If your garden philosophy is plant it and forget it, you’re either looking for a great ground cover or a very small gravel pit.
Ground covers do more than just fill space, they act as a living mulch that suppresses weeds, retains soil moisture, prevents erosion, and ties your entire landscape design together.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Which shade plants thrive under trees.
- Why a steppable plant isn’t the same as a walkable plant.
- Learn my top native plant picks
- How to pick vibrant blooming varieties for rich color
- Resilient ground covers that need minimal upkeep
Let’s select the ideal ground cover to beautifully fill your yard and flourish!
What To Know Before Picking a Ground Cover
First, you should understand what a ground cover is. Colorado State University defines ground covers as “low, spreading plants dense enough to shade out weeds.”
This definition encompasses many different plants. Perennials, low evergreen shrubs, ornamental grasses, and vines like ivy all qualify as ground covers.
But before you shop and settle on any ground cover, you’ll need to evaluate your planting location. Consider:
- How much sun it gets.
- How much room you want or need to fill.
- The usual size and width of the plant you’re considering at maturity.
- Whether the soil is wet, average, or dry.
- Whether the soil drains well.
- Decide if people will walk on it.
You’ll also want to note any plants that will sit behind or above the ground cover, especially if you’re planting flowering varieties whose flowers may be twice as tall as the foliage.
Choose your ground covers based on location first, then narrow down your options by appearance. Do this backwards, and you’ll spend seasons trying to correct the mistake.
Variety #1: Shade-Loving (Best for Deep Shade)
Shade is a common reason gardeners shop for ground covers. Often, the goal is to fill in a bed underneath a large tree.
But not all shade is the same. Dry shade under a mature oak is different from moist woodland shade, for example.
6 Standout Shade Ground Cover Plants
1. Barrenwort (Epimedium spp.): This plant can grow in the driest shade (Zones 4 to 8) like its name (“barren”) suggests. It can compete with tree roots and is drought-tolerant once established. However, it’s slow to spread, so plant extra.
2. Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense): This plant’s leaves overlap and form a dense carpet in heavy shade and rich, moist soil (Zones 3 to 8). It’s a deciduous plant that spreads slowly. For year-round cover, consider evergreen European ginger (Asarum europaeum).
3. Allegheny Spurge (Pachysandra procumbens). This is the better-behaved native cousin of the popular pachysandra found in most nurseries. It grows slowly and stays in beds.
4. Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia): This plant is native across the eastern woods and hardy from Zones 4 to 9. Foamflower sends up airy white-to-pink spikes in spring and spreads by runners. It tends to stay manageable, dying back in winter; however, it won’t tolerate drought.
5. Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pensylvanica): For a soft, grassy look in dry shade, this native sedge fills in well. It can handle only occasional light foot traffic.
6. Mondo Grass (Ophiopogon japonicus): A very slow-growing ground cover plant that eventually forms an evergreen, grassy mat that can withstand some foot traffic. Available in green and black varieties.
Skip These Popular Shade Plants
Two popular shade plants not listed above are Japanese pachysandra and English ivy. These both grow well in shade as long as temperatures aren’t too hot.
In fact, they grow so well that they tend to outgrow their beds and become a problem. I suggest you try one of the native options above first.
Variety #2: Flowering (Top Color Impact)
Some gardeners want more than a green carpet, and a flowering ground cover hides the soil while handing you a vivid seasonal display. For most of these plants, the color occurs in one flush, usually in spring, and then lives as a foliage plant the rest of the time.
So, don’t buy based on the flowers alone. Buy the plant for its ability to thrive in your area and its foliage, weighing when it blooms and how it looks the rest of the year.
Remember: Flowers need sun, so if these ground covers are planted in shade, you’ll get leaves and few blooms. Lenten rose is the one exception that truly flowers in shade.
6 Ground Covers That Add Blooms and Color
1. Creeping Phlox (Phlox subulata): This phlox species loves the full sun (Zones 3 to 9). In early spring, it flowers pink, white, or lavender on needle-like evergreen foliage. The shade-loving Phlox stolonifera is also sold as “creeping phlox.”
2. Creeping Candytuft (Iberis sempervirens): Blooms with white spring flowers over dark evergreen foliage. It mounds rather than runs.
3. Leadwort (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides): Blooms with gentian-blue flowers from late summer into fall, just as everything else stops, and the foliage behind them turns bronze-red (Zones 5 to 9).
4. Creeping Speedwell (Veronica spp.): Speedwell is the best choice for true blue flower color in the spring. The Turkish veronica (V. liwanensis) variety is especially tough and forms dense mats in the sun.
5. Snow-in-Summer (Cerastium tomentosum): This plant has silver foliage and white flowers as it grows in hot, dry sun (Zones 3 to 7). It’s flagged as aggressive, so give it space and shear it hard after bloom.
6. Lenten Rose (Helleborus spp.): For color in the shade, hellebores are hard to beat. The evergreen leaves look good year-round, and the flowers open in late winter. Deer tend to leave the plant alone because every part is toxic to people and pets.
Our guide to deer-resistant plants will help you identify other plants that can handle garden pests.
Variety #3: Low-Maintenance (Easiest Upkeep)
When it comes to ground covers, it’s important to know that low-maintenance doesn’t mean maintenance-free.
For the first couple of years, these plants will need water while the roots take hold, and they’ll also need weeding at times. Some may require an occasional trim, as the easiest plants to grow are often the most vigorous.
5 Grounds Covers That Don’t Require a Lot of Care
1. Creeping Juniper (Juniperus horizontalis): This low, sun-loving shrub doubles as ground cover. Dozens of cultivars, such as Blue Rug and Blue Chip, offer blue, green, or purple winter color. They won’t tolerate wet feet or shade, though.
2. Monkey Grass (Liriope muscari): Liriope forms grassy clumps topped with purple spikes in late summer, then stays in slowly-expanding clumps. It can be hard to kill and remove.
3. Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina): This ground cover is grown for its soft, silver, fuzzy leaves. It prefers sun and dry soil, and it is deer-resistant.
4. Blue Fescue (Festuca glauca): This plant is silver-blue with a grassy, dog-hair-looking texture. It prefers a dry, partial shade to sunny spot. It is a little short-lived, so you should divide it every few years.
5. Hens-and-Chicks (Sempervivum spp.): These little rosettes can take the hottest, driest, rockiest corner you’ve got, and they barely need you. The only requirement is good drainage.
Variety #4: Evergreen (Year-Round Cover)
These ground cover plants hold their leaves year-round, or close to it. Evergreen picks will keep shading the soil through the cold months, so fewer winter and early-spring weeds come in. And on a slope, the active leaves and roots hold soil that a dormant, deciduous planting might let wash away.
Whether a ground cover plant is evergreen or semi-evergreen is based on climate. Several of these options will stay lush in mild winters but become semi-evergreen in colder climates (and even the best can look ragged by late winter).
5 Ground Cover That Lasts Most of the Year
1. Coral Bells (Heuchera spp.): This plant is grown more for foliage than flowers, and it’s considered evergreen to semi-evergreen. It grows into mounds in part shade.
2. Bergenia (Bergenia cordifolia): A plant with bold, cabbage-like evergreen leaves. Rub a leaf, and it squeaks, hence its nickname “pigsqueak.”
3. Creeping Raspberry (Rubus pentalobus): Fast-growing and evergreen, this ground cover plant stays low while spreading several feet wide. Leaves turn burgundy in winter. It’s aggressive but not invasive and hardy in Zones 7 to 9.
4. Creeping Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens): A plant with glossy evergreen leaves, red berries, and a wintergreen scent when crushed (which gave it its name). It wants cool, acidic woodland soil.
5. Woodland Stonecrop (Sedum ternatum): Most sedums crave sun, but this plant tolerates shade and spreads into a dense carpet of succulent rosettes. It’s semi-evergreen in mild winters.
Variety #5: Low-Growing (Steppable)
If you’re looking for plants that’ll grow between stepping stones or tucked into a rock wall, these are your best bet. They’re the ground covers that stay flat — and some are fragrant.
These ground covers are usually short enough that if a mower runs over the top they won’t be affected. None of them can take constant walking on, but you may be able to step on some occasionally without damage. If people will need to walk through the area, lay a stone path first, then plant around it.
4 Low Ground Cover Plant Picks
1. Creeping Thyme (Thymus spp.): This is the classic “steppable” (try Thymus serpyllum) ground cover. It grows in full sun with good drainage, and it will release a fragrance when stepped on and cover itself with pink flowers. This is my top pick for a sunny gap between pavers in a flower bed.
2. Corsican Mint (Mentha requienii): Tiny and mossy, this is the ground cover to choose for a moist, lightly shaded stepping-stone path. It’s hardy in Zones 6-10; it can frost in the north but reseeds. It releases a mint fragrance when stepped on.
3. Irish Moss (Sagina subulata): This plant is dense and moss-like, but it’s not a true moss. The green cushion fills cool, moist spaces (and dislikes full sun), blooming with white spring flowers. Its gold form is sold as Scotch moss.
4. Spring Cinquefoil (Potentilla verna): Bright green with yellow flowers, this is a moderate spreader and grows in sun and dry ground.
Learn how to care for beautiful blooms in our chrysanthemum care guide here.
Variety #6: Full Sun (High-Heat Tough)
Sun tolerance and heat tolerance sound identical, but they’re not quite the same — especially when it comes to ground covers.
A plant can love bright light and still melt from heat off a driveway or bare ground. The plants listed below will handle both heat and full sun, given moisture and good drainage.
Snow-in-summer, which was mentioned earlier with the flowering ground covers, also fits this hot, dry category. Just remember to weigh heat tolerance and your hardiness zone. A plant that does well in dry Colorado heat may rot or collapse in a humid Gulf Coast summer.
6 Heat- and Sun-Tolerant Ground Cover Plants
1. Ice Plant (Delosperma spp.): This plant features succulent foliage and daisy-like flowers that make it a showpiece in a hot, dry bed. Hardiness varies by species, so in cold zones you should pick a hardy type like Delosperma cooperi. (Note: This is not the invasive ice plant along California highways.)
2. Woolly Yarrow (Achillea tomentosa): Flat clusters of yellow flowers over soft, woolly foliage appear as this plant grows in poor, dry soil. It thrives where other plants won’t.
3. Greek Yarrow (Achillea ageratifolia). Smaller and tidier than its woolly cousin, at under two inches tall with gray-green foliage and white daisies. Tailor-made for a rock garden or hot, exposed edge.
4. Silver Mound Artemisia (Artemisia schmidtiana): Silver Mound is a fluffy, aromatic mound. Give it lean soil and full sun. Shearing keeps it tight.
5. Rockcress (Arabis caucasica): This ground cover features soft gray foliage under white or pink flowers in spring. It can hang over rock walls and grow on sunny slopes, though you’ll need to trim after blooming.
6. Plains Verbena (Glandularia bipinnatifida): A native plant with deeply cut foliage and purple flowers from spring into fall. It grows well in hot sun.
Variety #7: Rapid-Spreading (Fast Coverage)
Rapid-spreading ground covers, or fast-growing plants, have pros and cons. They’re perfect on a bare, eroding slope, but they can require too much maintenance in a flower bed.
A ground cover that’s fast-growing establishes and covers quickly. If it’s considered aggressive, that means it’s hard to keep in a specific place and likely will need edging. Choose an invasive ground cover plant, and you’ll have a problem. These plants can escape into wild areas and kill off native plants that wildlife depends on.
A fast, aggressive ground cover can be fine in the right spot. Invasive plants, however, need to be checked before you buy. Some are banned from being sold or planted.
5 Ground Cover Plants That Spread Fast
1. Creeping Lilyturf (Liriope spicata): This is the running cousin of the Monkey grass-clumping liriope above. Liriope spicata is a rapid rhizome spreader; it’s great on a large slope but listed as invasive in some states.
2. Ajuga/Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans): Bugleweed fills shaded areas fast with thick foliage and flower spikes. But it’s invasive in parts of the country and slips into lawns, so it often needs edging. It comes in several colors of leaves and flowers. My favorite is burgundy leaves with blue flowers.
3. Creeping Jenny/Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia): Sold almost everywhere, especially the gold ‘Aurea’ form, this yellow-flowered plant is banned from sale in Massachusetts and listed as invasive in many states. It loves to grow in water, so it’s usually used around water spigots; it also tolerates light foot traffic.
4. Periwinkle (Vinca minor and V. major): This plant’s glossy evergreen leaves and blue spring flowers make it a shade favorite, but it’s listed as invasive across much of the country. Variegated varieties aren’t as hardy and grow slower.
5. English Ivy (Hedera helix): This is one to think twice about buying. It blankets shaded areas fast and climbs anything it touches. That’s the problem, and it’s why it’s classified as invasive in many states. If you have this ground cover, keep it cut back hard and stop it from climbing.
Variety #8: Drought-Tolerant (Water-Wise)
For a xeriscape (a landscape design with drought-tolerant or low-water plants and efficient irrigation), a rocky bed, or any location that’s a pain to water, drought-tolerant plants pay for themselves.
Drought-tolerant doesn’t mean a ground cover will never need watering. Even the toughest, most drought-resistant plants still require watering while they take root. If you skip watering in the first season, you risk losing them. Ideally, over the long term, you’ll get enough rain so supplemental watering is rarely needed.
2 Ground Cover Plants for Drought-Prone Regions
1. Sedum (Sedum spp.): Stonecrop has succulent foliage that stores its own water, and it grows well in heat and poor soil. In full sun with drainage, it’s about as hard to kill as plants get.
2. Hairy Alumroot (Heuchera villosa): This native coral bells relative handles dry partial shade, heat, and Southern humidity. If ordinary coral bells die out on you, try this one.
Three plants covered earlier round out this group. Creeping juniper is the best evergreen for a hot, bare slope. Hens and chicks need almost no water in the driest spots. And many sun-and-heat plants above (thyme, lamb’s ear, artemisia, and the yarrows) are just as tough once established.
Just make sure to compare shade plants and sun plants side by side. Drought tolerance does not automatically mean a plant needs (or wants) full sun.
Discover the ins and outs of growing drought-tolerant plants in our succulent guide here.
Variety #9: Slopes (Erosion Control)
Slopes and lawn replacements need more from a ground cover than ordinary landscape beds do. On a slope, plants need deep roots that help hold soil in place. A lawn alternative also needs to handle some foot traffic without becoming thin and damaged.
The best choice depends on the job you need your ground cover plant to do, how much sun or shade the area gets, and how carefully you plant it at the start.
Best Ground Covers for Slopes
A good slope plant needs dense roots that grip and spread quickly. They also need to be low maintenance since access may be limited on a slope.
Most of the best plants for this purpose have already been listed in other categories. Creeping junipers, creeping phlox, creeping thyme, spring cinquefoil, creeping raspberry, sedum, and clumping liriope are all proven to prevent erosion.
Pick plants based on your slope’s sun exposure and moisture availability.
Ground Covers as Lawn Alternatives
No ground cover can replace turf you can walk on daily. But for a low-traffic area, several plants beat bare dirt or mulch. You just have to set your expectations that these are limited use.
The right pick for your garden comes down to light.
In the shade, Pennsylvania sedge forms a soft carpet that you mow once a year. Mondo grass and dwarf Mondo form an evergreen, grass-like mat that takes some foot traffic in warmer regions. In sun, creeping thyme covers a bright, well-drained area, and blue star creeper will work for a seldom-walked-on spot.
For consistently moist ground, like in front of a water spigot, mazus fills in fast and takes occasional foot traffic, while Corsican mint suits a damp, lightly shaded path. Use them with stepping stones so you don’t wear a path across any of them.
Variety #10: Spreading Shrubs (Woody Accent)
A few low, spreading woody shrubs can serve as ground cover.
Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) is a native evergreen for acidic soil, with red berries. Horizontal junipers can spread to 5 feet and be used for erosion control.
Some cotoneasters work well as evergreen shrubs but are invasive in parts of the country, so check your state’s invasive list. These evergreen shrub ground covers are often planted around commercial buildings, such as restaurants.
Learn how to grow other shrubs in our guide to hydrangeas here.
How to Plant Ground Covers?
Choosing the best plants and planting them correctly will give you the best results. It can also prevent years of fighting weeds and plant issues.
You should plant ground covers in the spring or early fall, when cooler weather and steadier moisture help roots establish before heat or frost arrive.
- Clear existing weeds and grass completely. A commercial practice is to use herbicide to kill all the weeds in the area, then turn up the soil to expose more weed seeds. Those seeds germinate, then are killed. Repeat if needed.
- Fix drainage problems before you plant.
- Work 2 to 4 inches of compost into the bed. Aim for 2 to 4 cubic yards per 1,000 square feet.
- For shrubs only: Lay down 10- to 20-year-rated landscape fabric that lets water flow through but blocks weeds. Mark where the plants will go on the fabric, then cut a large X in that spot so the fabric can be pulled up around the plants after planting.
- Space plants by their mature spread, often 12 to 18 inches apart for perennials.
- For large areas, use a free online bedding plant calculator. You can enter your bed size and plant spacing, and it will calculate how many plants to buy.
- Plant at soil level.
- Water deeply to settle soil around the roots.
- Use organic mulch like bark lightly around plants to control weeds until plants fill in. There are also free online mulch calculators that will provide the amount of bags to buy based on area and depth of the mulch.
- Do not use pre-emergent weed controls. They will prevent runners or rhizomes from taking root and filling the areas.
Your spacing depends a lot on how much money you have to spend. You want the area to fill in as fast as possible, but that can be expensive. Also, it may crowd the bed and cause disease issues. Spacing according to mature size and letting patience do the rest is usually the best option.
Final Advice
The best ground cover is one that’s happy where it’s planted. Carefully selected plants shouldn’t need much maintenance. If your plants have issues like spots, sunburn, root rot, or just aren’t filling in, you may need to move them and plant something different in that location.
Check your state’s invasive plant list before choosing a vigorous ground cover. If you match the plants to your location, you’ll have an impressive, dense mat of plants by the end of the season.
Happy growing!
