AT A GLANCE
How can ground covers be successfully combined?
What factors should be considered when combining ground covers?
When combining ground covers, their basic characteristics should be included. Therefore, consider the following factors:
- Foliage: deciduous, wintergreen or evergreen
- heyday: March to August
- Location Requirements: sunny to shady, sandy to loamy soil
- growth height: up to 40 cm
also read
There are ground covers that present their foliage all year round. It is good to combine such specimens with plants that look bare in winter. But you can also socialize evergreen ground covers with other evergreen plants.
When choosing companion plants, consider the flowering time of your ground cover. Most ground cover flowers show their flowers in summer.
Since the majority of groundcovers only grow to a small height, it is important to put them in the foreground and not to cover them with the combination partners.
Combine ground cover in the bed
Ground covers are often combined with each other. But combinations with shrubs and perennials are also enriching, as the ground cover coats their root area and makes it visually more attractive with their leaves and flowers. For this purpose, however, it is important that the accompanying plants can deal with the urge to expand the groundcover and do not allow themselves to be restricted by their root system or even suppress it.
These popular groundcovers can be wonderfully combined with each other, in that respect
they have similar location requirements:
- blue pillow
- candytuft
- hosts
- creep spindle
- ivy
- Small periwinkle
- elf flower
- Purplebells
Combine blue cushion with candytuft
The blue cushion and the candytuft like a sunny spot on a nutrient-rich substrate. While the blue cushion comes along with its mostly blue-violet colored flowers, the candytuft shines fantastically next to it with its radiant white color. Their growth height also matches each other, so that they form a good team overall.
Combine hosta with rhododendron
The hosta goes well with the rhododendron as they are both native to forest plants. They love a partially shaded location on fresh and humus-rich soil. Place a white variegated hosta as ground cover at the base of the rhododendron or a little apart. The rhododendron will benefit from the presence of the hosta as it will shade its root area and keep the soil from drying out.
Combine ivy with rainbow fern
The ivy is often chosen as a ground cover to underline ferns such as the rainbow fern. Both the ivy and the rainbow fern do best in a partially shaded location. This union becomes even more beautiful if you plant several rainbow ferns in a staggered manner and let the ivy twine through them.
Combine ground cover in the bucket
Ground covers are often used to plant trees and perennials in the tub. They easily take up the space on the edge of the tub and depending on the species, they also hang over there nicely. Richly flowering ground covers such as the cushion thyme are particularly impressive, as they make the lower part of the partner colorful.
You can combine the following plants with ground covers in the tub:
- azaleas
- rhododendron
- oleander
- magnolia
- lilac
- Spindle bush
- hydrangea
