The Sweet-Smelling Herb Best For Growing Ground Cover In The Shade

Are the shaded parts of your yard looking bare? When it comes to filling in bare dirt around structures in your garden, areas that don't receive a lot of sunlight may begin to feel neglected. However, there are various groundcover plants you can use as shade-loving lawn alternatives, including this sweet-smelling flowering herb that pulls double-duty by providing deer-resistant ground cover and filling your garden with the scent of vanilla.

Also known as sweet-scented bedstraw or wild baby's breath, sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) is a fragrant groundcover that's as visually appealing as it is functional. On the surface, this plant easily fills space in shaded areas around your yard, providing perennial coverage that's resistant to both deer and rabbits. However, it can also be a show-stopper, with delicate white flowers that bloom throughout the spring, all while the foliage itself is evergreen. If you really want to capture the scent of sweet woodruff, it becomes more fragrant as it's dried. And, since this plant can get a bit weedy, you may find yourself trimming it back often, given you ample amounts of this herb to use around your home. You can add sprigs as potpourri around your home to create inviting scents in your entryway and other small spaces or even use it to help keep common insects at bay.

Of course, before you can enjoy the ground-crawling coverage or dried herbal benefits of sweet woodruff, the first step is learning how to grow this plant. Fortunately, sweet woodruff is considered easy to care for, and it's overall a hardy plant that, alongside its grazer resistance, can handle light foot traffic. Since it is a perennial, you'll want to start by learning more about its USDA growing zones. Sweet woodruff is hardy in zones 4 through 8.

Sweet woodruff's sunlight requirements are often the real selling point for this plant, however. When many people think about sweet-smelling plants and vibrant groundcovers, their minds may drift to those sun-loving flowers. However, sweet woodruff does best when it's offered shade. In fact, it can grow in both deep shade and partial shade conditions. As a result, it can readily handle conditions where other groundcovers fail, since it can survive with as little as no direct sunlight during the day. This makes it useful for adding coverage along structures or other areas where sunlight is a more scarce commodity.

As easy as it is to grow, sweet woodruff can require some maintenance, however. It needs moist soil, so regular watering is important, especially during warmer months. It also needs trimming to help keep it from growing too aggressively in your garden. Fortunately, its benefits outweigh its costs, making even a common garden chore like growth maintenance rewarding.