Flowering Ground Covers | My Most Beautiful Picks!

Welcome, how are you? My name is Angelina, and there's a couple things that have happened. Vlog is one. Exciting. Somebody did, some beautiful people did a parody on me, I guess. And they apparently did an amazing job. I haven't seen it yet because I was scared. I was a little nervous and anxious. So I said, I'm not going to watch it. I can't watch it, but I've decided I'm going to watch it because apparently they did an amazing job and I'm pretty excited to see it. So I'll report back on that after I see it tonight. So thank you, Olympia. You're an amazing person. You're a beautiful person. You're a funny person and kind, I think. I'll get back to you on that. I'm going to say thank you for subscribing to the email list on I think since that video has been made, the escape arrow, not the escape arrow, the escape X out thing is bigger. So you can find it if you want to just look at our plants and not have to sign up on the email list. But if you do sign up, you're going to get amazing deals. Just saying. I'm just going to say it. So that's that. As you can see behind me, spring can be a tough time in the garden. If you haven't planned for spring flowering plants, you might have a garden that looks like this behind me, which in about a month is going to be filled with perennials, filled with annuals. I'm probably going to put some spring blooming perennials in there just because it needs it. The first gorgeous perennial I want to talk to you about, bleeding hearts. Bleeding hearts have these flowers that dangle from the stems. And as the wind blows, they just they blow with it. They're just going with it. They're going with. And it's so wonderful to stop and watch that behavior. It's not behavior. It's a reaction to the wind because it calms you. It just relaxes you. And as I was filming some of this footage, I just wanted to stay there all day. I really did. And let the flowers speak for themselves. But they're absolutely stunning. And they're great plants to put in between like our other perennials that are going to develop later in the summer or later in the month. So you might have these holes in the garden that need to be filled with something that's pretty like a bleeding heart. And there's many colors. And each one of them is a spectacular ground cover type of plant. I say ground cover when I say bleeding hearts, because you can plant a whole bunch of them. And over time, they will start naturalizing and spreading by seed and filling in the gaps of your garden. So that's why I consider it a ground cover. It's creeping flocks. You've seen it. I know you've seen it. You've seen this mass of purple or a mass of pink climbing up a hillside or down a slope or in a rock garden. And it's just all color. It's in your face color. And it doesn't last that long. But when it blooms, it's spectacular. It dominates the landscape and creeping flocks is creeping good. I'm just saying it's just super low. It's nice and tight. It stays low to the ground. It covers all the surface. And it's I got friggin fireworks display of one color. You can plant many different colors together. It's a little visually crazy. So I recommend planting the same color all together and let it just do its thing. A juga. Okay, bugleweed bugleweed is in my mind in the mind of landscape world and gardening world. It's an invasive ground cover. It's a ground cover you want to use if you have a large space under trees that let in some light, dappled shade, and you need to cover it pretty quickly because it's a fast growing ground cover. And it has very beautiful purple spikes that pop up from the dark foliage. There's different types of foliage. There's different types of them to that have a slightly darker foliage. Some there's like a chocolate chip variety, I think that sorry, there's a chocolate chip variety that has smaller leaves and bronze bronze smaller leaves, but it has the same telltale sign that it's a bugleweed by the flower. I'm you know, forget me nots, little tiny, still friggin cute. The little tiny blue flowers on these leaves that are like lancelet and just long and pretty, and super low to the ground, a dainty ground cover if you're feeling like that, you feel like there's a section in your garden, a little section, you just want a pop of spring color and some very, very delicate, pretty foliage. Lots of good one. It just makes me want to go apple picking or something. I don't know, something pure. It makes me feel pure. The only thing that makes me feel pure. Vinca. I think what is the name? What's the common name for vinca minor? But vinca minor literally is a ground cover that you probably have seen. It has these blue to purple flower that just sits right on the top and it's not densely packed with with flowers. But the shiny leaves of the foliage are a great contrast to that purple. I think it's purple. I'm gonna call it purple, purple violet flower. And it's a great, great way to help stop erosion. If you're planting along a berm or a bankman or some disturbed land, and you need to cover it quickly and to secure it down because the roots are really hardy, and they'll stop, they'll help stop some of the erosion. So it's great erosion control. It can be a bit invasive once it's established. But you know, let it be, let it go. It's not hurting anybody. I don't think it's hurting anybody. There's some ground covers that are pretty destructive. This isn't one of them. And I am very fond of evergreen ground covers, because guess what, it looks good all year round. And in the spring, you get this, this beautiful display of these daisy like looking flowers. Columbines are another ephemeral type of plant, like the bleeding heart. They succumb to the heat. When it gets too hot, they just they plop back down and they're gone. So that's why these, I like to call them mysterious plants, because they're just kind of here for a moment, and they disappear. And they come back in the spring, next spring, bigger and healthier, if you kind of maintain their health, which this is maybe another video, I'm not really sure. But they have double flowering ones, single flowering ones, all sorts of colors, mixed colors. And again, it's very similar. They are very similar to the bleeding hearts because their foliage is very tender and succulent and delicate. And it has that same type of movement. Not like right now, I'm sitting in the sun because I was cold on the porch. When you need to feel like it's here, like spring is here. They're great reminders that nature's coming back to this area. Nature's coming back alive in the Northeast, where it has been so gray and dismal for so long. And the grass is getting greener, the huchera is coming up, things are coming up, hydrangeas, everything's starting to pop. Sweet woodruff is another perennial that is a true ground cover. It stays low to the ground, it hugs it, it keeps it warm, it keeps it protected. It protects the inside, I don't know, it's a true ground cover with prolific white blooms, tiny, tiny little flowers that are on these panicles, and it just goes. And they actually can last a very long time throughout the season. They can continually bloom to a certain point, then you're just kind of looking at the foliage, which is also gorgeous. So, you know, the thing is, like, flowers are wonderful and pretty and a reminder of the way nature needs to reproduce in a beautiful way. But the foliage is what supports it. It's its support group. Here's another not-so-pretty name, barrenwort. And that's okay, because you just look past the name and you think that is one fine-looking, early-blooming plant. You are barrenwort, and it has this... I like the droopy flowers. I like the pendulous flowers because they're just... it looks like they're just hanging on, but they're not. They're like trying to get those bees to come and say, look at me, get some of my nectar, and take it, you know what I'm saying. They know what they're doing with that beauty, and the barrenworts just push it. They push it hard because they want to survive, and they should because they're absolutely stunning. Gorgeous, spectacular-looking, every adjective you can think of. Plants. That flower early in the spring, another ephemeral type of plant, but it's a wonderful ground cover. It stays pretty low, and it's just... you can't... like, you'll walk by a garden. What is that? I hope you're those types of people that actually look at nature when you're walking around, because you're missing out if you're not. Stop, go walk slower. Go down, go down. The foam flower is another one of my favorites because it's a super solid perennial that has dense, denser foliage than some of the other ephemeral ones I'm talking about, and the flowers are prolific. Their spikes, they tend to just dominate your eye and area, and then they're done, and you're left with a carpet of beautiful foliage that really kind of fills in wonderful, wonderfully spots in your garden. It fills in little holes that just need to be filled in, and why I like using ground covers and perennials, sometimes over... the overuse of annuals is that you don't have to keep on replanting your garden, and the biennials I'm talking about, there's others like, like foxglove and even verbena benariensis, things that reseed and continue to be a part of your garden even when the initial plant is gone. So you got to think about the longevity of how you're planting and designing. That's why I like to use these ground covers. This is a perennial that is as many, many, many different types of geraniums, perennial geraniums, not the geraniums that you see in flower pots that smell very strong. They're not. They're a perennial type of geranium, crane's bell, and they are perfect ground covers. They're not as creepy as an adjuga. They're not as creepy as vinca, meaning they're not creeping around as much. They're not, they're not taking over space. They're well-behaved perennials that bloom early in the spring, and their flowers are very simple, and they're usually pastels, pinks and whites and light lavenders, white. I don't remember if I've ever seen a yellow, and there might be, but they just give a little bit of a texture and poof. They give some poof to the garden ground cover area, you know what I'm They heighten it up a little bit, and the foliage lasts pretty long throughout the summer. I've noticed in August it starts to look like crap, so I tend to cut it back, and I'll pinch back some of these perennials right after they bloom, just to give them a little bit longer chance to look better in the garden, because sometimes if they get long and luggy, they tend to look spent. So just maintenance is good. Maintenance for everything is good. Most of the ground covers that I'm talking about in this video require partial shade. Some can do well in the sun, like the creeping flocks, but it also actually does really, really well in partial shade. I think the late afternoon sun gets to be too much for them, so try to keep them in dappled light, not super dark, because really, really dark spaces are hard for most plants in general. They just don't do as well. So dappled shade throughout the day and these cool temperatures are going to be their friends, and you're going to be happy, because they will remind you that spring is here. It's here to stay. Summer's coming. We're going to have many, many, many more flowers in the garden, and we're just being well, we're being welcomed by these. They're just like the best. There's one more. I forgot. Huchera, the corrobals. You see it behind me? So huchera is, the flower's not that impressive. I'm just saying it's not an impressive flower, but the foliage, this always comes up first. It's a great ground cover. It does creep out a little bit. It does start to take over once it's well established, but it starts out as a mounding perennial, and then it's just, it's dark. It's mysterious. It's inviting. Cast a spell on me. Whatever. This thing, this is my last plant, and I'm going to go now. There's one more. There's one more. This is, what is it called again? I can see it. I can't remember the freaking name. False Solomon's seal. Solomon's seal. What? It pops out in the spring. As soon as that soil starts to thaw out a little bit, then you see this little cone popping out of the soil, and then this beautiful variegated foliage starts unraveling, and these tiny, delicate, little like teacups of a flower just line up along the stem and just dangle down. Another dangling flower that I love, and then there's one more, and it's the lily of the valley. Lily of the valley is kind of the best. Same thing. It's the same type of flower as the Solomon's seal. They're little tiny flowers that like to come up on the stem, and then these leaves that are just like, like little petals. I don't know. Look beautiful. They're really, really good at naturalizing in the garden, and they love shady areas, and if you're having a tough time with a spot in your garden that you can't get pretty much anything to grow, try lily of the valley. Try that out. Throw some bulbs in there. See what happens, and then maybe in a few years, you'll just have a sea of these white little bells just dinging in the wind in the spring. Now I feel like I'm getting sunburned, so I'm gonna go. I keep thinking of more plants as I get up. It's like the blood rushes to my head. I'm not even really going to talk about bulbs because not. I can see other things as I get up. There's definitely more, but those are my favorite.