For all you landscapers...I need some suggestions.

What about carex? Here's a shot of a variety planted en mass. It wouldn't need mowing as it stays this height year round, seed heads in the late spring (ish). There are many varieties that handle shade well and humidity. Some carex is striped with white or gold, some is dark green, some is erect and spiky, some arches.



Here's mondo grass. It has tiny, scented lavender bell shaped flowers and intense purple berries.


You could throw spring bulbs in with the plants, the leaves would blend in with the 'grasses' and wilt away without looking sloppy.

say hi to granny for me.

I hadn't realised you were a bourgeois Rocky. The bourgeois, a fine body of humanity it is generally agreed, do not do "pizazz". It is actually frowned upon.
Doing "pizazz" I mean. Talking about it is okay though. It makes one sound "with it" and a bit of a cool cat.

Plants are even stupider than animals and that's saying something.

Sir J.C. Bose researched sensitivity in plants in the institution that bore his name in Calcutta in the 1920s. They have heartbeats it seems and he could demonstrate them shuddering when pain was administered. Their little hearts actually speeded up when a grain of caffeine was added to their refreshments.

There is a myth which says that the mandrake shrieked when pulled from the ground. And J.C. confirms such sensitivity 2,000 years later although the myth, like all myths, is probably exaggerated. I could have sworn that I once heard a collective moan of pleasure from my dandelions when the sun appeared from behind a cloud.

And there they all are, rooted to the spot, as you approach with the shears or the flame-thrower and the Black and Dekker rotary weed gobbler intent on outdoing your neighbours in the unofficial Best Kept Garden competition. That's serious stupid. The Bible was right about man's dominion.

J.C.'s science is the sort of science that I marvel at. Whether it is suitable for schoolchildren I don't know. Some of them are very impassioned and impetuous about causing any of nature's productions suffering. Their own relatives, they could be forgiven for thinking, after having evolution explained to them. Some young ladies are not averse to drawing attention to themselves and justifying peculiar eating habits using science of that sort as a rational basis for their behaviour.

Groundcover plants for Florida:

http://hort.ufl.edu/woody/groundcover_selection.html

until reading your post, I actually hadn't considered the ascent of sap as a landscaping issue.

Using soz's pic as a reminder of what the area looks like....

In no particular order, here's plants I have, or people in the neighborhood, that I find attractive, and takes up space with little care.

Wormwood. There's diffeent varieties, the one below looks like the one someone in the neighbor hood has. The picture doesn't do it justice. His grows in tiers, and gracefully flows over some rocks and a stone wall. It draws my eye every time I go by.




Lantana. This one takes no care at all. It attacts butterflies like crazy. Drought tolerant, isn't picky about soil. Once a year you cut it down close to the ground (in the Fall), and in the Spring up it comes. Some grow and spread, others stay in nice small globish buses.




http://personales.ya.com/botanical/Lantana_camara.jpg



Sedum (stonecrop) - there's only about a gajillion varieties. Too many to put here. I don't cover a lot of area with it, but little odd corners. it just like to do it's own thing. There's so many looks to them it's like comparing a saint bernard to a chihuahua.

Jerusalem Sage
I like how the flowers grow up along the stalk in several places, making rings.
When it gets leggy, just cut it back.

You're a plant fascist chai. You should read Professor Veblen's ironic analysis of the type.

I like them all. I find the golf course at Augusta where the Masters is played something of an obscenity but an ideal symbol for the mind of the well-to-do mechanomorph. I winced when I saw Tiger bend his club on one of the trees that had got in his way.

I can't see how an enthusiastic Darwinian could possibly favour, aesthetically, one plant over another. It seems incomprehensible to me.

Ooh, many good choice. I love mondo grass.

And lantana too, smells real nice. and the flowers are so gorgeous.

These are all so great! So many amazing flowers to choose from.

Thank you all so much for your input!

Does Lantana do well in shade? I was thinking about planting it around my mailbox...but it is very sunny down there.

I love the mondo grass...that would probably work as well...that stuff takes over too...but I don't know that I mind that!

Thanks again!

Hard to keep a wavy line, one like soz's or a simple curve or two, when the ground cover is rambunctions.

I like ophiopogon (mondo) a lot myself - it worked well in my Venice garden. I used the mini one to good effect under some japanese maple trees. I also like a relative (if I remember correctly), Liriope... in small gardens in LA. Again, a lot of us don't know about your particular year round climate and its effect on rampantness of plants. LittleK has lived in Georgia and pays attention to plants..

I could rattle off a hundred(+) shade liking ground covers but I'm not going to.

I do hope you consult with some local experts, a very good local nursery (please don't only ask someone at home depot), professional garden designer with good repute, local arboretum, garden clubs (yea and nay on some of those), agricultural extension.

In Albuquerque, we have a book available at nurseries called Down to Earth, A Gardener's Guide to the Albuquerque Area. It's somewhere around $30.00.
I found it a good read when I first moved here, full of local advice, warnings, pros and cons, and source lists, with few things I'd argue about in a first look.

Adds, two sources for me when I first moved here were
a) the art museum of all places had some good books on local landscape design
b) a particularly good bookstore (not chain) has a great array of useful local garden books.

Carex...

I think of it as a native, though I forget just which one was native when I was asking. John Greenlee, the native grass man, is/was a kind of associate/advisor - I've seen his growing yard, have his book, have called him for advice re design in different climates. Not that he would know me if he tripped over me, but I've been amused by his design adventures and am a stalwart re his push for native grasses.

So that's another whole way to go, native grasses, probably mixed with certain other plants. Greenlee used to have a demo place in Malibu with native grasses and succulents, probably sages.. ahhhhh. But that particular mix was appropriate for Malibu. He used to fly all over the place to talk about local native grasses.

I guess I'm trying to push that good design is site specific.

There are east coasters (u.s.) and a belgian guy famed for native grass design - that could be a whole thread.

Well the Alabama state flower is hydrangea, and they thrive in the shade,
and look beautiful too. Phlox is another good and colorful ground cover.

I sometimes feel like a pest, but again, lantana is considered a pest (unless it's the native variety to florida. A website on invasive plants (based in florida) is: http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/node/223 (just read through a little, plants are toxic to people as well as other plants)

Yeh, me too.

Osso - I know you do.

How about Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' or another Hakonechloa (aka Japanese Forest Grass). It'd wash the slop with gold all season and then you could cut it back at the end of winter to prepare for the new season.

Haven't looked at some main websites lately, so this will be fun for me too.

Mismi may not want to go towards native/other grasses that work, or maybe you will, Mismi. But I'd like to get the links somewhere on a2k.. back after the hunt.


I also adore hydrangeas, don't get me going. There are whole books on hydrangeas.. I see them as a zone buffer, or highlight. But, I only know them from northern california (Annabelle! plus the expanse of rose-blue ones in my side yard that thieves routinely cut in pre dawn.. I caught 'em once, taught them to ask me and how to cut them) and not in my bones, as it were. Again, I'd look at what works locally. Apparently H. arborescens is native south to Florida.. and oakleaf hydrangea looks to be native too...

On the Hako, that would be gorgeous with something dark green just behind it.. plus a few well spotted other plantings. I don't know that grass, but get with the general idea.

I have to say.. to argue with myself.. that I don't have any clue how Hydrangeas would work with native grasses. My own not encompassing experience has them with tiny-ish ground covers. Or shrub ground covers.

In my own yard, that was none. But I haven't been around showplace Alabama gardens.

Don't you think osso that "yard" is not a very nice word for the environs of one's property. It conjures up stockyards and farmyards and suchlike.

What's up with garden or estate or park? In England yards are what cheap houses have outside the back-door to keep the bins in. Or places of employment.