Evergreen Herbaceous Plants In The Garden. Part 1

Tenacious (Ajuga)

One of the most interesting ornamental ground cover plants.

Propagated by aerial creeping shoots that end in rooting rosettes. Her root system is fibrous, shallow, but strong. The tenacious bloom in early summer. Inflorescences up to 30 cm long consist of numerous small blue flowers. She is unpretentious.

Good for filling all empty and unattractive places under trees, shrubs, and also looks good among colorful plants in flower beds. On nutritious soils, the tenacious forms luxurious carpets. The leaves, as a rule, are brown-beetroot or dark green; in the bright sun, the color of the leaves becomes more expressive. Use this plant to create groundcover, curbs, and anchor slopes.

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Heuchera

Ground cover plant from the saxifrage family. Possesses luxurious wide rosettes of leaves. The leaves are lobed, oval, heart-shaped, covered with fluff and pierced with veins. Small adorable flowers sit on tall peduncles. Heuchera is grown for its decorative leaves.

Flowers - white, pink, red and even green - appear on peduncles 45 to 75 cm high. Popular varieties are Peter Moon (pink flowers and marbled gray leaves), Red Spendlis (red flowers and pale green leaves with dark green stains), Greenfinch (green flowers and green leaves).

Heuchera rhizome is short, dense and slightly creeping; the root system is shallow. Heuchera is easily propagated by sowing seeds, dividing rhizomes and cutting rosettes. Grows well on all garden soils, but prefers loose and fertile soils. It can take a very long time without transplanting, but young 2-3-year-old plants look neater and bloom more abundantly. Heuchera is moisture-loving, but drought-resistant. It develops well and blooms in partial shade and in the sun. In snowless periods of winter, it requires dry shelter with coniferous spruce branches.

Iberis - stennik (Iberis)

In addition to annual and perennial species, winter-green forms are of particular interest.

These are wintering dwarf shrubs with small oval-lanceolate stem leaves. The root system of this plant is weakly branched and deep-lying. Small flowers 2 cm in size are collected in corymbose inflorescences. Growing, the plants completely cover the planting area, turning into a pillow up to 30 cm high, and flowers rise above the evergreen leaves.

Reproduction in Iberis is seed or vegetative - by layering and cuttings. Iberis is grown on soils of medium fertility with good drainage, while taking into account the fact that he loves full or partial lighting.

Aubrieta

An irreplaceable ground cover plant with dense gray-green pubescent small foliage.

In early summer, the leaves are hidden under small flowers of the most varied bright colors. After flowering, pruning is required. Ideal for green carpet, the root system of this plant is shallow.

Seed and vegetative reproduction. The main method is division in the spring, at the beginning of growth. Cuttings - in the second half of summer with new shoots that grow back after flowering. Aubrieta is unpretentious to soils, but prefers well-drained areas, illuminated by the sun.

Hardy, but still it should be closed for the winter - in case of severe frosts. Stagnant waters pose a great danger to obriety in spring. Popular varieties are: Farsighted (up to 12 cm in height), Aurevaregata (lavender flowers and leaves with a gold border), Bressingham Pink (double pink flowers) and Dr. Malis (purple flowers).

Saxifrage - Saxifraga

In our country, about 90 species of this plant are widespread, but no more than 15 of them are used to decorate the garden.

Saxifrage is a plant with a height of 5 to 70 cm, creates thick or loose curtains in the garden. The leaves are of various shapes: from lanceolate to rhombic, color - from green to yellow-spotted. Flowers are five-petalled, small, stellate; there are white, yellowish, pink, cherry and greenish.

The paniculate inflorescences of this plant are very effective. Saxifrage blooms from May to August. The vast majority of species are evergreen. Saxifrage easily reproduces vegetatively: by dividing the curtain, by cuttings, by single rosettes after the plants have faded. These plants are unpretentious, prefer calcareous soils, sunny location and good drainage. Plant saxifrage on rocky hills, in shady flower beds, use it to decorate the banks of reservoirs and create separate curtains.

Of the evergreen saxifrage, such species and varieties are widely used as urban (up to 30 cm high), Arends (they are sometimes called "Moss-shaped saxifrages"), opposite-leaved (blooms very abundantly with pink-red flowers), shady (creates beautiful dense clumps of flat rosettes about 5 cm in diameter, the leaves are round, almost smooth, green and yellowish-spotted), Elizabeth (with yellow flowers), turfy (forms dense, pillow-like thickets up to 20 cm high; flowers are white and pink-cherry), Pennsylvania (grows in damp places).

Cat's foot - Antennaria (Antennaria dioica)

Most species are groundcover, low-growing perennials with small silvery leaves and inflorescences that resemble a cat's footprint.

The bush grows up to 25 cm high and up to 45 cm in diameter. Forms dense silvery carpets of small rosettes located at the ends of creeping branching shoots. In June, small inflorescences appear in a range of colors from white to crimson. It reproduces mainly by dividing the curtains in early summer or closer to autumn, at the end of August.

Regular rejuvenation is required after 2-3 years. The cat's paw prefers loose, poor soil; drought-resistant and sun-loving, but shade-tolerant. In addition, this plant is winter hardy and does not require shelter. The cat's foot is used for curbs in flower beds, planted between slabs of paths and on dry slopes.

Lungwort - pulmonaria (Pulmonaria)

The lungwort is an indispensable curb plant and all of its species are extremely interesting. She has quirky colors: as we age, the corolla of lungwort changes from pink or purple to purple or blue.

The lungwort blooms for a month. Its flowers are bell-shaped or funnel-shaped with a bend, on long cuttings there are delicate pubescent leaves of a heart-ovoid shape, and on the upper side of the leaves there are blurry light spots. In winter, under the snow, there are bunches of basal, highly overgrown rough leaves. The lungwort prefers shady places.

Medicinal, narrow-leaved, sugar, red, Folyarsky's lungwort - various types of this plant are widely used in our country when creating background clumps, contrasting compositions in flower beds, especially in combination with hosts, ferns and other perennials. It is recommended to plant in shady places.

Rejuvenated - Sempervivum

This succulent is a popular garden decoration plant. Spherical rosettes of fleshy leaves ranging in size from 4 to 15 cm have different colors, density and pubescence.

In summer, yellow, red or purple star-shaped flowers bloom, collected in spectacular corymbose-paniculate inflorescences on thick peduncles. Non-blooming rosettes live for several years. The rejuvenated forms dense ground cover clumps. This plant propagates by daughter rosettes growing at the ends of ground stolons.

It is unpretentious, tolerates any soil, and is sun-loving and drought-resistant. It is quite frost-hardy, but in severe frosts, the young should still be covered with spruce branches. The most common types of juveniles are arachnoid, offspring and roofing. All types look good on rocky hills, in the crevices of the walls.

Spurge (Euphorbia) evergreen

Evergreen spurge is one of the many types of milkweed.

The name of the plant is not accidental - there are known species with white milky sap that flows from a wounded plant. Evergreen milkweed leaves are dark, shiny and collected in dense rosettes. The flowers form inflorescences, in the middle - one female flower, around - several reduced male flowers.

Euphorbia is planted in rock gardens and curbs.

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Fescue - festuca (Festuca)

An exquisite plant for an elegant green carpet. Fescue is an ornamental grain with blue foliage. The sizes of the festuka are varied: from small (for rock garden) to large (for borders, mixborders and specimen plantings).

This plant is distinguished by its originality of shape and interesting for its blue color. The most popular is gray fescue (glauka), which forms bumps of dense gray-blue foliage up to 15 cm high. The Blue (Blue Far) variety has pure blue leaves, while Amethystova has blue-gray leaves, and it forms larger bumps.

For rock garden widely used dwarf fescue veliysk, variety Sibirsi. The soil for fescue is not very fertile, with good drainage, and illuminated by the sun.

Sedum - sedum (Sedum)

This deciduous succulent is very popular. By type, sedums are divided into erect, ascending, creeping and rooting.

The flowers of these beautiful deciduous ornamental plants are stellate, white, yellow and pink, collected in corymbose, paniculate or umbellate inflorescences. Sedum is unpretentious, frost-resistant. Used to cover soil, rockeries and curbs. In our zone, the following varieties of sedum are most common: Acid, White, Thick-leaved, Bent, False.

But this is not a complete list of existing evergreen stonecrops. The sedum is caustic, 4-8 cm high, has ascending or recumbent shoots. Leaves, fleshy and short, cover the vegetative shoots. The flowers are golden yellow, up to 1 cm in diameter.

Sedum propagates by seeds and cuttings.

Read the next part. Evergreen herbaceous plants in the garden. Part 2 →

T. Barkhatova, florist