Roll out the green carpet

Dusty periwinkles may have given groundcover a bad name, but, as John Hoyland points out, large plantings of a single species can be both practical and key to a garden's design. The trick is to choose the right plants

- John Hoyland

IT is not only plants that come in and out of fashion; entire approaches to gardening experience the same ebb and flow. Fifty years ago, gardeners would have been at ease discussing groundcover plants and garden publications would have been filled with advice about what plants could best be used en masse to smother weeds, retain moisture or simply cut down on maintenance. Today, the talk is of plant communities, planting matrixes and prairies, never of anything as old-fashioned as groundcover.

The word itself is perhaps part of the problem, evoking images from the 1970s of sterile plantings in supermarket car parks or around municipal buildings, with swathes of periwinkles and dull shrubs. Recently, the term 'monoplanting' has been used to describe groundcover, but this is probably not going to catch on with sensible gardeners. Whatever term we use, most gardens have places that would be improved by planting large areas of a single plant and most gardeners would appreciate the lighter workload involved compared, for example, with maintaining a mixed border. The point is not to get fixated on terms and styles that might seem outmoded, but to appreciate that large plantings of a single plant can be both practical and an important element in the design of a garden.