The Best Groundcovers for Southern Ontario

Groundcover plants are gorgeous, and they provide us with so many unexpected benefits! If you haven’t tried growing groundcovers in your garden, you should definitely consider it. It’s a bit of a broad term, but groundcover generally refers to any plants that are more low-growing and form lush carpets of colour across the landscape. Here are some of our favourites for Southern Ontario.

The Best Groundcover Plants for Simcoe Gardens

There are so many groundcover plants we can grow in Simcoe—many are native to Southern Ontario, so they’re some of the best low-maintenance plants for our gardens! Here are a few noteworthy varieties you can plant here:  

• Creeping Juniper

• Ostrich Fern

• Blue Star Creeper

• Bugleweed

• Creeping Phlox

• Sedum

• Delosperma

• Creeping Thymes

• Lamium

Some are a bit taller and have more texture and colour, while others remain quite low and can handle some foot traffic, making them excellent lawn alternatives. Whatever the style or function you’re hoping to add to your landscape, you’ve got plenty of options for gorgeous groundcovers to grow here. 

The Benefits and Uses of Groundcover Plants

Groundcovers’ shape and growth habits offer some surprising upsides and functional uses. Here’s how you can use them strategically in your landscape design. 

Erosion Prevention and Terrain Stability

Sloping terrain can shift and erode over time due to rain, wind, or unstable ground. Extreme weather can cause messy, expensive landscape issues like mudslides. Luckily, groundcovers have such thick root networks that they help stabilize the ground by penetrating the soil and creating a woven barrier that holds loose dirt in place. 

Soil Moisture Regulation

When the sun shines down on the soil all day, it can evaporate available moisture quite quickly. Covering up the bare spaces in the garden with groundcover plants can help shield the soil surface from the sun, keeping the soil cool and moist for longer. Groundcover plants also help deliver nutrients back into the soil, maintaining a healthy ecological balance of good bacteria, microbes, and macronutrients.  

Weed Prevention

If you fill the bare patches of soil in your garden with groundcover plants, there won’t be any free space for weeds! Weed seeds are tenacious and can survive in the soil for years before sprouting, but if there’s nowhere for them to take root, the problem is solved. Less time spent pulling weeds sounds pretty good to us!

Much Prettier Than Mulch

We’ve got nothing against mulch—that stuff works wonders!—but it just isn’t as pretty as a sea of lush, blooming garden plants and colourful, textured foliage. Groundcovers offer many of the same functional benefits as mulch, plus so many more! While mulch breaks down and needs replacing every year or two, these perennial plants will look even more beautiful and bright with each passing year. 

Less Lawn, More Life

If all that time spent maintaining a uniform, plain grass lawn feels unfulfilling, why not reduce your lawn size and grow more low-growing plants and flowers? Planting groundcovers adds more visual impact, and if you stick to native, drought-tolerant varieties, it can be much more low-maintenance. The local pollinators will love it, too— blooming groundcovers provide plenty of valuable sustenance for bees, butterflies, and even hummingbirds. 

Discover even more of the best groundcovers in Simcoe by visiting Eising Garden Centre! We have many distinctive varieties with unique features and benefits. Feel free to ask our staff for some pointers on how to care for your groundcovers for the first year after planting!