How To Make A Lawn Without Grass

RELATED to Lobelia, Pratia angulata and P. pedunculata are two creeping perennials native to New Zealand. They were originally sold in Britain as rock-garden plants, but, in such sites, they tended either to dry up and perish or to become overwhelming, depending on exposure and water. It’s only latterly that we’ve come to see their invasiveness as an asset, freed them from the rockery and put them to work on the level.

- Mark Griffiths

There, they make Lilliputian lawns of dazzling charm, their intricate stems forming dense mats that are covered in tiny, bright-green leaves and spangled with flowers all summer long—white and lobelia-like in P. angulata, more starry and blue in P. pedunculata and a particularly fine cerulean in the vigorous cultivar County Park, introduced by the late Graham Hutchins, the much-missed UK pioneer of New Zealand plants. Both species may also produce an abundance of purple-red berries, to the delight of birds.

I generally use them in moist, sheltered and partly shaded spaces such as courtyards and city gardens. A favourite technique is to make a chessboard whose squares are alternately composed of Pratia and paving slabs. For the impact they achieve, they ask for remarkably little: a few inches’ depth of gritty, acid to neutral soil, watering until settled, then a trim with the scissors and a mild liquid feed if they’re looking ragged. They will also weave their spell in more open and less formal sites: in flower, P. pedunculata is breathtaking, a sky-blue stream when surrounding stepping stones in a snaking garden path.