Ajuga? Can you grow ajuga there? I have a bed full of purple ajuga that gives me the most beautiful blue flower spikes in the spring. There are color varieties as well as "Giant" and "Dwarf" varieties.

Yes I can, I grow Bronze Beauty. Beautiful purple flowers in the spring and a good spreader. Like all over the flower bed. Easy to pull up though and it does have the green/purple look going for it.

Ruellia is drought tolerant. Is great as a border and can grow to fill in a bed. I have the blue flowers here. And i have the taller pink flower variety. There is also a very tall blue flowering variety. It needs full sun.

Normally house plant, Spider Plant grows freely in my back yard in shade. My neighbor grows it in full sun.


A lot of Houston area yards use liriope as borders and to fill in beds.

Ruellia is pretty and undemanding, but you'll have to move to get rid of it. Spreads via underground runners with great determination. I find Asiiatic Jasmine worth the occasional trim because it always looks good and smells divine.

Do people grow Dichondra in your parts? It's compact, very green, and can be walked on. But it does need to be watered, so we Californians had to give it up. Could be perfect where you have plenty of warmth and rainfall.

I second Dichondra; we have the 'Silver Falls' variety and it is lovely; just takes a bit to get established in my experience.

Wouldn't that be an annual in Kabby's zone?

Yup, it would be an annual. I love the way it looks, cascading from a elevated container but the winter claims it.
Variegated spider plants are a thought, I have a couple of tropical plants in this bed that are green and white, the spiders would bring it together. I'll have to check the hardiness on those.
Y'all are great!

Katie's Ruellia, the one I have pictured propagates freely through itty bitty seeds in the wind. True, you might find the where you don't want them, i.e. in cracks of the sidewalk etc., but I have cleared out a complete border and it has not come back since. have not found it invasive at all.

Candidates to consider, that I'm using because they don't create places for snakes to hide:
Inch Plant (Callisia cordifolia)
Stonecrop (Petrosedum rupestre subsp. erectum)

I'd love to find various Selaginellas:
http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Alice - she did ask about TROPICAL groundcovers.....

@ShadyGreenThumb Cheryl do your spider plants put out plantlets when in the ground like that? They are zoned for 8b but I can make that work I think.
@purpleinopp I had never heard of Selaginella. It's hard to think of mosses and ferns taking our hard sun for 8 hrs.