An important task in the Florida garden is to cover the surfaces of shady parts of the garden with things other than weeds. We use a lot of pine bark mulch and another blog described our use of several kinds of ferns for this purpose. We need to use several other GROUNDCOVERS to add variety and resilience. Some of our groundcovers live where nothing else can. We use Mondo Grass by our front beds including sharing a bed with our neighbors. Like most groundcovers, it grows to occlude weeds and seedlings. Also in the front of the house, we have a bed of liriope, both variegated and green. These mounds of white and green certainly crowd out weeds, but also add a wispy interest to the bed. Under our Chickasaw plum and sweet gum trees, miniature peacock gingers with beautiful leaf patterns take forever to emerge in late June, but add interest to what would have been a mulch bed. In other shady spots, Farfugium japonicum covers the ground with big glossy round leaves and yellow flowers in the late fall. Finally, for our toughest, shadiest, driest, and most tree-root-bound spots, Cast Iron plants can thrive and multiply to cover everything with big shiny leaves. We have both the dark green in the front yard or a variegated variety under the Chickasaw plum tree amongst the citrus. These plans are not very showy, but they play an important role of keeping the Flotida garden neat and tidy.
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