Ground cover plants are a type of plant that’s naturally low-growing, meaning they spread out rather than growing up, to create a pretty carpet of leaves and flowers across your garden.
The idea is that they grow fast, look great, and take minimal effort to maintain, providing you with a beautiful, low-effort, and often evergreen covering for larger areas of bare soil you might like to enhance.
If you have some gaps to fill along the front of a border, finicky little spots around the base of shrubs that aren’t conducive to growing anything else, or even some sparse or spindly rose bush ‘legs’ you’d like to cover, ground cover plants are a great way to go.
You could even use them as an alternative to a grass lawn, particularly if weeds are a concern and you’d rather not deal with maintenance. In fact, ground cover plants tend to suppress weeds, acting as a self-mulching agent and preventing soil erosion due to their roots becoming a binding system. They hold nutrients and moisture in the soil, too.
On top of all that, many ground cover plants are great pollinators and a really beautiful and easy way to make your garden bee-friendly, so you can play an important role in helping to maintain bee populations in your area.
So – low maintenance, pretty, and a choice that may allow you to eschew the drudgery of weeding and mulching…shall we sign you up? Here are 13 of the best types of ground cover plants you can choose, whatever your needs or the needs of your garden.
1. Lily of the Valley
Ideal for underneath shrubs and woodland borders, lily of the valley is a classic, favoured and fragrant choice for those who need something that will thrive under shade. Also known as Convallaria majalis, lily of the valley spreads fast and covers the ground quickly with pretty, whimsical little bell-shaped flowers coming in late spring.
If you like to keep cut flowers in your home, lily of the valley is a great choice – both because of how pretty they are and because of their scent, which is a gorgeous, delicate fragrance. Bees love them. The only catch is that they aren’t evergreen, so foliage will die back in winter.
2. Wildflower meadow
Fantastic for those with a large area of soil to cover quickly, a wildflower meadow is a rugged, nature-lovers’ option. You can also find seed mixes – annuals, perennials, or both – to suit different soil types and gardens.
Wildflowers are low maintenance – you can even buy ready-sown wildflower turf to lay down on your prepared soil, as if it were a carpet. They’re pollinator-friendly, very pretty, and a lovely way to fill in the blanks in your garden, or even replace your lawn.
3. Heather
Low-growing and evergreen, heather is another wonderful choice of ground cover that’s hardy and colourful, and can even be planted strategically so that you have flowers all year round.
Erica heathers flower from winter to spring, and Calluna heathers flower from late summer through to winter. Heather flowers range in colour, with some a delicate white or pink and some in much deeper colours like purple and red – but all are beautiful.
Heather is delectable to bees and produces a honey that’s thought to be as good as, if not better than, manuka honey. Great in acidic soil and a sunny spot, heather will add a special, wild touch to your garden.
4. Rock Rose
Forming dense mats of crinkly, crepe-paper flowers in a vibrant yellow, pink, white or orange, rock rose is an evergreen clump-forming shrub that comes into its own from early summer. Rock rose like well-drained soil, can handle a bit of drought, and is a perfect choice for rocky gardens or to fill gaps around a gravel garden.
A resilient and attractive plant, it’s been used in herbal medicine for centuries to help with anxiety, stress and panic. We’re not sure how scientifically backed this is, but we can imagine that being surrounded by their charming little flowers is medicine enough. Rock rose is bee-friendly, too!
5. Jack Frost
Also known as Brunnera macrophylla, Jack Frost is an evergreen plant that’ll grow up to 45cm in height, and boasts some lovely, distinctive heart-shaped foliage that’s silvery but veined in a beautiful dark green. The flowers are a little like forget-me-nots: dainty little clusters of cornflower blue that will draw plenty of bees.
You can enjoy Jack Frost’s flowers from March to May, but even the leaves have a lovely enough aesthetic to make it a beautiful choice, year-round. Plant these in areas of well-drained soil, and ideally in the shade. They’ll add a distinctive and elegant look to your garden.
6. Bergenia
Beautiful Bergenias form thick clumps quickly. Big, round, leathery leaves create a beautiful, hardy blanket of foliage that’s impressive all on its own…and then, the flowers come.
You’ll notice the buds in winter just starting to form and swell, awaiting their moment to burst into bloom. This can happen as early as January, depending on the variety you plant (and, of course, the weather). When it does, you’ll be treated to beautiful clusters of bright pink, crimson, or white flowers atop strong red stems.
7. Mexican Daisy
You might see it called Erigeron karvinskianus, or less formally ‘fleabane’, but most of us know it as Mexican Daisy, and that’s certainly the most descriptive name. The flowers are almost exactly like daisies (albeit a little bigger), and make for a pretty way to cover your borders and even fill out little crevices and cracks you didn’t even know you wanted to enhance!
The plant spreads via its roots and self-seeding, and is very low maintenance, so you can plant it and relax. A perennial, the long-lasting daisies will show up every year to grace your garden with their cheerful colours.
8. Creeping herbs
For the cooks and the foodies, creeping herbs are a great choice because not only do they provide attractive, shrubby-looking ground cover, but they also provide incredible flavours for your kitchen. Herb flowers are super attractive to bees as well; they seem to love the flavours as much as we do.
If you have a sunny spot to fill, try thyme, camomile, oregano, or prostate rosemary (probably the most bee-attractant of them all, and evergreen with bright blue flowers in spring). Sweet woodruff is good for shadier spots, and can be used in potpourri or even on its own as an insect repellent.
9. Crocosmia
Crocosmia is a slightly controversial one, given that certain types can become invasive if they make their way from gardens into the wild, where they can tend to outgrow native flora. But if you live in a well-contained space that’s not too close to open countryside, it makes a very pretty and vigorous ground cover plant for your garden.
The common species, Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora, is the invasive type and is even legislated in the UK, but cultivated varieties are less likely to become invasive and are not subject to such legislation. Crocosmia grows from underground corms in spring to become a dense thicket of clumped leaves and flowers that creates a stunning carpet of ‘sunset colours’ (red, yellow and orange) in late summer.
10. Lavender
Beautiful as a lining for pathways, to fill out sunny areas, or to fill out the sparse areas underneath rose bushes, lavender is pretty, fragrant, and very attractive to bees.
There are several different types of lavender you can grow, but for a UK climate, the Lavandula angustifolia is an easier and hardier variety than the French or Spanish ones – look for Lavandula ‘Munstead’ and ‘Hidcote’.
Lavender flowers are also suitable for cutting and using in flower arrangements, potpourri, wardrobe fresheners, and tea, with properties known to encourage stress relief and soothing and promote sleep and relaxation. It loves the sun and grows well, but needs a little grooming after it flowers, or it may get out of hand.
11. Flower carpet roses
If beautiful blooms in a vibrant cerise pink sound like something you’d like to see spread through your garden from spring to frost, look no further than these. More robust than other rose bushes, flower carpet roses are absolutely stunning when they come into their own, and are renowned for being disease-resistant and very low maintenance.
Glossy, dark green leaves look beautiful on their own, even when the flowers eventually go, and you won’t have to exert too much energy tending to these glorious additions to your garden.
12. Campunalas
Also known as bellflowers, these are a beautiful perennial that bursts into a stunning and vibrant purple-blue bloom every year in June. The flowers last until September, and make a magical addition to your raised beds, gravel gardens, rockeries, or borders.
The little bell-shaped flowers are probably this plant’s biggest selling point. They’re not evergreen and require well-drained soil, but are so beautiful in bloom that many people feel them to be worth the bit more effort they require than some other ground cover plants do.
13. Aubretias
Aubretia grows in beautiful blue and purple clumps and will thrive in well-drained, alkaline soil that enjoys full sun. Aubreita loves a wall-top, where it will spread and then spill over into a beautiful curtain of colour.
It flowers in early spring and is a lovely sign for anyone who grows them that spring is finally here – and, if you cut them back after their first flowering, you might even get a second bloom in summer. They’re not evergreen, so foliage will die off once the summer turns.
Final thoughts…
Choosing the right ground cover plant for your garden can transform it into something more beautiful and less work than ever before! The trick is to find what works not only for your soil but for you – whether you’d like to be able to use the herbs you grow; attract and support more pollinators; fill your space with your favourite colour; or minimise the effort you need to put into your garden entirely.
If you’ve been mulling over the myriad choices of ground cover plants to elevate your garden, we hope this article might have given you some inspiration. Options are abundant out there, and if you choose the one to meet your needs, suit your soil and fit your garden’s aesthetic, you can truly take your garden to a whole new level.
Have you planted any of the above plants in your garden? Maybe you’ve made a different choice that you’d like to recommend. We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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