It’s really astonishing to me what a single plant can do. This plant is a great example of a ground cover. Do you have an area in your yard where maybe something doesn’t grow on the ground, like grass, because there’s too much shade because of trees or because the shade of your house? Or that it’s such a highly trafficked area, grass won’t grow. Or you’ve got a slope that just keeps washing away and you need something to stabilize it.
A ground cover like this is ideal. This little plant is called Winter Creeper, and it’s a tough, hard working plant. It can solve a lot of problems in your landscape. For instance, this plant will take full, hot sun or some shade. In the South, I think it does better with some partial shade, although it will take full sun. In the North, well, it probably needs full sun. And, hey, it’s not finicky. It can take just about any kind of soil as long as the soil doesn’t hold water and stays wet and boggy.
The other thing that’s great about this plant: It’s an evergreen. Yeah, all through the spring and summer it has this beautiful green foliage. Then in the fall, this very same foliage turns a beautiful sort of bronze red. Now just take a look at this bed that’s planted in Winter Creeper. Now, I couldn’t see planting lawn up here next to the house like this. And let me tell you, this area gets full, hot, screaming sun in the summer. This plant just keeps ticking right along. I planted these about 18 inches apart in this bed. And within one growing season they began to knit together. And by the second growing season, you couldn’t even see the ground because they had completely covered it.
Those little aerial roots connect to the moist soil, the plant grows out, and over time begins to cover the ground. I don’t know about you, but I love a plant that not only looks good but solves a problem, and that’s exactly what this Winter Creeper does.
You see, here, I only have to fertilize this bed once a year. And if this was grass, I would have to be fertilizing more, and I’d obviously have to be mowing it every week. But to keep this maintained beautifully, all I have to do is raise my lawnmower up and I can mow this just like I would the lawn, cutting off all these little tendrils to the same height, making it very uniform. I do that twice a year and I’m finished. Hey, if you’ve got other problem areas around your landscape or your home, check in with us regularly because we’ve got some great solutions. And tell a friend about Winter Creeper.