English Ivy

[devreux]

In front of our house, the ground slopes steeply away to the street. The previous homeowners at some point planted English ivy on the slope, because it's the thing you do in this neighborhood. (Also because mowing such a slope is quite precarious

Comments

[page_of_swords]

Hosta? Then there is Mint, which will try to take over the world.

[devreux]

I think hosta is wildly overused and I like it even less than ivy! ^_^ Furthermore, I think the front slope is a little too sunny for hosta -- sunburned hosta planted inappropriately in a sunny location is even uglier than regular hosta. Single hosta as accent plants can be okay, but I dislike them in massed plantings. And I think I do need a low, vining/spreading plant to hold the soil on the slope

[wanderingpixie]

I'm not sure if flox would fulfill the soil-maintaining requirement (or possibly the weed requirement), but it is decidedly not ivy :)

[devreux]

I like phlox, but it's very slow spreading. Eventually, when I make it to rock-garden land, I will totally have phlox, though. :-)

[page_of_swords]

WE ARE MINT RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!!!

[devreux]

Yesterday my boss suggested creeping sedums, which might work. I'll probably have to use some kind of stabilizing mesh to hold back soil until the sedum really gets established and starts to spread. But they'd take the sun, and even flower. (Sedums are most of what gets planted on green roofs.)

[mg4h]

I have some sedum on the rock faces of my front retaining wall, it's pretty when it flowers. When it gets outside where I want it, thankfully it pulls up pretty easily, but it's holding on till I do pull it. That might work really well. I know there are multiple color types, you could do a patchwork, see which one wins out :)