For starters I lay down a thick mulch of leaves when I rake in the fall. A tough evergreen ground cover might be vinca. If you know someone who has it, you can simply make cuttings and stick them in the ground 12" on center and in a year they will cover the whole area.

Lamium is another tough dry shade tolerant plant and can be had free from cuttings.

Both of these would need to be kept in control as they scrample everywhere.

Good Luck,

Jim

I agree that any good, dense evergreen groundcover for shade would work well and vinca is the first to come to mind. The primary control for Geranium robertianum is to pull the plant before it has a chance to flower - it's a prolific seeder and it ejects the seeds for a considerable distance. It also germinates readily in fall, so now is a prime time to remove any existing plants as completely as possible. I find it rather easy to remove as weeds go, but it is pretty much an ongoing chore :-)

I agree with gardengal on the removal of stinky bob, but caution on the introduction of either vinca or lamium/lamiastrum. Lamiastrum galeobdolon, yellow archangel and commonly called "lamium", is invasive and a noxious weed in Washington (as is stinky bob).

Maybe an epimedium or pachysandra? Check out the link for other suggestions.

kalmia

Here is a link that might be useful: non-invasive alternatives for the garden

Lamium maculatum is not the same as yellow Archangel (lamiastrum) and is quite well behaved. In fact, I've never had it grow vigorously enough to choke out herb robert. FWIW, I also find salal (Gaultheria shallon) a far more aggressive spreader than vinca. And it can get huge - I have salal thickets on my current property that are 6' tall! Vinca has very shallow roots and is easy to remove where not wanted, whereas salal produces tenacious underground runners. Just keep vinca away from natural areas and you are good to go!

Would bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) work? I have some growing in my side yard in less than perfect conditions, and in spite of that it's starting to take hold and do very well. And it's native, another plus. I think there's some stinky bob growing there, too. (Now that I know what it is I'll have to go pull it up!)

Thanks for all these great suggestions! I just looked up bunchberry and it's beautiful. Is it too hot here in Seattle (70-90 for two-three months or more) for it?

Thank you kalmia for the link, that booklet is priceless!

And I'll stay away from salal, vinca, and lamiastrum. I'm also going to pull all the stinky bob tomorrow, before it flowers.

Formerly of Seattle, Portland, Tokyo -- now in Salem. Would some kind person post a picture of stinky bob for me, so I can see what you're contending with?

Also, about the vinca -- there's a V. major and a V. minor. Which one will grow if you just stick it in the ground? And can you do that this time of year? I'm needing a LOT of groundcover.

Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum

Here is a link that might be useful: Geranium robertianum

Here's some great info on Stinky Bob, although the pictures look broken. Here's the most interesting part, to me:

'This invasive geranium species can outcompete the native understory plants to establish a 50-100% ground cover. Research shows that under a 90% forest canopy cover, up to 250 plants/m2 were found. In a more open canopy the herb Robert population was reduced by half, but the plants were more vigorous, and able to produce up to 3100 seeds/m2.'

Here is a link that might be useful: Technical Bulletin for Herb Robert

The stink in Stinky Bob is an apt description - barely brush the plant, and your hands will stink of it. Wear gloves. If you think you have Stinky Bob just pull one up and sniff. You'll know.

Either vinca will propagate from cuttings. V. minor is better in gardens, and is not all that invasive if not watered in summer. In irrigated gardens it runs like heck, and the roots while shallow are very tenacious. Once rooted it's hard to pull out. Easier than salal, sure, but still not easy. V. major can still be invasive in unirrigated areas.

I love epimediums, but not all are evergreen (if any?). Hellebores are definitely evergreen and wonderful in dry shade. Creeping mahonia (M. nervosa) makes a nice dense evergreen gc too, native, drought tolerant, individual leaflets turn bright red in winter for color, and much smaller than salal. Which I love but I don't live in a tiny city garden. Then there's creeping rubus, R. calycinoides? or something like that, very fast dense low evergreen gc, can be as obnoxious as vinca though, growing through everything around it, rooting tenaciously, choking out your shrubs. Not for small areas as it spreads several feet, but it would keep down the stinky bob!

I've never smelt it. Since it's such a prolific seeder shouldn't it be Stinky Roberta?

The smell reminds me of carrot foliage.

When I was first expanding from veggies and fruit into perennials I picked some of it up at a plant trade....it had such lovely fine leaves and subtle color and I loved the other geraniums I already had....... DON'T PASS IT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

jwww

Smelly Ellen. They've got a trailer out past Granite Falls.

Ooohh....there's LOTS of evergreen epimediums! Check out rainyside.com or Plant Delights Nursery for discussions of various species and hybrids. Naylor Creek Nursery locally carries a very good selection as well (mail order or local plant sales only), but be prepared to fork out some dough for anything other than the most common forms.

And like many other "evergreen" perennials, epis benefit from a removal of the old (last season's) foliage in late winter. The leaves are often rather tattered and ratty looking by that time and the removal of the old foliage allows for a clear view of the delicate flowers, which can be obscured by robust foliar growth. Like hellebores, the new foliage fills in very rapidly.

Epimediums are some of my most favorite shade plants and I plan on expanding my collection in my new, mostly shaded garden.

Of the familiar kinds most burn during the winter, a few do not. Epimedium perralderianum and its hybrid are the main examples. The others behave more or less like Hypericum calycinum on many sites, keeping the leaves through the winter but sufficiently discolored by spring that cutting them away at that time often seems desirable.