect.

Decoration paths and tracks. Beautifully grown primroses, iberis or stonecrop planted along the path on the site, look no less impressive than roses or tulips. Many gardeners prefer their more capricious colors, considering that the area looks more harmonious, the whole filled with flowers than a small area just near the walkway. Ground cover grows heavily and fills the entire surrounding area, which eliminates the need to come up with the design of the remaining area, as is the case with roses, tulips and other flowers, growing either bushes or singly.

Blooming lawn .This is a great alternative to conventional lawn, with several advantages:

1. No need to mow. Ground cover grows only in width, and in height is always the same height;
   grows even in dry and shady places where ordinary lawn grass does not survive;
   This is a creative and unusual solution for those who do not like monotony.

In order for the lawn to have a presentable appearance, you should think over in advance what it will be.

By planting several varieties of plants together, we get a multi-colored lawn that will not look quite like a lawn. Here it is better to give preference to plants of one species or at least one color. If desired, you can also think over some pattern and plant the seeds so that those plants that grow from them repeat the invented pattern.

When to plant and how to care for ground cover plants

Ground cover plants plant and propagate in the spring when the soil is wet enough and the weather is already relatively warm. They grow well in almost any climate and do not require special care. Moreover, they prevent soil washing out and weeds.
Planting ground cover covers takes place in several stages:

1. Prepare the soil: clean it of weeds and debris, loosen the ground.
2. Add complex fertilizer.
3. We plant plants in pits of 20-25 m deep. If we want to get a beautiful flowering lawn, we plant them in rows close to each other. In the case of mulch, on the other hand, the planting should not be too thick so that it does not grow much. When planting plants at the track, make sure that the landing went in a row. Here, the neglect of accuracy can lead to the fact that the plants "climb" on the track and have to replant them again.
4. Fill up the pits and make a small mound.
5. Water the plants.

Ground cover maintenance consists of watering them every day for the first 2-3 weeks after planting, watering once a week afterwards and removing rare weeds.

Video about ground cover plants