Beginner Gardening: We need help choosing ground cover for Zone 4b, 1 by dougmcquinn

dougmcquinn wrote:
Hi there. We hope someone might take a personal interest in guiding a couple of novices. We're starting new landscaping and we welcome your expertise.

We would rather be canoeing, or reading, or even going to the dentist, than gardening! With apologies to all gardening enthusiasts out there, whose help we are soliciting, I had to hoe weeds for 5 cents a row when I was a kid. So to me, gardening and lawncare are "work" and I can't be persuaded otherwise ;-)

Our objective is low maintenance, beautiful plants, environmentally friendly solutions, reasonable cost, and in case I forgot to mention it, low maintenance ...

- We've just added 3 new retaining walls to reduce the slope and erosion at the front of our home in southwestern New Brunswick, Canada. The walls replace steeply sloping rubble that was impossible to work on. The blocks come from a redi-rock.com dealer and we are delighted!
- We are in Zone 4b and our home faces north. The front has no shade but gets very little sun until the early afternoon.
- We aren't ready for planting yet ... the following pictures are up to the minute. It's raining so we won't be spreading any topsoil today!
- One of the pictures shows all 3 walls. The third wall, at the far right, is on the upper side of our driveway.
- The other two walls stop at our property line on the left side of the pictures. The adjoining land, partly shown, is a 30 foot wide strip owned by the town. Town officials have no concerns about changes we've made but they also have no interest in maintaining this narrow property. As upstanding citizens (who, ahem, happen to also have a self-interest in how it affects the curb appeal of our own property), we will be fixing up this town property with topsoil and ground cover.

You'll be pleased to know, when it comes to the environment, we "get it". We don't use herbicides and aren't striving for a monoculture bluegrass lawn. But we also have deep prejudices against dandelions, plantain, and burdock when they're on our side of the fence. So our compromise, which seems to be working, is to mix white clover and grass seed when doing lawn repairs.

We are getting older, but both of us still work part-time, so we don't want our new landscaping to result in a whole lot of additional lawn to maintain and mow. From what we've been reading, ground cover plants are going to be less work than a traditional lawn. Does everyone agree?

We have friends with lots of Boston Ivy "veitchii" (Parthenocissus tricuspidata "veitchii') who have invited us to take as many free cuttings as we want. So we plan to use this for a large portion of our ground cover, especially for that 30 foot strip owned by the Town. It gets mostly favorable comments on the websites we've browsed so far. Does anyone disagree?

We aren't planning to use vines that can eventually damage our walls, but are hoping to use other more colorful ground cover and perennials to fill all the areas above and below our new walls. Probably we'll have plants that will spill over our walls from above. We like yellow, so we might use a good amount of yellow alyssum. Other flowering ground covers that have gotten our attention are various colours of creeping phlox, Dragon's blood sedum, October Daphne sedum, blue rug juniper, Prince of Wales juniper, clematis (non-clinging varieties).

So, we probably don't even know all the right questions to ask but here are a few for starters. Please feel welcome to jump in with other suggestions or warnings. We've labelled the questions a, b, c, d, etc to hopefully save you a few keystrokes when replying:

(a) What's the best way to take cuttings from our friends' Boston Ivy?
(b) How far apart should we plant these cuttings?
(c) Should we try to plant as much as possible in September or wait till spring?
(d) Should we use mulch to control weeds while ground covers are getting started? If so, what type of mulch? And once they are underway, can these plants coexist with no separation between them? We figure any bare spot is just an invitation to a weed ...
(e) On a slope, does it make any difference whether you begin planting at the bottom or the top?
(f) Do the plants mentioned above seem like they would coexist well? We don't want to make work for ourselves by choosing plants that would choke out other plants. or that don't like the same soil conditions. New Brunswick soil tends to be acidic ... we treat with lime when necessary.
(g) What should we do to amend our new topsoil before planting ground cover? We've asked our contractor for the "good stuff" but it may not have a lot of organic material mixed in, and it may have weed seeds - we don't know yet. Should we add lime and fertilizer? Should we get it tested so we know our starting point?
(h) Are there other ground cover plants native to our area that we should also consider? We like photos of Prairie Smoke that we've seen on this website, but if it's native to Saskatchewan, perhaps it doesn't belong in New Brunswick ...
(i) Should we use certain combinations of plants because some will flower early and some will flower late?
(j) What about mixing colours? Should we use Irish moss, or more Boston Ivy, or some other green or white ground cover to separate bright colours? Do some colours clash? Should we avoid using two different plants that are similar colours?
(k) Are some ground covers more work or more prone to disease than others? What work will we have to do each year?

Thanks in advance to anyone who undertakes to answer some or all of our outrageously long list of questions.