A New Groundcover Project

  • Post published:05/17/2008
  • Post comments:1 Comment

We are always trying to eliminate lawn, and the labor of mowing. Unfortunately more lawn always seems to pop up somewhere else, but this is the latest lawn elimination project.
In a moment of madness I planted a lot of daffodils in the lawn – never calculating that this area of lawn, in front of the peonies and rhododendrons, could not be properly mowed before the other plants were in bloom. Daffodils in the lawn were very pretty. The fading foliage was not so.
I have been moving the daffodils to the strip of lawn behind the peonies. This is a good move as far as it goes. Now we come to the next move. I have started removing the sod and planting Waldensteinia, or barren strawberry, in its place. This plant is pachysandra-ish, except that the foliage is like large strawberry leaves and it has the advantage of straweberry-ish blossoms. Only yellow.
The idea is that this large strip of lawn will eventually be eliminated. The barren strawberry will thrive, with shade in the morning and sun in the afternoon. It will be underplanted with the daffodils which will bloom in the spring and will wither all unnoticed as they should.
My beautiful big barren strawberry plants came from the Nasami Farm Native Wildflower Nursery in Whately, Mass. It is run by the New England Wildflower Society. There are now eight greenhouse operating, and this is the largest wildflower propogation nursery around. Check out their website

This Post Has One Comment

  1. GardenAuthor

    Pat – great blog… always interesting and informative posts. Thought you might want to check out the May 17th exposĂ© of mulch mounds, and the culprits who create them, over at ‘gardenauthor.’…Deb

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