Plant Ideas – Groundcover

In this video, Pennsylvania Certified Horticulturalist Kevin Prall discusses a great evergreen ground-cover you can use in your Pittsburgh landscape. Myrtle or Vinca is a tried and true, versatile ground cover for shady areas. This plant is great for covering  bulbs, slope cover and year-around interest.

Transcription

Hi Kevin here continuing our discussion with great plants to use for Pittsburgh landscapes. Today I’d like to talk about a groundcover. Many people know this plant as Perriwinkle or Vinka, the botanical Latin name is actually Vinca Minor. 

It’s a great evergreen ground cover. It really does best in some shade or partial shade. It’s known for really pretty flowers, and will be one of the first things to bloom in the Spring, typically in April. Masses of purple flowers. Sometimes you’ll see this plant in white, you might even see it in pink on occasion or a really dark purple and on occasion I’ve seen some cultivars I’ve seen a double purple flower. So it’s really quite interesting. 

I would say on a level of deer resistance, 1 being browsed continually, or 5 not being browsed at all, I would put this at a 5. Even in areas of North Park and parts of Fox Chapel that have really intense deer pressure, this plant is really not browsed at all. It’s just a great plant to use in a heavy deer situation. 

Another good thing to note about the plant is it’s evergreen. Really good thing to have in the winter time, especially in the perennial border of the garden to give you that winter color that you’re going to need. Good bulletproof plant, let’s use it wherever we can. Try to keep it out of a lot of sun, it will grow but it tends to be a little washed out, and can go yellow on you. Great plant to use, take a look at it.

Questions for Kevin?

kprall@eichenlaub.com

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