Date: Fri 09-Aug-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: CHRISL

Illustration: C

Quick Words:

Bleach-Gardener-Plants-Path

Full Text:

(`Burban Gardener on plants & pathways, 8/9/96)

Suburban Gardener-

Plants Can Soften Steps & Stones

By Anthony C. Bleach

Plants and paving slabs can go together.

Underneath, the soil stays cool in summer and warm in winter. With their heads

in the sun, roots cool and protected, many plants find this an ideal home. It

is a good idea for the gardener to take advantage of this. If you don't,

nature will with a dandelion or grassy weed with roots tucked away under

paving as nearly invincible as any plant can be.

Spilling over the edges of paths or patio pavings, plants will soften lines

and lessen formality. When patio, paths and plantings merge without sharp

transition, the effect is restful.

But give careful thought to color, especially when choosing plants to edge

sunny paths. Bright pinks and purples may enliven shade, but in sun the effect

can be strident. Magenta Phlox subulata wars with red brick in far too many

gardens.

With white you can scarcely go wrong, whatever the color of the paving. The

narrow, dark green leaves of perennial candytuft ( Iberis sempervirens ) are

evergreen in all but the coldest climates. The individual four-petaled flowers

are small, but mass into lace doily heads of shimmering white touched with

pink as they fade. Plants grow up to one foot high, baring with soil, climate

and whether or not they are pruned. Cutting back after the flowers fade

encourages dense, compact plants.

Left alone, candytuft trails and mounds becomingly for several years. It will

renew itself if hard pruned when ragged. Several lower-growing selections are

Purity, Little Gem and four-inch Pygmaea in diminishing order of size.

Christmas Snow often blooms again late in the year, as do the others some

years, especially if spent blooms are removed.

Another beautiful crack filler is Maiden Pink Dianthus deltoides, which trails

over paths on rocks. In spring, they are hidden by the flowers - sun facing

and three-quarter inch across. You can sow the seed in the cracks. The plants

are not long lived but they replace themselves with self-sown seedlings.

If all the intersections of a path are filled with plants, then progress along

it may be awkward to walk along. You may want to mortar some joints, leaving

them open along the edges of the path. Another way is to lay the paving over

black plastic, slitting this with a knife to sow seed or insert a small plant.

A favorite edging plant for such a path is Campanula portenschlagina ,

suitable for sun or part shade. Dense clumps of rounded, bright green leaves

grow only a few inches high. Space them a foot apart and in a year or two they

will meet up, forming a ribbon of starry blue flowers in spring. It will also

spread along the seam where riser meets thread of garden steps.

If a path is shaded and fairly moist, moss will probably arrive of its own

accord sooner or later. Grass seeds itself into moss and you can spend many

hours painstakingly picking this out. But remember that some weed killers kill

the grass without damaging the moss. There are many kinds of moss, so this may

not be true of them all; experiment with a small patch first. Moss-like

alternatives are the plants known as Irish and Scotch moss, the bright green

Sagina subulata , and golden S.S. aurea , both sprinkled with tiny white

flowers.

For edging a shaded path alongside a bed of rhododendrons, azaleas or other

tall or medium-sized shrubs, sweet woodruff is hard to beat. It flows over the

path, filling any chinks and merges back among the shrubs to form a deep pile

carpet of the freshest, brightest green whirled leaves. In early spring, they

are topped with lacy white flowers. Shrubs tower over sweet woodruff, but it

will engulf most things under a foot in height.

The best of the annuals for sowing into sunny crannies is sweet alyssum.

Whites, pinks and purples all blend harmoniously with gray paving, but against

red brick it is best to confine it to white. In warm areas it is a perennial,

but even in cold areas it often self-seeds and reappears of its own accord.

For sunny paved patios with unmortared joints, creeping thyme is the best

choice. It is low and flat, tolerant of being trod upon now and then and

yields a pleasant fragrance. At Knightshayes Court, England (a National Trust

garden open to the public), a charming, much photographed feature in the

middle of a lawn consists of an urn (it could as well be a sundial or

birdbath) surrounded by a circular gray-paved area which becomes a mosaic of

intermingled white, pink and purple thyme.

Other plants that do well between the slabs of a patio are woolly yarrow,

thrift, and such sedums as yellow flowered Sedum acre.

An article by Pamela Harper was the basis of this week's piece. Her book,

Perennials, How To Select, Grow and Enjoy , written with Frederick McGourty,

is also superbly illustrated by her.

(Anthony C. Bleach coordinates the horticulture degree program at Naugatuck

Valley Comm-Tech College in Waterbury.)