Sedum Ground Covers

Gary Bachman: Gardeners are always looking for a carefree plant that has a big impact in the landscape, today on Southern Gardening.

Narrator: Southern Gardening with Gary Bachman is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service.

Gary Bachman: I'm always looking for a way to reduce the amount of lawn mowing and add interest to the landscape. I have always relied on building new or increasing the size of landscape beds, but sometimes choosing from the standard ground cover menu can get monotonous. But what else can we use? Ideally, it would be absolutely versatile and carefree and not need much water. So how about low growing sedum? There are literally hundreds of sedums to choose from, way more than we can talk about today. But a trip to your garden center is an easy way to see at least a portion of what is available.

Sedums are succulent plants with soft and juicy leaves and stems, and is a good choice for low water use gardening. There's a wide variety of foliage and flower colors. Growth habits include ground hugging creepers to upright growers. Sedum does not tolerate a soil that is too wet, so planting and well-drained soil is a must. And don't fertilize excessively... In fact, only a bare minimum of nutrition is required, or the plant will get leggy and tend to overgrow. Sedum as quite possibly one of the easiest plants to propagate. In the spring clip off healthy stems before flower buds have formed. These clippings can simply be spread out on potting media in a container and placed in the shade. Mist with water every couple of days, and roots will start forming after a couple of weeks. Easy to care for and to propagate, sedum is the obvious choice for carefree gardening.

I'm horticulturist, Gary Bachman for Southern Gardening.

Narrator: Southern gardening with Gary Bachman is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service.