Creeping Jenny

Creeping Jenny is the chartreuse trailer that spills over the rim of a pot like poured paint. The gold form, ‘Aurea’, is the one worth using: its round coin-shaped leaves light up a shady porch where most trailers go dull. It roots wherever a stem touches soil, so it fills in fast. Small yellow flowers show up in summer, but the leaves are the point.

In the Upstate

It is hardy to zone 3, so an Upstate winter does not touch it. In a pot it dies back to a mat of stems in December and pushes new growth in March. Summer is the harder season. Missouri Botanical Garden notes it prefers some afternoon shade, and in a dry pot it wilts by lunchtime. Give it morning sun and steady water and it holds. It is also the plant to be careful with. NC State calls it weedy and an ecological threat where it escapes, and it will run through a bed and into a lawn. Keep it in a container or a bed with hard edges.

In a container

It is a trailer and a living mulch: 2 to 4 inches tall, spreading a foot or two and hanging well below the pot rim by midsummer. Plant it at the edge and let it drape. Water whenever the top of the mix feels dry, which in July is daily. It is a perennial, so the same plant can stay in the pot for years and be trimmed back each spring.

Care

Water is the whole job. It tolerates a wet pot better than a dry one and NC State lists it for pond margins and rain gardens. Feed lightly with the rest of the pot. Trim it hard in early spring to clear the winter stems, and cut runners any time they reach the ground so they do not root into your bed. The one thing that kills it is a hot, dry pot in August, though even then it often comes back from the roots once you water.