What's a good solution for underneath this picket fence?

I'm just starting to really work on redoing our whole yard, albeit we're broke, so progress is slow. I'm aiming for as much of a native restoration as possible, within obvious limitations. But simultaneously, we're also doing some phytoremediation work in our yard, by planting lots of sunflowers, which will get pulled up and disposed of as hazardous waste since they will hopefully contain lots of the heavy metals in our soil. (we live in a thoroughly toxic area of the city - foundry, asphalt plant, diesel fumes, etc.)

Anyhow, this fence will ultimately get replaced (i hope) with a taller skinny metal one (climbing toddler, throws stuff over this one). But since we're broke, that might take a few years. In the meantime, I'm planting rows of tall sunflowers along the inside of the fence.

But my question is, what should I plant along the base of the outside of the fence? Right now, it's lots of dandelions, creeping charley and kentucky bluegrass. I'd like to figure out something so that our water runoff is not going out into the sidewalk/street. So what's a short groundcover, native to Twin Cities area, that would help prevent soil erosion and live happily in dry, sandy soil with dappled sunlight?

Thank you for your advice and thoughts!

Peace,
Carrie Anne, aka the Green Warrior Bunny

Check the stepables web site. They are really affordable and durable plants. I would hazard to guess there are some native to you and that would compiment fence and sunflowers.

Creeping Jenny is very pretty and low growing.

thank you both. i've checked out the steppable's site. I've seen the creeping jenny there too. very pretty. but there's nothing on their site to know if something's native or not. so, i've sent them an email to ask if they have any suggestions. we'll see! thanks again! you've got me on the right track! =)

Creeping jenny is not native to the US.

The MN Native Plant Society has a webpage which probably has some good info on native plants for you http://www.mnnps.org/ Or if you have a particular plant in mind and want to find out if it's native or not, you can use the USDA plants website http://plants.usda.gov When you have found your plant using the search engine, up near the top of the page there is a section that says Native Status. If it says L48 I then it was introduced to the lower 48 and is not native so no need to look further. If it says L48 N then it is native to somewhere in the lower 48, so continue by scrolling down the page to the map that shows the plant's distribution. If it shows that the plant doesn't occur in MN, then you know it can't be native to MN. If it does show it occurring there, then scroll down to the bottom of the map and click on the link in really tiny font that says View Native Status--if MN is colored in blue on the native map, then it's native to MN (the map on the main page only shows whether a plant occurs in the wild in your state, and it'll show it as occurring there regardless of whether it's native or introduced, that's why you have to go to the second map to see if it's native or not).