Landscape Your Garden With Weeping Plants

Most of the plants grow upright, but there are some plants that grow to the ground and thus are known as weeping plants. It is because of the habit of growing downwards or the nature of drooping flowers downwards as tears roll down on cheeks, these plants are called weeping plants. Weeping plants add to the year round interest in the garden with the unique growth habit, which offers contrast to upright plants. With no much effort you can have weeping plants in your garden to add to the beauty of the landscape.

People see this plant with different attitudes. To some it represents calmness, restfulness, contemplation and wisdom. To others it conjures up classic romantic images often seen in paintings of weeping willows with a background of boats in a lake. Used in modern landscapes, a weeping plant can be used to create a focal point for an entire garden, or offer contrast to surrounding foliage and textures.

Weeping plants can be as subtle as delicate mounded plants. These can include common plants such as Liriope, Lomandra and even ornamental grasses. Less common plants worth trying include bulbous plants like Bulbine, Cyrtanthus and Kniphofia, bromeliads and coral blow. Upright growing plants that have drooping flowers can inject significant calmness to a garden. Such plants include: Acalypha hispida, Amaranthus caudatus, Clerodendron nutans, Medinilla magnifica and Brugmansia.

Let us see some of the best suitable weeping plants for your gardens:

Evergreen Candytuft – A familiar bedding and edging plant often grown in containers, the candytuft is a beautiful cascading perennial. The candytuft is evergreen, semi-evergreen in very cold areas. Iberis sempervirens is the most commonly offered of the candytufts and will grow about 10" high by 2' wide with a pleasant trailing stem habit that makes it lovely in rock gardens, containers or raised beds. The candytuft also has beautiful fine foliage and white, fragrant flowers that cover the plant in early April.

Maiden's Blush Fuchsia – A beautiful and graceful hardy fuchsia, this plant grows to 3' tall with arching, graceful stems and pendulous flowers. The pale flowers are lavender-pink and hang from the drooping branches like fountains. The plant needs plenty of water in areas with hot, dry summers. They also benefit from mulch in the winter, and shade in the summer.

Trailing Twinspur – This pendulous perennial forms a lovely mound about 10" tall. Beautiful for cascading over the edge of raised beds or containers, the twin spur also looks great lining a path or walkway. Plant Diascia's in sun or light shade and make sure they have well-drained soil to get the best blooms all season long.

Ground Morning Glory - A tender perennial, the ground morning glory is a beautiful cascading form of the morning glory. A non-invasive form, the ground morning glory has the same lovely blue flowers you expect from a morning glory but isn't a climbing vine. The perennial will grow to 6" tall but spill over other shrubs or the edge of walls in a lovely manner. Non-stop blooms all season. The plant needs well-drained soil.

Spring Heath – This heath has a lovely pendulous form and is a long-lasting perennial. Sometimes also called Winter Heath, the flowers last for a long time and often last from fall through winter and well into mid-spring. The foliage is needle like and evergreen and the heath grows to about 10" by 20".

Weeping Astilbe – A perennial that is quickly gaining popularity because of its lovely form and beautiful flower plumes is the Astilbe. Now, there are even weeping form cultivars available. The 21/2-3' long flowers are present all summer and show off the weeping habit that makes this Astilbe so unique.