Plants are a lot like people. Some are hardy and can grow anywhere. Some require special care and attention but reward you with amazing results. And then you have what I call “beautiful offenders”: think of these as the super cute bad guy you dated in high school. They show up at the wrong place and the wrong time but they look so good you’re tempted to let them stay on their own terms, right where they are. That’s when your troubles start.
See, these beautiful offenders will start to take over your life. Um… Yard, I mean: they’ll start to take over your yard. What starts out as a superficial infatuation will wind up causing you a ton of heartache and frustration down the road. See, they really are a lot like that guy you dated in high school… But just like with that piece of arm candy you have options. Change the rules of the game: instead of letting that beauty call the shots choose to accept this plant on your terms only. And if that doesn’t work? Toss it to the curb, there’s always more plants where that one came from.
I think I’ve beaten this analogy to a pulp, but you get the idea.
At any rate, the most confusing part is that beautiful offenders are different for everybody. What you think is the perfect filler plant or ground cover might drive me up a wall (both literally and figuratively). If you’re starting from scratch in a newly created yard this won’t be much of an issue for you except for the occasional volunteer plant from nearby lots. Odds are, though, that you’re in a house that someone else has loved and cared for which means you’ll inherit all the plants the put in. Some of them will be hidden gems, plants that you’ve always wished for or perhaps have never even heard of. Others? Not so much.
Here are examples of the beautiful offenders in my yard.
First up is periwinkle, a very aggressive viney groundcover. There are two varieties: Vinca major and Vinca minor (Vinca minor is pictured). Both have the characteristic five-petaled flower in shades pretty shades of purple-y blue. Vinca minor has smaller, darker leaves and correspondingly smaller flowers. Periwinkle spreads easily both at the root and by rooting at the tip as it grows along the ground. The vines are slick and harden as they age and die off, making it difficult if not painful to remove.
I have both varieties in my yard and it’s a never ending battle to keep it in check. Each year I rip out the parts that have grown outside their boundaries. Each year, I miss a tiny piece of root and am doomed to repeat the whole process again. Pretty as it is, I hate it. It’s being banished from my yard. I will be putting some low-growing phlox in its place: the flower shape is almost identical though phlox is more pink. Plus, the variety I’m putting in is native to my state.
Next are liriope and mondo grasses, genuses Liriope and Ophiopogon respectively. The two are easily confused as they look very similar: clumps of grass with a flowering stem in the middle that produces bluish or purple-black berries. Mondo grass has narrower leaves and the berries are more blue while liriope has more obvious flowers and blue-black berries. Both types spread aggressively through re-seeding (from the berries) and underground propegation of rhizomes. Liriope is typically more tolerant of heat and lack of water and that combined with it’s self-spreading groundcover tendency has put it on the recommended plant list for my area. I could kill whomever put it on that list…
There is definitely a time and place for these plants. They do well underneath trees where nothing else will grow, or as borders in a contained area (think concrete islands in a parking lot). In my yard, however, they’re everywhere. And by everywhere I mean you’ll find one within 10 feet of you no matter where on my lot you’re standing. They’re under my trees, coming up in my driveway, in my flower beds. They’re even coming up between the pavers of my patio. Leaving just a single rhizome behind means there will be a new plant there next year. I have a pile of dirt in my backyard from when we cleaned off the patio last summer, it’s about a foot deep. There were rhizomes in the bottom of that pile, and new clumps are making their way through that foot of dirt as we speak. I can’t even compost the stuff, it’ll grow in the compost heap. Next stop: the fire pit.
One of the saddest inclusions on my list is my state flower, the Carolina Jessamine (aka Carolina jasmine), or Gelsemium sempervirens. Carolina Jessamine is a climber: a reddish clambering vine with glossy dark green foliage. The blooms are bright yellow trumpet shaped flowers and the scent is absolutely amazing. I love my jessamines: I have several of them. Unfortunately, they’ve been left to their own devices, and for a quick growing climber that spells disaster.
My flowering quince (pictured left) is completely covered by jessamine vine. It’s almost pretty in a chaotic kind of way: a mound of green and yellow with long spikes of flower-laden quince limbs sticking out here and there. But, if I leave it like it is the quince will die out and will likely take the vine with it.
One of my projects this summer is to move my jessamines to the strip of ground in front of the chain link fence in my back yard. That will give them something sturdy to climb upon and will do me the service of covering up a rather ugly fence. The tricky part is going to be disentangling the vines from their current victims. I expect it’s going to take a while…
This next picture isn’t the greatest in the world, so you’ll just have to trust me on the fact that it’s a violet (the foliage gives it away). There are upwards of 500 species in the Viola genus, (and African Violet isn’t one of them, it’s a separate genus) so please don’t ask me what kind I have. I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it… All I know is that I have small clumps of violets throughout my yard, and of course they’re in all the wrong places, namely sun. As a result of their current poor placement my violets are much more well behaved than they are for some people: in the right conditions, violets will spread to take over a flower bed in just a few years through roots, runners, and seeds. The variety I have dies back every year, so I’ll be honest: I’d be thrilled if it filled up a flower bed. I’d get a month of pretty green with dashes of delicate purple, and then they’d all die back and make room for their summer time bed buddies. This means I have yet another project for this spring: move my violets to a single, shady location. Perhaps I’ll put them in a spot currently covered up in periwinkle.
The last offender for today is grape hyacinth (genus Muscari). I’m not certain which variety I have, though armeniacum, latifolium, and neglectum are all likely suspects. As of this morning I have about ten of these popping up in random places in my lawn. They grow to about six inches tall and have dark blue to purple flowers (actually clusters of flowers). Much like violets, grape hyacinth can easily spread to take over the bed it’s in. However, they’re also small and die back each year like violets, which means they make room for summer plants quite easily.
When planted together as a group, grape hyacinths actually look quite striking. It’s rare to get such a blue color in a flower, especially so early in the spring. Leaving them in the yard isn’t an option (we’re sodding or seeding this year), so it’s either move ‘em or loose ‘em. Since they do well in sun, I think I’m going to put them into the newly re-worked front flower bed. I think they’d look really nice clumped together, and they’ll provide a good contrast to all the daffodil bulbs I have to plant up there. Plus, they’re way easier to get rid of than mondo grass and periwinkle…