Maybe it's too mundane for you, but the various Thymes offer a variety of foliage colors and are very inoffensive. They require little care, can take some foot traffic and will cover your bare ground. At least they do mine in Zone 9. Shirley Meneice johngrimshaw@tiscali.co.uk wrote: >Every year, about this time, I am vexed by the sight of bare soil where the >spring bulbs have gone dormant. I hate bare soil as it seems such a wasted >opportunity to be growing something, so I am looking for plants to form a >low carpet over these areas. Ideally these should be perennial, need no care >or supplementary water, form a mat over the area, but not offer any >resistance to an emerging shoot, or any competition to the growing bulbs >that are the most important occupants of the space. > >Certain Sedums are suitable, and in a rock garden setting there would be >many options from the genus, but the areas I need to cover are in a >'woodland' garden with shade for part of the day. Yesterday, taking >advantage of moistish ground and the forecast of two or three days of wet >weather (yippee!) I put out some plants of Pratia pedunculata and Leptinella >(Cotula) 'Platt's Black' over snowdrop patches. Last year I used a rather >good bright green Leptinella that I had from Wayne Roderick (any suggestions >for identification would be welcome!). It has tolerated the conditions quite >well, but for some obscure reason I only planted it in areas where there is >only a narrow fringe of 'bare' ground between thick herbaceous plants and >the edge of the bed. In other areas there are several square feet of bare >ground to cover in the case of the bigger patches of snowdrops, so some >vigour is needed. > >I should be very interested to hear what other people use or could suggest. > >John Grimshaw > > > > >Dr John M. Grimshaw >Garden Manager, Colesbourne Gardens > >Sycamore Cottage >Colesbourne >Nr Cheltenham >Gloucestershire GL53 9NP > > >Website: http://www.colesbournegardens.org.uk/ > >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > > > > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.338 / Virus Database: 267.9.6/59 - Release Date: 7/27/05