This Stunning Ground Cover Is The Perfect Addition To An Outdoor Rock Garden

If you're seeking a no-mow grass alternative to replace a traditional lawn, a rock garden is worth considering. In addition to saving you time by making mowing unnecessary, this type of landscaping conserves water. To add some plant life to a rock garden, consider 'Dragon's Blood' sedum (Sedum spurium), a variety of Caucasian stonecrop. This plucky succulent offers red buds and pink flowers that boost your yard's visual appeal, and it can handle intense sunlight, water shortages, and pollution. This textural plant's love of stony, sandy ground makes it a perfect fit for the terrain of a rockery. 'Dragon's Blood' has a creeping habit, spreading up to 2 feet wide but rarely growing taller than 6 inches. This makes it easy to use as a ground cover.

Though 'Dragon's Blood' welcomes desert-like dryness and can manage heat, it doesn't demand scorching temperatures. In fact, it will thrive as far north as USDA hardiness zone 3, where -30 degrees Fahrenheit isn't uncommon on the coldest nights of winter. This adaptable perennial is also content as far south as zone 9, which is considerably warmer. Though there are many types of sedum ground covers suitable for rock gardens, not all are hardy in such a wide range of growing zones.

'Dragon's Blood' will also bestow beauty upon your yard throughout the year. Its foliage is green with red edges until autumn, when it turns a deep crimson. Butterflies are likely to visit when its bunches of tiny flowers start blooming in the summer. As an added bonus, 'Dragon's Blood' is unlikely to be bothered by any deer or rabbits that visit your yard.

'Dragon's Blood' sedum tends to be low maintenance if you meet its needs on the regular. Like many landscaping plants, it isn't keen on excess water, demanding soil that drains well. Though it won't mind a bit of shade, planting in a spot with full sun encourages optimal performance.

When using 'Dragon's Blood' as a ground cover, it's important to give every plant the right amount of room to grow. A gap of 10 to 12 inches between each specimen encourages attractive creeping. With this spacing, your 'Dragon's Blood' will form a thick mat of foliage. Ground cover plants function like mulch, but without as much upkeep, crowding out weeds while regulating your garden's moisture levels. At the same time, proper plant spacing gives every part of the ground cover access to sunlight and oxygen. If the plants are too close to each other, some may struggle to get enough of these resources.

If you want your 'Dragon's Blood' ground cover to blanket a larger area of your rock garden, consider propagating a set of cuttings. Just snip off a leaf with roughly 2 inches of stem, then insert it into the soil in the spot you'd like it to grow. As long as it receives plenty of sun and light but consistent watering, it should sprout roots and start spreading. As the plant grows, it will form nodes that put out even more roots when they make contact with the soil. This is how 'Dragon's Blood' expands its territory.