WHEN A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY
Midsummer patterns of color and texture from a limited palette of spreaders at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Glasshouse Garden at Wisley. You can do this.
A wave of Bergenia cordifolia (zones 3 to 8, part shade to shade) laps at the edges of a garden path in late summer. Be still my heart come fall when those green leaves turn sunset red!
Gardeners expect most perennials and shrubs to follow the reassuring adage, “the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps.” But some plants creep from the get-go and others hit the ground running. Either way, plants that widen their stance by sending up suckers from roots, or by spreading outwards in clumps or via rhizomes and stolons, will graciously fill the garden with broad sweeps of color and texture sometimes sooner than their third year. Growing with the vigor of “weeds,” spreaders offer lavish abundance at dime-a-dozen prices, give actual weeds a run for their money, and provide us the chance to grow an extra-exuberant garden. They’ll also exercise your green thumbs by allowing the convenience of creative control and the luxury of generosity. Because whenever you have too much of a good thing, all you need to do is divide, transplant, and share.
When I fall for a plant, rather than buying the recommended three, five, or seven of the same variety, I usually tuck in what Plant Delights Nursery owner Tony Avent calls “drifts of one” to see how it grows. I suspect most of us on a budget do that. It’s not wrong, but when the garden is young or sparse it can slow the process of creating a naturally cohesive, rich, and riotous design—unless we make the most of that one by propagating the heck out of it. Some plants will spread vigorously or grow quickly enough to make a new garden or area look established and lush within the first season or two. I put those to work as temporary placeholders that keep my garden growing while I debate all of the design options and plant choices available to me. And as soon as they’ve matured I buy a little more time by transplanting pieces of their overgrowth wherever they’ll provide the dramatic echoing drifts and syncopated rhythms I enjoy so much in other gardens.
Plants that grow by leaps and bounds make a lot of gardeners nervous. We all have a list of plants that we warn our friends about that includes regionally invasive species as well as anything that requires more strength to manage or remove than we have in our arms and legs. We reserve the right to disparage those plants as aggressive thugs, bullies, and the devil. But each of us has a different tolerance threshold. One person’s devil is another’s favorite groundcover. My definition of groundcover is anything that provides a carpet where I want it to, whether it hugs the ground or has a sizeable presence, and doesn’t require a backhoe or flamethrower to edit when it rolls out too far.
Allow a sprig of golden creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’) or a burnished silver Sedum spathulifolium to ramble along a border, over the curb and into the street. Those spreaders are too tiny and easy to toss out to be considered bullies by most of us. Pick on something your own size instead, like plume poppy (Macleaya cordata)—or let that gray-green, feather-topped 10-footer hold up the back of a border, screen the neighbors, and change the garden’s scale from shy and retiring to bold and beautiful. As tall as it is by midsummer, it’s easy to manage because its roots are close enough to the surface to be cut out by spade or pulled by hand.
The large oak-like leaves and spires of plume poppy (Macleaya cordata) towering over brightly variegated Brunnera macrophylla ‘Hadspen Cream’ give this quiet border something to talk about.
Generous swaths of a single species can offer our eyes a place to land that’s more interesting than sweeps of lawn, which functions the same way but requires more attention. In an intensively planted garden, use a foliar giant like butterbur (Petasites japonicus) for its restful surface area and engrossing contrast. Because it too is shallow rooted and easy to edit (especially considering its gargantuan leaf size) it can even be enjoyed in a small garden like mine.
As you come to appreciate, rather than fear, plants with exuberant growth habits, take another look around gardens that inspire you and (re)discover some great plants. Plenty will thrive on benign neglect once established in the right location, with whatever soil type and amount of sun and moisture they require and you happen to have. Mexican evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa) and plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) will brilliantly cover and color any sunny patch of soil. Barrenwort (Epimedium) and gingers (European and native species of Asarum) will colonize dry shade as if they’d never considered those two conditions to be even remotely difficult. Sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) offers fragrant hip-to-shoulder-high texture on dry sunny slopes where no other hedge would cover the ground as graciously.
Sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina) planted in shallow and dry soil at the entrance of Blithewold’s parking lot.
Butterbur (Petasites japonicus) rambles along under Black Lace elderberry (Sambucus nigra ‘Eva’) in my moist and shady sideyard garden.
Allow spreaders to engage in friendly competition with others that can give as good as they get, or at least hold their own. It would take a heavy hand to do in a healthy daylily, baptisia, or amsonia. Shrubs and sturdy plants with impenetrable crowns can stand like boulders in a running river of grape-leaf anemone (Anemone tomentosa ‘Robustissima’).
Combine early-rising sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and snow poppy (Eomecon chionantha) with slow-to-wake hostas for a succession of textures, or highlight spring by planting them with shrubs that bloom in concert, like blueberry and fothergilla. And let the task of monitoring and controlling their growth become an addicting pastime that reminds you that a garden is an engaging work in process as well as a sweet place to sit in the evenings around the guacamole bowl with friends.
