Clover

Q. Is it OK to have clover as the ground cover between plants? I live in Chicago zone 5 and have a small plot 3' x 5' that I am growing a few perennials in. Any advice would be most helpful also any web sites you could direct me to I am very new to gardening and am terrified I will kill a few before I settle in!

A. There is white clover and red clover. I have websites below for both for you. They are not harmful toward your garden plants. There are quite a large amount of health benefits to man from these plants. They grow as a living mulch over the roots and keep them cool during hot spells in the summer. The amount of water and food which they use will not be large enough to cause harm to the success of your plants.

I recommend that you do not let it get out-of-hand. Trim it down every two weeks with a pair of clean sharp gardening shears. You can leave the cut stems as added mulch but if it is self-seeding quite a bit you may wish to discard stems of seed pods. In the fall the stems will die back but it will reseed itself.

If you decide to till the clover out be sure not to go too deeply as the roots of many perennials are very close to the soil surface and you do not want to harm them.