An Excellent Spring-Flowering Ground Cover
The Spruce / Evgeniya Vlasova
Aubrieta (Aubrietaspp.)
a cheerfulground cover, is a great candidate for edging your paths or tucking intostone walls.
These plants are far more common in Europe than in North America.
Snowdrift AubrietaCharlotte Bleijenberg/Getty Images
The genus name derives from Claude Aubriet, a European landscape artist from the 17th century.
For best results, grow plants where they will receive at least a half-day of sun.
If the pH is low, increase it with the addition of lime.
Doctor Mules Variegated AubrietaGratysanna/Getty Images
Water
Aubrieta plants need a moderate amount of water, but they don’t like wet feet.
Temperature and Humidity
Aubrieta plants grow best in areas with cool summers that mirror their alpine climate.
Fertilizer
Aubrietas grow in lean soil and need no supplemental fertilizer to make beautiful blooms.
Creeping PhloxMaYcaL/Getty Images
At most, occasional watering withcompost teais all the feeding aubrieta plants need.
Types of Aubrieta
Most aubrieta sold in the nursery trade are cultivars or hybrids.
Popular varieties include:
Pruning
Aubrieta can get a bit scraggly after blooming.
In midsummer, the foliage tends to die back and will benefit from a hard shearing.
Keep it tidy by trimming plants back after flowering.
Use shears, and trim no more than half the plant’s growth at any one time.
Potting and Repotting Aubrieta
Aubrieta complements the container garden as a trailing plant, softening container edges.
Plant it as a companion to other rock garden flowers with similar growing needs, likedianthus.
Pot up your aubrieta plants with a lightweight all-purpose potting soil.
A potting mix meant for cacti is also appropriate for aubrieta plants.
Take care not to bury the foliage when potting up aubrieta.
In that case, the roots need to be protected.
Wrap the container in burlap and bubble wrap, orplace it inside an insulating silo.
What Does Aubrieta’s Flowers Look and Smell Like?
Aubrieta produces vivid purple-red flowers that smell very fragrant.
Flowers can also range from more pink and red hues to more magenta and blue-violet hues.
Aubrieta blooms at its best in full sun.
Aubrieta makes a perfect pocket plant for garden walls and rock gardens and it providesgood erosion controlon hillsides.
Both plants grow as a creeping mat, spreading across the border’s edge or trailing down walls.
