Periwinkle
Vinca minor
Takes shade or full sun and asks for nothing once settled — but give it an edge to butt against, or it ends up in the lawn.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Blue
- Sunlight
- Happy anywhere from deep shade to full sun.
- Watering
- Rides out dry spells once its roots are down.
- Feeding
- Nothing to feed; it manages on what the soil already holds.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- April
- Pruning
- Shear it back in spring to hold it inside its bounds.
- Mar–Apr Spring Growth
- Apr–Jul Flowering
- Jul–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 23.6 in
- In-row spacing
- 23.6 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Shallow roots, spreading on surface runners
- Working depth
- 6–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 24 in–3 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
The roots themselves stay shallow and near the crown; the spreading is done above ground by runners that root wherever they touch. The colony walks outwards while the parent plants age out, so keep the young rooted runners and replace the old ones every few years.
Every trailing stem roots where it touches, so a periwinkle advances on a hundred fronts at once and every rooted node left behind starts again. It is superb ground cover in dry shade and a long job to remove.
The habit is Periwinkle’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Vine weevil Vine weevil, which favors the shadier corners
- Rust Rust — small orange pustules scattered over the leaves
- Runs beyond the border and into the lawn if left alone
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Vine weevil
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Vine weevil
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Vine weevil
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Vine weevil
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
Hostas, Ferns, Hellebores, Snowdrops
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com