New book has you covered on ground covers

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This article was published 25/11/2022 (769 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ground covers can take your garden design to the next level. In his new book, The Complete Book of Ground Covers (Timber Press, 2022), Gary Lewis illustrates the many ways that ground covers offer limitless creativity, playfulness and flexibility in garden spaces.

Through lively, informative descriptions and colourful images that appear on almost every one of the book’s 456 pages, The Complete Book of Ground Covers is an enlightening excursion into the functional, sustainable and esthetic possibilities for ground covers. Lewis, an accomplished nurseryman, focuses primarily on low-growing ground covers up to 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) tall with a spread at least double the height — 4,000 distinct species and cultivars from A to Z, to be precise.

The book is light enough for you to bring along on plant hunting (shopping) trips and comprehensive enough for when you or your landscape designer want to go deep on creating a dynamic, diverse and versatile design for your garden space.

Recently I caught up with Lewis, who has been busy with speaking engagements to groups in Canada and the U.S.

“Ground cover plants are often an afterthought, but they punch above their weight when it comes to their strategic use to enhance and influence the visual experience in the garden,” said Lewis.

“Of course, we need trees, shrubs, vines and perennials when we are planning a garden, but it’s the ground covers that are the ultimate finishing touches, the extra tchotchkes that can really take a garden to the next level and make it interesting.

“Adding flowering ground covers or ground covers that produce berries provides more potential habitat for a greater diversity of pollinators, birds, and other small creatures that we want to have visiting our garden. You can have beautiful foliage combinations growing amongst the bases of your perennials to provide carpets of colour or plant ground covers at the front of a border which will help make a visual transition between the negative space of lawn and the positive space of the garden bed.

“There are just so many possibilities… that make them so much more interesting and sustainable than covering bare soil with bark or gravel.”

As the owner of Phoenix Perennials, located in Richmond, B.C., Lewis has built a reputation for assembling a curated collection of cutting-edge and specialty plants. His passion, as well as the knowledge and insights he gained from travelling to four continents during this nine-year project, shines throughout this well-researched book.

Lewis draws some of his inspiration from looking at ground covers in the wild. Standing on a rocky headland on the edge of Notre Dame Bay in Newfoundland, he realized that all the plants growing there are ground covers.

“There are five or six types of ground covers all intermingling, and you can see these wonderful combinations of foliage colour, textures, berries and fruit. That is a lesson from the wild that we can take into our gardens and start thinking about how we can combine ground covers and create a sort of patchwork tapestry or design pattern.”

Ground covers are good at making shapes in the garden, says Lewis. You can plant them in squares or rectangles, circles, curves, or drifts to move your eye towards certain focal points.

An encyclopedic reference, The Complete Book of Ground Covers highlights the benefits and different uses of ground covers for a range of soil types and conditions with an emphasis on species and cultivars grown in North America, but with attention paid to the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

It was important to Lewis that the included species are readily or somewhat available as plants or seed from garden centres or mail-order sources in North America and Europe. So long as the plants described met those criteria, said Lewis, then he could include some more unusual things so that readers could leaf through the pages and start discovering new possibilities.

In the section on trailing ground covers for walls and hardscape, there is a jaw-dropping image, for example, of Azorella trifurcata ‘Nana’ Emerald Cushion billowing over a rock wall. Lewis captured the image on a visit to New Zealand. Although this enviable plant variety is not hardy to southern Manitoba’s winter climate, the image resonates, nevertheless. Why have a bare rock wall when you can make an indelible impression with the addition of a ground cover? It is worth noting here that almost all the thousands of photos in the book are by Lewis.

Lewis makes his topic relatable and easy to read by providing concise descriptions of each species that he profiles, including Zone hardiness, habitat in nature, characteristics, cultural and growing information, uses, propagation, and cultivars that are available. “Usually, the habitat of the plant in nature is your clue to the best conditions in the garden,” said Lewis.

The section on design as well as the recommendations throughout for plant combinations and different uses provides readers with an endless source of inspiration. As intensive an experience it must have been to write such a comprehensive book, it’s clear the author loves and enjoys his subject matter. His photography captures not only the beauty of individual species but also the exuberance that well-chosen combinations bring to a garden space. And the ideas are not limited to vast swathes of landscape. Indeed, Lewis cleverly shows how container gardens can illustrate a dynamic combination of contrasting leaf shape, size, colour, and texture. It’s for you, the reader, to decide how you may want to translate that same magical combination of plants to suit your garden space whether it is a patio, balcony, slope, raised bed, pathway, border, or flower bed.

Again, such a wide-ranging book has something to offer everyone. No matter that not all the plant species illustrated may be suitable for prairie gardeners, this book will inspire no shortage of ideas for how to incorporate certain elements into your garden. In one captivating example, a small grouping of Heart-Leaved Bergenia, an evergreen perennial, is shown paired with Sedum ‘Dragon’s Blood’, Sedum ‘Angelina’, and Thymus (thyme). In another, Lewis captures the impact of a border he saw at Chanticleer Garden in Pennsylvania where the gold foliage of Hedera helix English Ivy spreads across an empty urn. At its base, Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ Creeping Jenny and Salvia officinalis ‘Icterina’ echo the theme of yellow.

Lewis shows you how a diverse range of easy to grow sedums can be used to create colourful patterns along driveways and sidewalks or between stones and pavers. Ground covers can also brighten a dark, shady area of your garden or transform a lawn into a living tapestry.

The Complete Book of Ground Covers is an exceptional book to add to your holiday wish list. Look for it at local bookstores or order a signed copy from Phoenix Perennials.

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