Take a moment to visualize yourself cavorting barefoot about your garden, a soft, fragrant, living carpet beneath your toes. Or picture a hillside of purple flowers, abuzz with bees, gathering their nectar. Welcome to the magical world of groundcovers.

Groundcovers serve multiple purposes in the landscape. They can provide broad splashes of color and texture, they help control erosion, and they can create a soft fragrant carpet in your garden.

What is a groundcover?

It is any low-growing plant that primarily spreads horizontally. Groundcovers range in height from a quarter of an inch [wooly or elfin thyme] to 2 feet high [Ceanothus Carmel Creeper].

Garden design

While much is made of the value and impact of color in the landscape, texture is just as important. Groundcovers can be used to create a mood and a feeling through their texture. For instance, scotch moss is used just as much for its soft carpet-like effect as for its bright green color. In contrast, certain grasses and sedges have an almost furry look that can be quite delightful.

Choosing your plant heights wisely is key to a well-designed landscape. You would be surprised at the number of poorly designed gardens in which the tall plants have been located in the front and the low plants in the back. Groundcovers are an excellent choice in the foreground of your garden. If one is using rocks, water features, or garden art in the landscape, framing them with a groundcover is a great way to accentuate your featured element.

Slope retention

The Santa Cruz Mountains are prone to sliding, and planting groundcover is a good way to help stabilize a slope and prevent soil erosion. There are several varieties of groundcover, such as rosemary, where the lateral branches send down roots as they spread. Rosemary is, in fact, the No. 1 pick of many landscapers for hillside retention because it is fast-growing, long-flowering, binds the soil and tastes good in your spaghetti.

Another good hillside retainer is myoporum parvifolium, commonly known as Creeping Boobialla. [Not surprisingly, the common name is not often used, as it sounds like some disease one might pick up in Australia.] Myoporum is a very fast-growing, drought-tolerant, fire-retardant groundcover. It has deep aggressive roots that make it a good erosion-control plant but also makes it hard to get rid of.

Groundcovers to avoid

Vinca major, also known as periwinkle, is one of the few soil-binding groundcovers that do well in the shade. I cannot condone its use, however, as it is extremely aggressive and chokes out native species. There are people who go out and spend their weekends trying to restore the wildlands, and one of their primary duties is pulling out vinca.

Iceplant is another groundcover that has been popular in the past for its rapidly spreading growth habit, yet I highly recommend against its use. At one time, the coastal areas of California were widely covered with this plant because early settlers were under the mistaken impression that it was good for slope retention. Actually, iceplant is not a good slope retainer. It is shallow rooting and is so heavy that it pulls the topsoil down the hill. And on the sand dunes of the Monterey Bay coast, it has choked out precious native plants and is generally regarded by native plant enthusiasts as being an obnoxious weed.

Recommended covers

Elfin Thyme. This species of thyme creates a delightful carpet in your garden and sports a tiny purple flower. Thyme is a great groundcover to plant between stepping stones and around rocks, as it creates a striking visual contrast between plant and stone. It is fairly slow-growing but when it fills in, it is very successful at choking out weeds. It is also deer and gopher resistant.

Chamomile makes a very attractive and fragrant groundcover and of course is highly valued for its many medicinal uses. It spreads fairly quickly and is quite hardy.

"Elijah Blue" Fescue [festuca glauca] is an all-time favorite for its soft texture, gray-blue color and its resistance to gophers, deer and drought. I like to call it the Volkswagon of groundcovers for its dependability. A large grouping of this lovely grass is really quite beautiful.

Lamium goes by the common but unappealing name of Deadnettle. However, don't let its common name deter you, for it is really quite a beautiful groundcover. This plant does well in the shade and creates a bright flowering carpet in otherwise dark spots in your garden. Being a member of the family lamiaceae [mint family], it is also quite deer resistant. This is a plant of which you forest dwellers should take note. There are approximately 30 different species of Lamium with foliage ranging in color from striped green to bright silver. It is fast-growing and can be somewhat invasive if given enough water.

Erica, commonly known as heath or heather. There are more than 700 different species within this genus, but several of the species grow more horizontally than vertically and create a soft verdant green mat about 12 inches high that gets covered with tiny pink flowers in the winter. The UC Santa Cruz Arboretum is a great place to view Ericas.

Gray Santolina, also known as Lavender Cotton, is considered a shrub, but planted close together in a grouping makes for a striking groundcover 12-18 inches tall. Its silver-gray color and yellow button-like flowers create a nice contrast in the garden. Try planting a patch of Santolina adjacent to a grouping of Erica to great effect.

Corsican Mint [Mentha requienni] makes for an exceptionally fragrant compact groundcover that spreads fairly quickly when provided sufficient moisture. It does well in sun or part shade and works great between stepping stones.

Tish O'Reilly recommends the following shade groundcovers: Ajuga repans, Campanula poshskyana and Lindernia grandiflora.