The continuing fight against the weeds - Ground Cover
For the past couple of blogs, I have talked about getting rid of weeds, but what about the plants we are trying to keep? The Ground cover is the end product of what you want the layout to grow. It is the grass and the bushes that add detail to your scenery to choke out and minimize unwanted weeds. If I knew the latin name for the plants that would be fantastic or even if I kept the plastic tags that came with each plant giving me the common name that would be even better. But yesterday was recycling day and we threw all the containers away. Besides, I have many different books and magazine articles on miniature plants, but if you live somewhere different than the place where the article was written (New Zealand, Switzerland or even Alaska) you may not be able to buy the plants mentioned, and even if you could they may not survive due to the temperature or intensity of sunlight. Our layout gets a lot of sun and we aren't the greatest at making sure everything is watered even during a heat-wave so hardy plants are very important to find.
1. Natural Moss: We pulled this from our lawn. It is dry, flaky and has no visible roots. It grows anywhere and can be found in the forest around here in Canada.
2. Scotch Moss: This looks the same as Irish moss but is strong enough to with stand a heat-wave. We had invested in lots of Irish moss last year and killed most of it off (What is left is not pretty enough to take a picture of) Currently we have planted it in the front and back yards of our residential area to hopefully have beautiful lawns for next year.
3. Wild Thyme: We had purchased herb Thyme seeds from the hardware store a couple of years ago. After the plants came and went their seeds produced something completely different. Mutant Thyme that grows to be a couple of feet tall and spreads like crazy. Out of control plants is normally very bad to have on a layout but with occasional trimming resembles brush trees. (plus the weeds hate this plant and it smells nice when you cut it)
4. Elfin Thyme: This is stuff you want to find. It is cute and green and spreads nicely. The only problem is at $3 for 4 square inches and having a layout that might be 40ft x 30ft it would take thousands of dollars to cover the whole layout in one year. But like I said it spreads nicely so we buy a dozen of them every year and have to be patience and find other plants to fill the gaps until we have a beautiful green carpet.
5. Wooley Thyme: This is the strongest of the Thymes we have purchases. It survives all that the weather throws at it and it spreads exceedingly well. The purple flowers and fuzzy texture provide interesting accents to the countryside.
6. Lemon Thyme & 7. White Thyme: Another variation that smell nice, looks great and fills space nicely.
8 Mini Fern: This is the most interesting of our recent purchases. I wish I knew what it was actually called. Very detailed, looks fantastic, hopefully it will do well for us. I planted it behind our brewery and beside the track sidings. Have to wait until next summer to see how it thrives.
9 - 12: Once again I don't know what these plants are named. They are all new purchases that looked great at the nursery but we will have to wait to see how they spread and if they survive.
Stay tuned for Part 2 :)
Very helpful.
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