Ground cover plants

So when I say ground cover, that actually means all over the ground and climbing up and over every surface you see. Welcome to weeds, Australian style.

In Europe and North America we grow this ipomea, Morning Glory, from seed every spring. Have a lovely climbing display over the summer and then clear it away when it dies back in the Autumn.  Bring that sort of plant to a climate that has no proper winter and watch the results.

My mother only needs to turn her back for a month on any part of her garden and the beasties leap.

There’s a lemon tree under there.

I had a great session yesterday hauling on the vines. You get a good handful and pull hard and about ten feet of vines come away in your hands.  But there is more to do. So what on earth am I doing indoors on this warm morning? Cowering. I bet they have grown back overnight.

Here is a more satisfying and slightly better behaved ground cover plant.  Agapanthus. The Sydney weed of choice. I don’t think I have seen a garden without them.

Right now deep into summer most have finished flowering. So my job was to cut down all the seed heads to stop them proliferating even more, and then Jan waded in and levered out half a dozen to make way for another plant.

The roots are tough little blighters to get out. It’s a two spade job.  But once you get a good clump you do the traditional thing: shove them in a plastic bag and leave them somewhere shady. That way when another friend comes by and asks if you have any ground covering aggies, you shove the bag at them and another part of a Sydney garden gets colonized.