A few tips for growing groundcovers on hillsides

Plants that ramble and scramble over the ground are great problem solvers for inclines that are too steep to mow but not too steep to plant. Here are a few excellent groundcovers for hillsides:

At their best, groundcovers form a thick carpet of foliage that excludes weeds, retains moisture, and protects the soil against erosion.

• Simplicity is the design key to getting stellar results from groundcovers grown on sloping ground.
• The beauty of a carpet of bugleweed or moss phlox comes from the solid mass of flowers it produces when it is in bloom.
• After the flowers have passed, the consistency of the foliage texture and colour kicks in to extend the show.
• Slopes planted with broad bands of only a few species of plants are also much easier to maintain than a mixed collection of different plants.
• Trimming, feeding, and weeding can be done quickly and efficiently.

Plant texture provides clues that you can use when deciding what plant to put where.

• Visually, the fine texture of plants with small leaves causes them to appear to be farther away than they actually are.
• The coarse texture of plants with thick stems and larger leaves, appear closer to a viewer than they actually are.
• So, if you place plants with bold textures, such as bergenia or hens and chicks, in the foreground of your slope and position fine-textured plants, such as candytuft or dianthus, to the rear, the optical illusion that you created will make the area appear larger and more expansive.
• If you reverse the combination of textures, the hill will actually look less steep than it actually is.
• You can actually create the same optical illusion described above, by combining plants with warm and cool colours.
• Warm colours advance and cool colours recede.
• For instance, if you set plants with blue-green foliage, such as hostas, or blue flowers, such as ageratum, at the back of a bed, or at the top of a hill, the blue colours will blend into the sky at the horizon line, causing a bed to look deeper than it actually is, and it will also cause a hill to appear greater than its height.
• If you want to make the hill look shorter, put plants with ruddy foliage, such as barberry, or plants with yellow, orange, or red flowers, such as rudbeckia or daylilies, toward the front of the planting.
•  Use plants with highly visible, upright, straplike foliage, such as ornamental grasses and daylilies, to their best advantage. They contrast handsomely with creeping juniper and other spreading shrubs.
• Also keep in mind that some vines make good groundcover plants, particularly clematis and honeysuckle.
• Another point to ponder is how you'll handle the inevitable transition area, where the plant textures and heights change, which occurs at the bottom of the slope where the groundcovers merge with lawn grass or some type of garden bed.
• Because the area at the base of a slope is often moist and well-endowed with organic matter, it's an excellent place to grow perennials that form a low hedge, such as hardy geraniums, rudbeckia, or even groundcover roses, which have been bred to have a low, spreading habit and to bloom intermittently.

• Artemisia
• Asarum
• Bergenia
• Bugleweed
• Candytuft
• Catmint
• Clematis
• Cotoneaster
• Creeping phlox
• Crocus
• Daffodil
• Daylily
• Dead nettle
• Dianthus
• English ivy
• Epimedium
• Euphorbia
• Ferns
• Geranium
• Grape hyacinth
• Hens and chicks
• Honeysuckle
• Hosta
• Japanese spurge
• Juniper
• Lady's mantle
• Lamb's-ears
• Ornamental grasses
• Pachysandra
• Red-osier dogwood
• Rose
• Rudbeckia
• Snowdrops
• Stonecrop
• Sweet woodruff
• Thyme
• Vinca

Not only do groundcovers allow you to shape the landscape in whatever way you want, they will also save you a ton of time on mowing and lawn maintenance. For those pesky hillsides, groundcovers are definitely an option you have to consider.