A patchwork of year-round colour

When we built Hither Barn, we wanted a mass of planting (roughly 20x9m) in front of the house. I had heard about ‘grass free lawns’ on Gardener’s Question Time, and set about trying to create one. 

The key was year-round interest, so I started with the foliage – the flowers were incidental. The bones of the design were low-growing evergreen ground-cover plants arranged in a patchwork of drifts that flow into each other. Being a beekeeper, I also wanted to offer pollinators a smorgasbord of nectar all through the year.  Below are some of the plants in my grass-free lawn.

• Ajuga reptans atropurpurea – bronze leaves, dark blue flowers

• Arabis ‘variegata’ – green leaves edged with white, white flowers

• Helianthemum ‘Bunbury’ – green leaves, deep pink flowers

• Lysimachia nummularia ‘Gold’ – yellow leaves, yellow flowers

• Erodium ‘Album’ – green leaves, white flowers

• Pilosella officinarum – green leaves, yellow flowers

• Pratia pedunculata – green leaves, sky blue flowers

• Thymus, several types – green/sliver/gold leaves, mauve flowers

• Viola ordorata – green leaves, violet flowers

Over the last five years I have added low-growing plants I like the look of, and there are now nearly 100 types in the mix. Since there is a bulb for almost every month, I chose several types, and planted them in groups of at least a dozen. These come up through the ground cover and include:

• Tulipa tarda – yellow with white tips

• Fritillaria meleagris – purple 

• Iris reticulata – blue – and ‘Purple Sensation’ – mauve

Finally, I needed to be able to munch my way through the inevitable weeding, so threw in masses of wild white strawberries (Fragaria vesca) which I share with the birds. The finishing touch is the trusty Erigeron karvinskianus, which flowers freely from May to October.