The ground cover in my front flowerbed is mostly doing pretty well. I’m a bit peeved that the Lamiums all died, while their wild cousins turn up here and there in the new hedge, full of vigour. I even see Aquilegia in there but I’ve given up hope about them blooming.

The flowerbeds I remember from my childhood summers in my grandmother’s cottage had single flowers planted at regular distances: tagetes, lilies, gladiolus, hostas. In between the plants the earth was bare. And I remember my grandmother and mother sitting and weeding those flowerbeds to keep them tidy. It must have taken up so much of their time.

I think that aesthetic is still quite in fashion in Estonia, although nowadays the general recommendation is to cover the earth with mulch of some sort to reduce the need for weeding.

The result can kind of look elegant if you can keep it totally pristine, but that bare-earth look just seems so unnatural to me. All gardens and flowerbeds are unnatural by definition, of course, but mulched or bare-earth flowerbeds are like perfectly even monoculture lawns and giant paved patios: it’s no longer bringing out the best of nature but a constant battle to completely dominate nature.

All philosophy aside, it’s also a giant waste of time.

Last summer I also planted some ground cover under one of the new hedges. I couldn’t make up my mind so I bought three different species and gave them equal shares. That turned out to be a very good thing. Out of the three, one has died out so completely that I can’t see even enough of a trace to recall what I may have planted. The second one (Waldsteinia) is growing well, and I’m planning to get more of those to fill in the empty section. The third one (Vinca) is surviving but not exactly doing a good job of covering the ground.

The front hedge I left to its own devices, because the “lawn” there has a lot of species that I thought might spread and cover the ground – Creeping Cinquefoil being the foremost among them. It is generally categorized as a weed, but I find it completely inoffensive in all ways and would happily let it take over all the ground under the hedge, and block weeds I don’t like. The cinquefoil is doing pretty well but there are places it hasn’t spread to yet, and those are now being invaded by less attractive weeds, so I think I will be buying some commercial ground cover for those spots to speed things up.