Creeping Color

Our gardens are alive. They are made up of living plant material, that is alive with the reflection of every color in the rainbow. Alive with motion and movement with every breeze that enters our gardens. If you slow down enough, you can almost see your plants grow. Growing tall and wide, sprouting, blooming and even crawling.

One of the best "crawlers" for color is groundcovers. They spread their blooms like quilts of color on your grandma’s bed.

In sunny gardens the pure white puff-like flowers of the Candytuft (Iberis) spreads like clouds, and are a beautiful contrast around evergreen shrubs. Planted in mass they crawl and spread in early spring filling in spaces with their pristine blooms.

The crawling, vibrant blue of Lithodora ‘Grace Ward’ is reminisce of the deep true blue found in the center of Crater Lake. Spreading through a garden bed, this Lithodora looks like someone tapped into the lake and let it flow. Lithodora will grow best in full sun or afternoon shade.

Rock Cress (Aubrieta) is an old fashioned spring bloomer. In the spring landscape, Rock Cress can appear as splashes of pink, white or lavender blooms among dormant stems. This low mounding perennial, crawls to about two feet across in sun or afternoon shade. Even after the blooms have faded, the cool green of the foliage is a nice backdrop for the plants above.

One of the fastest crawler’s of color is Verbena ‘Homestead Purple’. This plant will grow 2-3 feet across in just one season. The attractive purple blooms are perfect to soften retaining walls. The long tendrils of color will crawl down the wall creating a vertical wave of color. Verbena will begin blooming at the end of May and will continue the progression of spring color from where the other early blooming "crawlers" left off. In a sunny site, you will have purple blooms until fall.

Named appropriately, Creeping Phlox creeps along the floor of the garden, adding color wherever it is planted. Its soft, romantic five-petal flowers in white, shades of pink and lavender, are a mainstay for spring blooms.

Beautiful in the landscape, these perennial groundcovers are also fantastic in spring containers. Their blooming colors spill over the edge of the pot.

All of these varieties could all use a bit of trimming after flowering. This helps the foliage fill in and look beautiful for the rest of the summer.

Whether in a container or in your landscape, plant just a few groundcovers to spread a little living color this spring.