Original article by David Graper, former SDSU Extension Horticulture Specialist and Master Gardener Program Coordinator. Updated by Kristine Lang, Assistant Professor and SDSU Extension Consumer Horticulture Specialist.
Spring and fall are both great times to look over your gardens again and find places to add new plants. Are there big patches of bare ground in your garden under trees or next to a spot that gets shade near your house? If so, you might want to plant perennial ground covers to fill in the space!
Shaded gardens can have plants of all sizes and shapes that grow to be several feet tall and have beautiful leaves or flowers. But ground covers, which are usually no more than 12 inches tall, are an important part of a shade garden.
Most ground cover plants will spread out over or in the soil, producing new plants as they grow. Rhizomes are underground stems that some plants, like lily of the valley, use. Stolons, on the other hand, are spreading stems that grow above ground and are made by other plants, like bugle weed. Grasses and other monocotyledonous plants can also make rhizomes, stolons, offsets, or tillers to cover more ground. All of these are great qualities for a ground cover to have, especially in tough spots like a hillside that needs to be stabilized because it is prone to erosion. However, because these plants like to spread, many of them can be tough competitors for other plants that you might want to use in your landscape. So, be careful when you choose your ground cover plants so that you don’t end up with a big plant that will take over your garden after a few years.
Adding ground cover plants to your landscape is an excellent way to fill in empty spaces, prevent erosion, and crowd out weeds. Green and white ground covers offer unique visual interest with their variegated or mottled foliage. The contrast between the green and white leaves creates eye-catching textures and patterns in the garden.
When selecting green and white ground cover plants, consider factors like sunlight exposure, climate, growth rate, height, and spread. With so many options available, you can find the perfect fit for your specific needs Here are some of the best green and white ground cover plants to consider
Hostas
Hostas are some of the most popular green and white ground cover plants. The leaves come in a stunning range of variegated patterns, with leaf colors like blue-green, yellow, and white. There are hundreds of hosta cultivars to choose from in a wide diversity of sizes. Some examples:
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‘Patriot’ – Features dark green centers with wide white margins. Grows 18 inches tall.
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‘Ground Master’ – Has thick blue-green leaves with irregular white edges Only reaches 8 inches in height
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‘Francee’ – Displays heart-shaped green leaves outlined in white. Grows to 15 inches tall.
Hostas spread readily by rhizomes and are easy to divide and propagate. They thrive in shady locations and require little maintenance besides removing spent leaves in fall. Hostas also help crowd out weeds.
Ajuga
Ajuga, also known as bugleweed, carpets the ground with lush green and white foliage. The scalloped leaves often have pronounced white markings and veins. Ajuga spreads aggressively through underground runners (stolons) and makes an effective erosion control ground cover. Some ajuga varieties to consider:
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‘Jungle Beauty’ – Features oval leaves with bold white edges. Grows 6-8 inches tall with a vigorous spreading habit.
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‘Burgundy Glow’ – Has tricolored leaves in green, white, and pink. Reaches 4-6 inches in height.
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‘Golden Glow’ – Displays rounded green leaves heavily splotched in bright yellow. Grows 4-6 inches tall.
Ajuga thrives in partial shade and tolerates a wide range of soils. Regular pruning of leggy growth encourages fullness. It blooms attractive spikes of blue flowers in spring.
Euonymus fortunei
Also called wintercreeper, Euonymus fortunei is a fast-growing spreading evergreen shrub that works well as a ground cover. There are many variegated cultivars to choose from, displaying leaves edged, spotted, or streaked in white, gold, or pink. Some popular options include:
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‘Emerald Gaiety’ – Green leaves with white margins that turn pink in winter. Grows 1 foot tall with a 5 foot spread.
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‘Emerald ‘n Gold’ – Bright yellow centers and green edges. Reaches 1 foot tall and spreads indefinitely.
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‘Silver Queen’ – Dark green leaves edged in bright white. Grows 1 foot tall by 6 feet wide.
Euonymus does best in part sun to partial shade. It can become invasive, so regular pruning is needed to keep it contained. It has good fall color and salt tolerance.
Hedera Helix
English ivy is a vigorous spreading evergreen vine that performs beautifully as a ground cover. Look for variegated cultivars with streaked, splashed, or margined leaves in shades of white, cream, and yellow. Some options include:
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‘Glacier’ – Deep green leaves with creamy white margins. Grows 6-8 inches tall.
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‘Anne Marie’ – Green leaves irregularly blotched with yellow. Grows up to 1 foot tall.
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‘Goldchild’ – Bright yellow leaves that hold color all year. Reaches 1 foot in height.
English ivy thrives in shady sites and spreads quickly across ground. It can climb walls and tree trunks if not trimmed back. Drought tolerant once established.
Lamium
Lamium, also called spotted deadnettle, displays stunning silver-marked leaves. There are many ornamental varieties to choose, often with contrasting flower colors for added visual interest. Some lamium cultivars to consider:
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‘White Nancy’ – Silver leaves with green edges. White flowers. Grows 6-8 inches tall.
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‘Orchid Frost’ – Silvery leaves with green veins. Purple flowers. Reaches 10-12 inches in height.
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‘Chequers’ – Silver leaves marked with green. Pink flowers. Grows to 8 inches tall.
Lamium grows well in shade and spreads aggressively. Prune back spent flower stems after blooming to encourage leafy growth. Cuttings root easily. Lamium may become invasive in some regions.
Lysimachia
Also called creeping jenny, Lysimachia nummularia is a fast-spreading ground cover with bright yellow foliage. Look for the cultivar ‘Aurea’, which has golden leaves splashed and streaked with green. It grows 4-6 inches tall and spreads rapidly across ground or in containers, trailing over edges.
Creeping jenny thrives in part sun to full shade. It appreciates consistent moisture. To control spread, simply pull out unwanted runners. Works well spilling from hanging baskets. The foliage turns greener in too much sun.
Vinca Minor
A popular flowering ground cover, Vinca minor displays glossy green leaves edged in white. It spreads aggressively to form a thick carpet across the ground. The common name periwinkle refers to the abundant blue flowers produced in spring. Some options include:
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‘Illumination’ – Large periwinkle flowers. Grows 6 inches tall.
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‘Bowle’s Variety’ – Produces light lavender flowers. Reaches 4 inches in height.
Periwinkle grows well in sun or shade and tolerates poor soils. It requires little care except watering during droughts. To limit spread, remove stems rooting in unwanted areas. Avoid planting near wild areas where it can become invasive.
Options for Full Sun
The above ground covers all grow best in part to full shade. For plants that can tolerate full sun, consider:
- Sedum (angelina, dragon’s blood, blue spruce)
- Creeping phlox
- Thyme (mother of thyme, creeping)
- Ice plant
- Creeping juniper
Combining Shapes, Textures, and Colors
The key to creating an attractive, cohesive ground cover planting is to combine plants with diverse shapes, textures, and hues. For example, pair fine, rounded hosta leaves with ajuga’s broad pointed foliage. Combining silver lamium with bright variegated euonymus shrubs generates eye-catching contrast.
Repeating certain colors and textures helps tie the scheme together. Vary heights to make the design more dynamic. Use taller ground covers to anchor corners or define edges. Let trailing plants spill over walls or down slopes.
Caring for Ground Covers
Ground covers require minimal care once established. Apply a thin layer of organic mulch around plants to inhibit weeds and retain moisture. Most appreciate consistent watering during dry periods for the first year. Once rooted in, ground covers become quite drought tolerant.
Prune back any diseased, damaged, or leggy growth as needed. Cutting back rampant spreaders will keep them contained within desired areas. Some species like hostas and lamium can be divided every few years to encourage fullness.
With the right selection and placement of green and white ground covers, you can create a lush living carpet that transforms your landscape into a beautiful and lush outdoor space. Make sure to control aggressive spreaders and combine colors, shapes, and sizes for optimal visual appeal.
Coral Bells, Foamy Bells and Foam Flower
A group of closely related genera includes Coral Bells (Heuchera sanguinea), Foamy Bells (Heucharella), and Foam Flower (Tiarella). They all do best in part-shady areas that get a steady supply of water. They are so closely related that they have been frequently used to create intergeneric and interspecific hybrids. Most of these plants are known for their pretty leaves, but some also have pretty flower spikes that come in colors like white, pink, and red. They tend to grow in clumps and will look best when planted in groups of at least five.
Yellow Archangel (Lamium galeobdolon). Courtesy: David Graper.
Yellow Archangel (Lamium galeobdolon) is a popular groundcover for shaded areas. With its quickly growing stems and opposite medium-green leaves with silvery markings along the edges, the species can be pretty mean. So, be careful where you choose to plant it, so its aggressive nature does not become a problem. A type of the plant called “Herman’s Pride” doesn’t spread and only gets eight to twelve inches tall and wide. It has yellow, tube-shaped flowers that look like the species.
Spotted Nettle (Lamium maculatum). Courtesy: David Graper.
Spotted Nettle (Lamium maculatum) is a great ground cover plant with pretty flowers and leaves that come out in large groups in mid-spring and then in scattered groups throughout the summer and fall. The leaves are fairly small, about one inch in diameter. They may be plain green, but they are usually spotted or banded in silver-gray. Some varieties have leaves edged in gold-yellow. The flowers grow on short stalks that are about six inches tall. The flowers can be white, pink, or lavender. Lamium spreads by creeping stems over the soil, where they will root down and form new plants. As a dense ground cover, it can hold the soil in place and do pretty well against weeds.
Lungwort (Pulmonaria sp.) Courtesy: David Graper.
Lungwort (Pulmonaria sp. ) is a shade garden “must-have. It has beautiful leaves from spring until the first hard freeze, and in the spring it blooms with pretty white, pink, or lavender flowers. Someone in the early days of plant collecting thought that the leaves of lungs looked like they were sick. It might be better to remember the plant’s scientific name. The leaves of these plants usually have silvery, mottled spots. In some cases, the entire leaf is so covered with spots it just looks silvery-green. Lungwort is about 12 inches tall when in bloom with only small, narrow leaves present along the stem. Then those stems die down while fresh, larger leaves grow up to take their place. Lungworts spread slowly in the garden, eventually forming nice clumps of plants about 12 to 18 inches wide.
Selections for Shady Gardens
Snow-on-the-Mountain (Aegopodium podagraria ‘Variegatum’) Courtesy: David Graper.
Snow-on-the-Mountain (Aegopodium podagraria ‘Variegatum’) is one of the toughest ground covers you are going to find. The foliage grows up to about ten inches tall and is usually green variegated with creamy white. It sends up stalks of white flowers in early summer that can grow an extra four to six inches above the leaves. If this plant grows in moist shade and good soil, it can quickly cover a lot of ground. This can sometimes make it a better choice than grass that doesn’t grow well. But you had better be careful to keep it in-bounds. If it gets too dry, the leaves may turn a bit brown. Just mow them over in the middle of summer, and in the fall, they’ll grow new leaves. Snow-on-the-Mountain can grow well in sunnier locations if it has adequate moisture.
Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) Courtesy: David Graper.
Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) is one of the easiest and most reliable ground cover plants to grow. It easily spreads by stolons that grow along the ground’s surface and make new plantlets that root down and add to their colony of plants. The common name for this plant comes from the blue, tube-shaped flowers that grow around the nodes on the six- to eight-inch stems in June. There are several cultivars that have foliage in plain green, burgundy green or variegated with white and pink.
Canadian Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense). Courtesy: David Graper.
Asarum canadense (Canadian Wild Ginger) and Asarum europium (European Wild Ginger) are two very interesting ground cover plants. Their leaves are rounded and heart-shaped, and their stems lie flat on the ground. A simple way to tell the difference between these two species is that European Wild Ginger has smooth leaves and stems and Canadian Wild Ginger has slightly hairy leaves and stems. The flowers are tubular, about three-quarter inches in diameter, with three pointed petals. They practically lie on the ground to facilitate pollination by ground-dwelling insects. While the stems do have a distinctive gingery aroma, these are not considered to be edible plants.
Vison in Pink Astilbe (Astilbe chinensis Vision in Pink) Courtesy: David Graper.
False spirea (Astilbe sp. is a plant that does well in places with shade to part-sun, soils that are high in organic matter, and regular watering. In early summer, striking, fuzzy-looking flower spikes are produced in colors of white, pink to red. Many different types of Astilbe can be bought at garden centers, so you can have a lot of different flowers in your garden. A mass planting of these plants will look soft because their leaves are made up of three layers. They are also attractive all season, even after the flowers have died.
Heart-leaf Bergenia (Bergenia cordifolia) Courtesy: David Graper.
Heart-Leaf Bergenia, or Bergenia cordifolia, is a great plant for a lot of different garden spots. It does well in both full sun and partial shade, as long as it gets extra water. It looks great as a single specimen plant or planted in groups of five or more. Heart-leaf Bergenia is not invasive, spreading slowly as new basal shoots develop on the plant. Lovely, magenta-pink flowers emerge in early spring at about the same time that new foliage unfurls. The flower color of other varieties can range from white to dark pink. Soon, the leaves spread out to about a foot wide and develop a nice, glossy texture. The common name for this genus is “Pig Squeak,” which comes from the sound the leaves make when you rub them together. When temperatures cool and days shorten in the fall, the leaves take on a burgundy color. The foliage is very freeze-tolerant, so it will look good all fall. It will persist through the winter, especially if given some mulch or snow cover. In the spring, simply cut back the old leaves to make room for the fresh foliage to emerge.
Siberian Bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’) Courtesy: David Graper.
Heartleaf Brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla) is another great shade garden plant. It grows to about 10 inches tall and 12 inches wide with broad, rounded leaves. The leaves are shaped like hearts and may be plain green, but they are more likely to have spots or be mostly covered in silvery spots, with only a few small green veins showing. Heartleaf Brunnera produces small, blue flowers in late spring that are quite delicate and pretty. Its rounded leaves can look nice next to hosta leaves, which are usually much longer and narrower.
Lily-of-the-Valley (Convallaria majalis) Courtesy: David Graper.
Lily-of-the-Valley (Convallaria majalis) has one of the most sweetly scented flowers of our perennial flowering plants. Each plant usually has only two, or in some cases, three wide, strap-like leaves. In early spring, a flower stalk grows up through the coiled leaves. The flower stalk opens in mid-May and blooms. Flowers are usually bright white, but there is at least one cultivar with pink flowers. Once it’s established, lily-of-the-valley quickly spreads to new areas. It does this by sending out short stems called pips that grow into the ground. It will spread out into the lawn, but mowing should keep it knocked back. In some situations, you might want to use a border that goes down about 6 inches below the ground to keep it in place. Lily-of-the-Valley can handle full sun as long as it has enough water. If it doesn’t, it may burn in the summer when it’s hot and dry. Therefore, a partly shaded to full shade location is preferred.
Barrenwort (Epimedium x versicolor Sulphurium). Couresty: David Graper.
Barrenwort (Epimedium sp. is a perennial plant that doesn’t get used much and does best in wooded areas that get some sun to some shade and a steady supply of water. However, it will grow in dryer locations, just more slowly. Early in the spring, before the leaves are fully grown, white, lavender, pink, or yellow flower clusters with four petals appear just above the leaves. The leaves are two or three times ternate and usually emerge with a maroon coloration along the edges. Some types of Barrenwort can only grow in Zones 5 and up, so this plant might not do well in all South Dakota gardens.
Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) Courtesy: David Graper.
Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) is a useful ground cover for the partly shaded garden. It has fine, palmately compound leaves and clusters of small, star-shaped flowers in the spring. It spreads nicely in the garden, particularly with a consistent supply of moisture. Once flowering is complete, its foliage looks good the rest of the summer. The leaves emit a sweet fragrance when crushed.
Snow Angel Coral Bells (Heuchera sanguinea Snow Angel) Courtesy: David Graper.
10 Popular Drought Tolerant Groundcover Plants for Water Conscious Gardening
FAQ
What are green and white leaves called?
Can you walk on Creeping Phlox?
Is creeping thyme native to America?
What plant has green leaves and white spots?
Do ground cover plants have white flowers?
Ground cover plants with white flowers are ideal for creating a floral mat in beautiful shades of white. However, white-flowering ground cover plants offer more than just beauty. Their spreading nature and mat-forming habit help keep weeds under control and prevent soil erosion.
What is an evergreen ground cover plant?
An evergreen ground cover plant is beneficial to your garden in many ways. Evergreen foliage provides year-round visual interest. Ground covers offer ways to lower yard maintenance, such as suppressing weeds, fighting erosion, and helping you avoid dangerous mowing on sloped areas where they grow.
What are ground cover plants for shade?
Generally, ground cover plants for shade are hardy types of creeping or spreading plants that are green all year long. The reasons to use plants that provide good ground cover in the shade is to help control weeds, prevent erosion, or landscape areas of your garden where other plants don’t thrive.
Are white-flowering ground cover plants good for shade?
However, white-flowering ground cover plants offer more than just beauty. Their spreading nature and mat-forming habit help keep weeds under control and prevent soil erosion. Ground cover plants for shade also help improve the appearance of a bare landscape where other plants won’t grow.
Are evergreen ground cover plants good?
Growing evergreen ground cover plants has many advantages in any garden. Ground cover plants help prevent water loss from the soil, keep weeds at bay, stop soil erosion—especially on slopes, and provide year-round interest. Another benefit of evergreen ground cover plants is that they require little care to thrive—in full sun or shade.
What is the best evergreen ground cover for full sun?
The best evergreen ground covers for full sun are creeping phlox for its stunning flowers, candytuft to create a blanket of white blooms, and evergreen wintercreeper. The best evergreen ground cover plants for shade are deadnettle for its bright variegated foliage and perennial sweet woodruff due to its dainty white flowers.