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shadara Offline OP
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Is there such a thing?

I just wanted a small perennial plant that I could use as a border in my north shade gardens w/o it taking over the entire garden and/or choking my bigger plants (hostas, ferns, tiarella, heuchera, etc). Or... something to easily pull out when overrun.

Thanks!





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Deep Purple
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i'd just use the violets that are native to the area...easy enough to transplant them and they'll multiple in time and, if they start encroaching on other things, you can just pull them up.


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Have you seen Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla, zones 3-7)? In my zone 5 garden it grows 10" tall and 20" wide, with heart shaped leaves and blue "forget-me-not" flowers in late spring. Mine have a silver imprint on the deeper green which reflects the available light along my shady path.

Another idea is Lungwort(Pulmonaria)whose leaves can be speckled with silver or almost fully silver. It grows 4-6" tall and 6-10" wide, the flowers are small pink or blue. Lungworts prefer fertile, moist soil in partial to full shade in USDA Hardiness zones 2 to 8.

An intriguing plant with shiny round leaves that spreads slowly is European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum, less 6" tall, and 12" wide)for partial to full shade. It's habit is to slowly become a ground cover, but not invasively.

None of these plants becomes a nuisance, they can be divided after a few years to fill in gaps in your border's edge. They all prefer moist shade.

Enjoy the challenges of the shade! It's cool!



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pachysandra

vinca minor


I love the sweet scents wafting in the breeze. I stop to admire the vibrant colors of all living things. And people think me odd. Then ODD I am!!!

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Wild Willow
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Thank you Shadara for posting this topic!! I was just coming here to post one almost identical. I am in need of something that will grow under an old wooden bench I have sitting by my pond. Right now I have weeds.. so I need something semi invasive and I think I am really leaning toward the vinca minor.. IF I can find any. I would love to have violets, but you just don't see them in this area like you used to. =(

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Ajuga is a fantastic groundcover. Rugby suggested pachysandra, I'd say that's less invasive than the vinca, though vinca can be managed fairly easily.
Mrs. Peggy suggested a few things I'm not even familiar with, but I assume she really knows her stuff.
I like variegated liriope, (monkey grass,) it's not invasive like the standard.
Bill has more plant choices on his list that I DON'T know than ones I do, and I partially specialized in shade gardening for 25 years, your biggest problem will be having to pick what plant you prefer!!!!!!


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Thanks for that linkie Bill! I was heading in that direction. LOL

Peppereater, I have heard of Aljuga but I don't know if I have ever actually seen it. Also, the Monkey Grass.. I think I would rather have something lower growing..

A question on the vinca minor.. is it considered more a vine? A friend's mom has something growing in her beds that I LOVE and she told me to help myself to it. It looks like the vinca vines you buy as accent plants.. like the spikes etc to mix in with flowers. I had no idea that it was a perennial though. It has green and white variegated leaves. Is that Vinca Minor??

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As far as I know only vinca major comes in a variegated version. Let me grab my camera, I have a start of one I bought for a quarter when a local store cleared out the last of their nursery stock.
For a really low growing ground cover, Ajuga is great...I have the impression, from my experience, that the solid colored one is slightly better than the variegated Ajugas, but one cultivar is more silvery/pale green than others and has streaks of color almost identical to the color where pinkhorse is, hehe.
Ajuga has a really nice flower spike early in the summer, you know, I'm not even sure that the variegated vinca blooms, but it surely does since the other cultivars bloom. You'll have about a 1 foot tall planting with vinca major, about eight inches with the minor, and the minor, compared to the solid major, is very much more tidy mostly due to the smaller leaf.


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dave
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vinca vine is perennial; the vinca plant is annual.

vinca CAN be invasive - when it's in the right conditions. in a place where it's more northern and you get an extended amount of cold and the ground freezes down a foot or two as well as that it will be shaded, it shouldn't be invasive at all.

i'm in 6b and i have some in a very sunny spot. it took a few years to get going and once it did, it filled the area in very nicely and took another few years before it started spreading out. where i have it, it's contained by concrete and/or blacktop, so, it can do what it wants.

i've seen it in other areas around here and it can get going really well - especially if it's in full sun.

if it's in shade, it doesn't grow as quickly. i've been traveling the same route to work for more than 9 years now and i see it growing on many lawns. on one street, in particular, a few houses have it. on the side that get some sun, it's filled in, yet isn't going overboard. on the other side, that is totally shaded, it has barely grown - and it's not a matter of what type of tree it's under, there's a variety from pines, to maples to oaks as well as various bushes. so, acidity or lack thereof isn't what's keeping it in check...it's the shaded conditions.

sweet woodruff, may apple, lamium, huechera and ferns are some other things to think about. of all of those, only some ferns get taller than a couple feet. all the rest won't get taller than a foot. you could also do cranesbill geranium, especially if you have a little bit of sun. that one will spread out over time...it's not too fast a grower and you can easily dig it up and split the rhizome to keep it from getting out of hand. any time you cut a part off, it kind of goes into a pout and really slows down on the growth for a couple years (at least, that's been my experience with it).

you could also do stonecrop sedums like autumn joy and the like. there are many color variations available now - from light green to dark as well as reds, purples and even so dark the purple looks black. (same color range with huechera now, also).


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Yes, peppereater, that picture is the one I was thinking of. My friend's mom has that in her beds and it keeps coming back year after year.. though I don't know as it blooms.. which doesn't really matter to me. As I said, it will be underneath a small wooden bench by my pond.. but it would look really pretty peeking out from under it. I think I will take her up on her offer to give me some. =)

Thank you Joclyn for that information, and also for the other suggestions! I have a tree out back that I would like to add a ground cover under... sometime.


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