When it comes to ground cover, one usually thinks of leafy and flowering flat perennials - but a few creeping conifers can also be used to make low surface areas and beds attractive and easy to care for. Here are some ideas.
Conifers can be used in many different ways in the garden
Conifers as ground cover - their special appeal
When planting areas that are supposed to be manageable and low in the literal sense, the usual candidates usually come to mind first - periwinkle, Ysander or Waldsteinia are popular weed repellents, for rock gardens the typical Mediterranean sun worshipers thyme, fragrant stonecrop or stonecrop are established classics . The fact that there are also creeping types of conifers should also be kept in mind when designing the area - because conifers can be used to set very characterful accents, especially in grave plants, heath gardens or gravel gardens with a Far Eastern touch.
Another advantage of ground-covering conifers: they are usually very robust and hardy. As a result, they have a good shading effect and keep their pretty needle dress all year round. Due to their moderate growth rate and often very even expansion, they also require hardly any care, especially no pruning as a rule.
Good arguments for coniferous ground cover are:
- structurally attractive ornamental value in heather or gravel gardens
- very hardy and hardy
- hardly any maintenance needed
Varieties for different design plans
Creeping species of conifers are mainly found within the genera of juniper, thuja and yew.
creeping juniper
Above all, the juniper offers a wide range of low species that are suitable for the design of front gardens or rock gardens. There are creeping junipers with very different needle shapes, sometimes with typically flat, lobed branch structures, but sometimes also with fine, short-needled and dense branches or elongated, panicled shoots. Small dwarf shrub junipers can be used in solitary planting but are also suitable for structured rock or heath garden design.
thujas
Dwarf spherical arborvitae are not extensively ground-covering - but they can be an attractive enrichment for low area plantings with their eponymous small, spherical growth. You can keep the little tree very accurate by pruning it regularly or let it grow naturally, although there is no need to fear that it will proliferate depending on the variety.
yew trees
Dwarf yew species can also look very pretty, especially in the heath garden in combination with Erika: The thorny yew, for example, offers a familiar sight with its deep green, soft needle pattern, the golden yellow cushion yew is a little lighter - if you like it a little more unusual, you can fall back on delicate creeping yews , whose cuddly shoots are particularly decorative over a bed of pebbles.