Groundcovers: Understory Heroes 🍃

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When I was a little girl, I often imagined how lovely it would be to sleep on a bed of moss. My life-long obsession with forests and mosses has continued into adulthood, and I remember feeling so excited and eager when we were learning about groundcovers in my college program. They are the often underappreciated unsung heroes of the woodland understory - the hard-working stewards of the foreground. You'd be surprised to learn just how crucial groundcovers are in many environments!

🌼 Why Native Groundcovers Matter:

• Stabilizes soil and suppresses weeds

• Reducing chemical use

• Provides habitat structure: from soil microbes to insects, frogs, and birds

• Supports pollinators through every season

• Retaining moisture in the soil and reduce evaporation

• Filtering rainwater and preventing runoff

• Helps revive dry, barren areas
• Acts as a living mulch

1. 🍀 Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia): This common groundcover is delicate yet mighty - they are deer resistant, can adapt to many different conditions, and will readily self-seed and spread. Blue Violets serve as a host plant to many different species of butterflies, moths, and bees, and it can survive a lot of foot traffic. During the Spring/Summer, blue and purple dainty blooms pop up from the hardy foliage. 
2. 🍀 Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia): Foamflower loves to colonize moist and shady areas where mosses and ferns grow. It has attractive evergreen foliage and blooms white or pink during the Spring. This broadleaved groundcover will assist in stabilizing the soil and helping to prevent erosion while resisting rabbits, deer, and foot traffic! The flower spikes are attractive and striking against the broadleaved foliage. 
3. 🍀 Green-and-Gold (Chrysogonum virginianum): This evergreen groundcover forms a dense, coarse mat of foliage with small yellow blooms Spring to Fall, and is excellent for weed suppression. It will tolerate a myriad of conditions, including deep shade, part sun/part shade, moderate foot traffic, etc. Green-and-Gold tolerates regular division and transplanting, and will easily spread. It can become aggressive in the right conditions, so take care to keep it under control. 
4. 🍀 Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides): This popular evergreen is easy to get established, and provides some nice texture underneath trees. I have seen it widely loved as a groundcover for areas with conifers! It is a durable and deer resistant plant, but it will not spread on its own due to its clumping growth habit. That said, you'll need to plant groupings in multiple spots to fill out a space!
5. 🍀 Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense): Wild Ginger is an incredibly cute heart-shaped low growing plant that spreads easily via underground roots called rhizomes. From Spring to Summer, it may produce tiny, inconspicuous brown-purple flowers underneath the foliage, but they are fragrant and will attract bees and other pollinators! This is a shade loving plant that loves organically rich soil, moist to dry conditions, and will be very low maintenance once well established.
6. 🍀 Creeping Phlox (Phlox stolonifera): One of my personal favorite groundcovers, Creeping Phlox creates a low-growing carpet of stunning and vibrant flowers atop glossy dark green foliage. This is a pollinator favorite with the ability to spread easily and rapidly via above-ground roots called stolons. That said, take care to keep it controlled. However - due to its ability to spread and fill out areas quickly, it's a perfect choice for slopes, border gardens, foundations, and any area that looks barren and lifeless. 
7. 🍀 Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea): Golden Ragwort has a special place in my heart, and is something I enjoy growing year after year in my own home garden! It is readily available in native plant nurseries and is very low maintenance. Flowers on tall, attractive spikes range from bright-yellow to orange and provide a good food source for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. This powerhouse mostly enjoys moist to well-draining conditions and can handle part shade to full sun.
8. 🍀 Flat Fern Moss (Hypnum imponens): This native moss thrives in shady woodland conditions, and can be found growing on logs, rocks, and soil from moist to dry, especially at higher elevations. Further research has actually lead me to discover that this moss really was used to stuff mattresses historically! It forms an extensive interwoven mat that somewhat resembles tiny fern fronds when observed closely. 
9. 🍀 Pincushion Moss (Leucobryum glaucum): It's always a lovely feeling when I'm taking my forest hikes and I see the pincushion moss growing along the banks, rocks, and logs. It feels so soft and velvety, forming cute little cushion-like clumps! It comes in a variety of greens and browns, and can easily be propagated by dividing and transplanting clumps. It can thrive in a variety of conditions and won't need much human intervention once established.
10. 🍀 Delicate Fern Moss (Thuidium delicatulum): A key native sheet moss of Appalachia, Delicate Fern Moss spreads along the forest floor, forming a dense mat. It is incredibly popular, being purchased by wholesalers country-wide, and even worldwide for arts and crafts, pot-liners, terrariums, etc.! This moss is very hardy, relatively slow-growing, and requires somewhat moist conditions as a non-vascular plant. It can be easily divided and propagated, but make sure to leave behind at least a third to allow for faster recovery. 

🧭 Planting Tips & Eco-Benefits:

• Match plant to site conditions: moist shade? Try foamflower or ginger. Sunny slopes? Choose phlox.

• Diversity ensures resilience: mix different types of groundcovers to support pollinators and and help stabilize the soil.

• Let them spread: self-spreading types suppress weeds, reducing maintenance.

• Leave seedheads/fruit: Winter seedheads feed birds and the next season’s growth.

Groundcovers are more than just small and beautiful — these low-growing plants prevent erosion, suppress weeds, improve soil health, and provide habitats and resources for wildlife. They are critical parts of the ecosystem in many different regions, including Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic! From my experience, choosing to incorporate groundcovers into the garden is a fantastic way to support the other plants, repel and resist pests and diseases, to maintain soil integrity especially on slopes, to suppress weeds, and to make your garden feel more natural. I just love these little guys!