A perennial border is the best option, if you do not want to remove weed. Perennials and especially ground covers grow in the width, and cover the soil with their leaves. This covers the ground from sunlight and the weed will hardly germinate. The result: a maintenance friendly border!

Making a perennial border with ground covers

You can plant a border with loose plants, which are cultured in small pots (usually indicated with size P9). Like that, you can install an average of 7 perennials or shrubs per m². Then you make sure these plants will grow a dense cover in the next few years, so they can cover the soils completely, to prevent weed from growing. This dense covering will take approximately 3 years in the Netherlands. In those 3 years (when the soil is not yet covered) you will need a lot of maintenance to keep the border free of weed.

Plant mat

This is where our plant mats make a difference. A ready to use plant mat is the ground cover 2.0! They cover the soil with plants from day one. Therefor you can enjoy the benefits of a fully grown ground cover from the start. A beautiful green covered perennial plants border with little weed and maintenance.

Other possibilities instead of a border

The most common application of our ground covers is to install them in a border. But the plant mats are also suitable for many other applications, such as: slopes, roundabouts, tree bulbs and many other applications. The plant sorts which are used for our ready to use ground covers are mainly perennials. Perennials are often the base plants for a border. The benefit of perennials is that they bloom often and sometimes multiple times per year.

Result

Our plant mats offer a lot of possibilities. From a small border along the street work in a front yard, to long borders at a park lawn. In both situations, the benefits of a ready to use plant mat will stand out as a ground cover. The result is a maintenance friendly perennial border which gives a fully grown and green result directly. And from that moment on, the owner will need less time for maintaining this border!

Benefits of plant mats in a border

• Quick and easy to install
• The result you wished for, from day one: the border is fully grown and evergreen
• Less growing of weed in the border
• Less maintenance and therefor saving time and money
• The gardener can use his time during maintenance for the more technical activities instead of weeding. Therefor the gardener can lift up the complete garden to a higher level, against the same costs.
• Always a well-kept garden with a neat appearance

How do I make my border maintenance friendly?

Is your border really laborious and does it take a large part of your garden maintenance? You should really consider a maintenance friendly border. But how do you get it? how do you get a well-kept border without too many weed? By choosing the right planting. Especially perennials and shrubs can cover the ground really well. They prevent the sunlight to reach the soil and prevent the weed from germination.

The perennials and shrubs which take away the sunlight from the soil, are called ground covers for a reason. As the saying goes: better to prevent than to cure, weed is no exception to that. If you prevent weed from growing in the first place, it will save you a lot of time. In our assortment ready to use plant mats, we choose the strong ground covers. Vinca minor (periwinkle), Waldsteinia ternata (Barren Strawberry), Hedera helix ‘Woerner’ (Ivy), Geranium cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’ and the Nepeta x faassenii ‘Walker’s Low’ (Catnip). All available as a ready to use plant mat. This offers a lot of benefits. Below we made a roadmap to help you turning your border maintenance friendly.

Roadmap to maintenance friendly perennial border:

Preparation

1. Check your existing border for plants you want to keep. Remove the not-wanted plants from the border, try to remove as many roots as possible.
2. Make sure you remove all the weed from the border. Watch out for remaining roots! This is crucial, these roots will sprout again. For our plant mats it is important to start with a weed free soil. Our plant mats will provide the soil from newly sprouting weed.
3. If the soil lacks enough nutrition and humus, you can choose to improve the soil. You can use a soil improver, like plant start or DCM Vivimus. If you want you can also add some organic fertilizer. Rake the soil improver and fertilizer through the soil.
4. Equalize the soil. It is easy to equalize the soil with a rake. Equalizing is important for the plant mats you will install on top of the soil. A flat soil helps the roots of the plant mats to connect to the soil below.

How many plants: define and install

1. Measure the surface of the border in square meters and multiply them by 4,5, to know the amount of plant mats you need (plant mats are 57x38cm, which means normally 4,5 plant mats will make 1 m²).
2. After that you can order the correct amount of plant mats at one of our selling points near your location. In our list of plant centra and webshops, you will also find a list of gardeners. Gardeners provide a professional installation of our plant mats. If you need any help installing, we can also accompany you. Please contact us or chat directly with one of our employees, we are pleased to help you.
3. After receiving, check if the soil is moist enough. If not, add sufficient water first.
4. Lay the plant mats on the equalized soil, one by one.
5. The plant mats will root to the soil the first 3 weeks.

If you need more information or advise, please contact us or chat directly with one of our employees, we are pleased to help you.