Sweet Woodruff a great ground cover for shade

There are many ground covers to choose from and, likewise, many fragrant plants. But the charming Galium odoratum, a.k.a. Sweet Woodruff, is one of the few fragrant plants ideally suited as a ground cover.

Its bright green foliage features tiered whorls of six to eight lanceolate leaflets, making for a most attractive fine-textured forest of foliage. Given regular water, plants spread quickly, eventually forming a dense carpet. In late spring, masses of simple, four-petaled pure white flowers float above the foliage. It is the foliage, however, that emits a very pleasing woodsy scent when crushed. Some have compared the smell to freshly mown hay.

Sweet Woodruff ’s other principal value is that it loves the shade, making it a wonderful addition to a shady bed or as an understory planting. Once established, it is tenacious and can be used in lesstraveled areas. Its ground-hugging nature means it can also be used as a green carpet around other shade perennials. Galium is highly adaptive. When there’s sufficient water it spreads and fills in densely. Under drier conditions it goes semideciduous, waiting for moisture to reappear.

Sweet Woodruff makes a nice addition to mixed planting containers, providing a bright green floor upon which taller plants can be offset. It is also ideal for gardeners with a moist or boggy area in their garden; or it can be planted next to a pond or water feature.

Galium odoratum is widespread and native to much of Europe as well as Turkey and Iran; it extends as far east as Russia, China and Japan. It has naturalized in parts of the United States and Canada.

Earl Nickel is an Oakland nurseryman and freelance writer. Email: food@sfchronicle.com

Wikimedia Commons Sweet Woodruff boasts small white flowers (far right) in late spring and makes a dense ground cover (above). Its fragrance has been compared to freshly mown hay.