Actually, pictured are SIX more reasons, and they're just a few of the groundcovers that look just fine here in late November (photos taken 11/22).  My point is that all of them are all  much nicer to look at than dead leaves.  Isn't winter dreary enough without covering up our evergreen groundcovers?

Now if you garden in, say, Buffalo like my friend Elizabeth, your beds are going to be covered with snow all winter anyway, so what the hell. But here in balmy  Zone 7, we get to see plants..

Clockwise from upper left are: Hellebore, lambs' ears, Vinca minor, Pulmonaria, Carex 'Ice Dance', and Ajuga.

I go ga-ga over ornamental grasses and recommend a couple of books about them.

Photo: in the garden of Kurt Bluemel.

I snapped this shot of the old English ivy that had covered my butt-ugly fence for decades to illustrate a really important fact:  this stuff is waaay too thick, vigorous and heavy to be enveloping the canopies of trees.  But just in case a picture isn’t worth a bunch of words, here’s the rap sheet on English ivy in trees: 

• It provides the ideal home for all sorts of harmful insects, including gypsy moths.
• Its sheer weight can easily kill smaller trees, like dogwoods.
• When allowed to grow more than 10 feet or so vertically, it matures, changes form, and makes berries, which are then distributed by birds all over the place.  Not nice.

Killing the Damn Stuff
But no matter how much ivy may be growing up into your trees, it’s a breeze to kill and remove it.  Simply slice a section from each ivy trunk at any point you can reach it, and then let it die a slow death.  Eventually the dead leaves will fall and the birds will use the old vines as nesting material and you’ll feel like a hero. 

Now how to kill ivy at the base is a trickier proposition, which leads me to the question: Can ivy stumps be killed without using a synthetic herbicide?  Not quickly, but it can be done slowly by drilling holes in the ivy stumps and then covering them with fresh compost.  Another method that’s recommended for organic gardeners is covering the stump with plastic and again, simply waiting. 

I know, I’m always ranting about plants being called "no-care" that most certainly are NOT, but really I do absolutely nothing for this plant except pick up the wilted stems after the first frost.   That’s it. 

Then the next year in early summer they reappear and in greater number because they’re happy seeders.  Hardy begonias are fine with any amount of sun or none at all, though I imagine if they’re sitting in the blaring afternoon sun they DO need watering.  These get just moments of direct sunlight.  Happy Garden Blogger Bloom Day.

You’d think I’d have been warned off by the horror stories reported by Daves Garden contributors about Trumpet Vine (Campsis radicans).  Like?

• Spreads up to 40-50 ft from host plant
• Strangles plants, trees
• Invades gardens, robbing them of nutrients
• Crawls up houses and gets under siding. Rips gutters from house
• I never would have thought it could punch a hole up and through asphalt  

And on and on.  And I’d read all that and wrote that I couldn’t recommend this native vine because of so many horror stories, but shoot, I said to myself, I can handle it.  Experienced gardener and all that. 

Well, as if that weren’t stupid enough, even before the plant starts destroying my home and garden I can see by its foliage that it’s none other than the weed I’ve been battling on my property for 24 years now, with no success.  Why didn’t I recognize it in my research?  Oh, maybe because the photos I’d seen of it were of its lovely flowers, rather than the crappy, rampant foliage.  Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But now what?  Oh, I’m moving the chimnea again, too.  Oy vey.

Photo credit.

Continuing the gardenblogger tradition of showing off our blooms on the 15th of the month, I present one of my favorite scenes in the garden: lacecap hydrangeas, astilbes and (in the upper right) an ‘Anthony Waterer’ spirea.  For a longer view, click on over to GardenRant.