Upgrade Your Sunny Yard With The Help Of This Low-Maintenance Ground Cover

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Whether you are using ground cover to create a no-mow lawn or to suppress weeds in flower beds instead of adding mulch, artemisia schmidtiana is a low-maintenance ground cover that can help you upgrade your sunny yard. Better known as silver mound or silver mound artemisia, it is actually a tiny shrub, which is a type of wormwood originating in northern Japan and eastern Russia. While it is often seen in rock gardens, silver mound has a variety of uses, including being utilized as a border or even an accent plant in a larger garden.

Silver mound typically maxes out around a foot tall and two feet wide. It is renowned for being deer and rabbit resistant, as well as extremely easy to take care of. The foliage of silver mound is, as the name suggests, silvery. In late summer, mature plants will be dotted with tiny yellow flowers. The texture of the foliage along with the overall shape of the plant make it an ideal choice for adding depth and contrast to a sunny area of your yard.

While it is important to choose the best ground cover for your climate conditions, silver mound can actually be grown throughout the vast majority of the United States. It does best in hardiness zones 4 through 8, but can be cultivated in zone 3 as well. Should you decide to plant silver mound in your garden, it's best to start with plantable pots like the Winter Greenhouse Store Silver Mound 3.5-inch Container. The plants should be placed about 16 inches apart in full sun locations, preferably with sandy or loamy soil, although these resilient plants are able to adapt to most soil types.

Caring for silver mound is extremely easy. This low-maintenance ground cover plant can thrive in soil with little nutrient content, so fertilizing is not necessary. It is equally drought tolerant, so there is no need to water it unless there has been an extremely long period without rainfall or heavy dew. Mature plants can be pruned to shape if you choose. It is also a good idea to prune them back if you expect prolonged freezing conditions. Silver mound will die back when temperature dip below freezing, but will spring back to life once the weather warms.