Cleaning Up Flower Beds & Replacing with Ground Cover

Marilyn from Jackson township asks, “we have two flowerbeds at the beginning of our driveway, pretty good size and have a flowering crabapple in the middle of each. The one has been daisies for years and just seems like everything else has taken over and the daisies are getting dried out. We wonder if we cut everything back this fall and use the stuff that kills everything. And I think you said it stays in for six months so that we would be able to plant some spreading pine of some kind and not have to deal with flowers and that anymore.”

That’s a great question. The chemical you use there is very, very important. And it’s important that you don’t use the wrong chemical, because remember that crabapple’s root system is going to be under the ground, exactly in the same spot as your perennials are. 

Your best bet there is actually just to use a Roundup based product. Spray on the surface or remove and dig out of the perennials that are in there. It may take more than one application because the root system of those perennials are going to be very established, but you don’t want to use something that sterilizes the soil for six months, because it’s also going to affect that crabapple and you’ll most likely lose the tree as well.

So you do not want to use something like that. You can use a Roundup based product and then sprinkle another product down called Preen. That’ll kill any new seeds as they germinate and prevent you from having to respray so much. And if you spray the perennial with Roundup, usually after a couple of applications, that’ll be pretty effective for getting rid of the perennial.

The more surface area you leave for the plant to have Roundup on the foliage, the more of that chemical it’s going to draw into its root system and the more effective it’s going to be. So I’d be careful cutting it back too far. Maybe if you can spray it before you do the cut back, it’ll draw more of the chemical down to the root system and be more effective.

A juniper would probably be what I would recommend for ground cover. If you’re underneath the canopy of the crabapple, I would stay away from the blue junipers. There’s a blue rug, a blue Pacific, a blue carpet. The ones with the blue color require much more intense sunlight for them to do well. I would stay more with one called a Japanese garden juniper.

It’s a green, low ground cover creeper. It’s really dense. If you want to see a couple that are mature, we’ve got them in our back waterfalls at the portage store. You can see how they’ve crept and covered the ground and the rocks. It’s very hardy, it’s probably the hardiest of all the ground cover junipers.

You’re still going to have roots and that kind of stuff in that area, it’s still going to take a while for that kind of stuff to decompose down there. If it were me, I would probably dig up a heavy amount, get out what you can and then spray. I’d probably do a little bit of both just because especially with replanting, you’re still going to have stuff below that hasn’t broken down yet. It’s just kind of something to keep in mind.

Using that Preen will definitely prevent new weeds from growing. Especially after you put the junipers in the ground, it’s important that you put something down to prevent seeds from germinating because you’re disturbing the soil, you’re bringing new seeds to the surface that may have been dormant in that soil for decades. When the environment’s right, those seeds will germinate. If you put the Preen down, the Preen kills the seeds as they germinate. And the only thing left alive in the flowerbed is the juniper or the ground cover that you prefer.

You could use the Preen right away to prevent any new seeds from germinating, but whenever you dig in your junipers or the ground cover of choice, you’re going to want to, anywhere you disturb the soil, sprinkle some more Preen down in that area.

I think you’ve got a big fall project.

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