My Favorite Low-Growing Groundcovers for Low Maintenance Landscapes
Posted on May 27 2025,
By: Leigh Kade
Native Landscaping, when done right, will require significantly less work and water from you to maintain. The key to making a native yard even lower maintenance than "traditionally" landscaped areas, or even old fashioned bluegrass lawns, is to get your native plants to take up SPACE.
The more ground is (literally) covered, the fewer opportunities weed seeds will have to land, root, and find enough light to thrive.
It's no surprise, then, that native groundcovers are one of the most efficient ways to cover the ground. Insert comedic drum beat here.
I'm not talking about delicate groundcovers like creeping thyme or clover, but rather woody, dense low-growing shrubs that will fill in large areas without being too busy visually. You can surround these "low maintenance" areas with showier groupings of perennials if you want a "wow" factor, or if you prefer your landscapes more relaxed and monochromatic (and almost no work, once the plants are established), you could strategically "color block" with our hardiest native groundcovers; I've highlighted my favorite below!
I dive into further detail with these plants (as well as my favorite plants for spring interest) in the video below as well.
Here's some of the plants from the video that I particularly love to put in a native landscape.
Kinnikinick
One of my favorite evergreens to include in a Utah native landscape is kinnikinick. Related to bearberry and manzanita, it's a low growing ground cover that can spread out up to eight feet in the right conditions. It's foot traffic tolerant, but a little bit woody, so I wouldn't use it as a lawn alternative. However, it looks amazing along pathways or in the front of borders, and it'll just provide year round interest even when other flowering perennials come in and out of dormancy.
Creeping Oregon Grape
I also love Creeping Oregon Grape, also known as Creeping Mahonia, Low Oregon Grape, and Creeping Desert Holly (Since there are so many names, look for the scientific name
Mahonia repens while shopping).
Creeping Oregon Grape is a bulletproof plant. I have one in my side yard that I have never once watered and she's doing just fine. It's not really walkable because while it is a ground cover, I use that term in that it's covering the ground, but she's still like a foot tall or so.
This is great for low maintenance areas, filling in the middle section of showy flower borders, or covering a side yard you don't want to do anything with. What's amazing about Oregon grape is that it's evergreen or semi evergreen, but it also flowers and has these electric yellow flowers that come into bloom in April, providing extra spring interest on top of year round interest.
Gro-Low Fragrant Sumac
Gro-Low Fragrant Sumac I use sometimes interchangeably with Oregon Grape depending on client preference. It has rounder leaves, whereas the Oregon grape might look a little bit prickly since it's related to holly.
The sumac overall has much "friendlier" looking leaves, so some people like it more. However, it's a pretty plain looking plant and doesn't have much going on in the way of spring interest. It does become this incredible bright red showpiece in the fall, so you're getting an incredible burst of fall color.
There's so many fantastic choices we have when it comes to native plants in Utah! Choosing these not only brings incredible, showy color to our landscapes in the early spring, they'll cut down on your overall maintenance and provide an early food source for pollinators coming out of hibernation!
