Working like a charm
Groundcover plants do exactly what the word says; they cover the ground and deprive weeds of sunlight. And it’s nice to see them working well in landscapes. All this was in my head while I waited in my car, only a block or two away from the Coquitlam Centre Mall, after I saw the bed below covered in Pachysandra terminalis.
The Pachysandra terminalis groundcover is a slow-grower but in this bed it looked great. No wonder I couldn’t see any huge weeds sticking out of it. It’s still early spring but, I suspect, the Pachysandra does a great job depriving weed seeds of the sunlight they require to germinate. No weeds means no weed seeds, except for anything the wind or birds bring in.
The groundcover looks thick and healthy and the white flowers also brighten up the bed nicely.
One bonus feature is minimal maintenance. I imagine, once in a while it becomes necessary to clip the edges so the plants don’t spill out too much into the sidewalk. But, considering that Pachysandra terminalis is a slow grower, I say we’d have to do this maybe twice a year.
Why so excited?
Now, you might be thinking, why is Vas getting so excited about groundcover plants between a tower and a car lane? Because I’ve had to rip out perfectly good groundcover for reasons I still don’t understand. It was an order.
Somebody decided that a perfectly healthy patch of ivy (Hedera helix) had to be removed from in front of a power box. I still don’t know why and I did ask the question. No luck, and out came the ivy. Not that it was easy. There is a reason communities conscript volunteers to rip it out of local parks.
What used to be nicely covered by ivy is now a bare patch and I was the lucky guy who had to weed it. Now you know why I got so excited about the Pachysandra terminalis bed.
Nature detests open spots; weeds drift in or birds bring them. It took me at least fifteen minutes of unnecessary labour to scrape the weeds off. The ivy didn’t prevent people from accessing the power box, nor is the box accessed frequently. This was a dumb project invented by a foreman who no longer works on the site. Very funny.
Blog lesson
This, then, is the lesson for you to take away from this blog post. Unless you have plans to replant the bed, don’t remove your groundcover. Let the plants shade out and outcompete weeds and wow you with their flowers. If everything goes well, you won’t have to maintain the bed at all.
There, my rant is over.
