Foodscape Your Yard With Beneficial Groundcover Plants!
Often overlooked, ground cover plants are worth considering for gardens, yards and landscapes. Unlike grass, edible ground cover plants not only beautify your yard and reduce maintenance, many are also edible and medicinal!
Don’t Want to Eat Ground Cover Plants? No Problem, These Also Have Ornamental Landscape Benefits
Not everyone likes the idea of eating plants low to the ground. If you have dog/s like we do, edible ground covers are best planted outside the dog’s range. Our electric dog fence spans a large area, so we’re limited on where we can plant and harvest edible ground cover plants.
Another option for dog owners would be to plant edible ground cover plants in containers. You can plant them as companion plants for a larger plant, or as an entire large planter of just growing edible ground cover plants. These can be harvested like you would microgreens.
We’ve even pulled chickweed from our yard and placed into pots so that we can consume it worry-free. Yep… planting weeds in pots, but it’s edible weeds with benefits!
In recent times of concerns around shortages of food and staples, more people are interested in growing their own food and learning survival skills such as foraging for food. One such skill is to learn more about the plants around you and their uses and benefits. Another is to plant a garden and edible landscape plants such as edible hedges.
Edible ground cover plants enhance landscapes, manage weeds, retain soil and expand your food production areas.
Benefits of Growing Groundcover in Pots
- Keeps plants away from pet “areas”
- Provides an attractive arrangement/soil cover for other larger plants/planters
- Easier to harvest clippings for salads, sandwiches and soups
No dogs? Then edible ground covers may be an especially beneficial option for you to expand your food production while serving your landscape aesthetics.
You can grow edible ground cover plants in pots for a pet free solution that’s easy to harvest.
Edibles Beyond the Garden
There’s no need to restrict growing food to the vegetable patch! We’re a bit obsessed by finding and encouraging food sources that are often overlooked.
If we had bundles of parsley, cilantro or watercress growing in tufts in our yard, chances are we wouldn’t just pull them as weeds. Yet most people do that all the time with other perfectly viable edibles.
The following is a list of plants that have edible and/or medicinal benefit and can be used as ground cover.
This list includes commonly cultivated ground covers as well as those that voluntarily grow wild in lawns, meadows or woods. We’re considering any low-growing plant that grows and spreads well and that’s edible, often with medicinal benefits.
Some, such as the Mexican sour gherkins, aka cucamelons, are generally grown as trellised vines. However, vine plants such as cucamelon and others in the cucurbita (squash) family can also happily cover a lot of ground growing horizontally.
If you have a lot of space to cover in a full sun area, cucurbitaceae plants can serve as edible ground cover for summer.
From dandelion to wild violets… chickweed to clover, there are all kinds of natural and cultivated edible ground covers worth growing.
Function and Beauty with Benefits
Often overlooked, ground cover plants are a worth considering for gardens, yards, and even pots. Unlike grass, ground cover plants not only beautify your yard and reduce maintenance, they can also be edible and medicinal!
If you have dogs like we do, edible ground covers are best planted outside the dog’s range if you plan to eat it. Our electric dog fence spans a large area, so we’re limited on where we can plant edible ground cover plants.
Another option for dog owners would be to plant edible ground cover plants in containers. You can plant them as companion plants for a larger plant, or, as an entire large planter of the edible ground cover plant of choice.
We’ve even pulled chickweed from our yard and placed into pots so that we can consume it worry-free. Yep… planting weeds in pots! But… it’s edible weeds with benefits!
Ground cover crops can be harvested for salads, soups and sandwiches by trimming like microgreens.
Edible ground cover plants enhance landscapes, manage weeds, retain soil and expand your food production areas.
Edible Ground Cover Plants
25 Natural and Cultivated Ground Cover Plants
- Alpine Strawberries, Fragaria vesca
- Bugleweed, Ajuga reptans – young shoots raw in salads
- Chickweed, Stellaria media
- Clover, trifolium
- Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia,
- Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale
- French sorrel, Rumex scutatus
- Ground Ivy, Glechoma hederacea, aka catsfoot
- Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule
- Marjoram, Origanum majorana, O. vulgare aureum & O. mounding marjoram
- Mexican sour gherkin, Melothria scabra, aka cucamelon
- Mints, Corsican mint
- Nasturtium, Tropaeolum
- Okinawa Spinach, Gynura bicolor
- Oregano, Origanum vulgare humile, aka creeping oregano
- Plantain, Plantago major
- Purslane, Portulaca oleracea
- Rock cress, Subrieta deltoidea
- Rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis prostratus
- Sage, Salvia officinalis
- Sweet Potato Vine, Ipomoea batatas
- Thyme, Thymus prostratus, and Thymus serpyllum, aka creeping thyme
- Verbena / Vervain – Glandularia canadensis
- Wild Violets, Viola sororia
- Wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens, aka creeping wintergreen
- Wood Sorrel, Oxalis stricta
Favorite Edible Ground Cover Plants
Alpine Strawberries
Fragaria Vesca Sempervirens, commonly called Wild Strawberry or Woodland Strawberry. These grow wild and are also cultivated to grow as a groundcover in select landscape areas.
By Renee Shepherd of ReneesGarden.com
These are a special ground cover for smaller areas as they stay put and won’t self-propagate via runners.
Considered a gourmet treat in French cuisine, Alpine strawberries produce a delightful berry. Seven to eight mature Alpine plants will yield approximately one cup of berries several times a week on a continuous basis throughout the summer.
Whenever you harvest strawberries, you may also want to harvest strawberry leaves for tea and salads!
8 Alpine strawberry plants can yield around a cup of berries several times a week throughout the summer.
~SOURCE: ReneesGarden.com
Bugleweed – Ajuga reptans
One of our favorites for partial shade ground cover is the low-growing ajuga, known botanically as ajuga reptans. Though not really minty in flavor or aroma, ajuga is in the mint family, and as with all mints, ajuga is edible with medicinal pr