Hello my friends Kevin here from Epic Gardening.

Hope you're having a baller day in the garden.

Today we're talking about a question from Jonathan Swain.

He says, Kevin, I would like to plant Blue Star Creeper as a lawn substitute in upstate

South Carolina, but I'm afraid that it is too shady an area. Can you suggest alternatives that would be similar but would thrive in an area that is more shady than sunny?

It's a great question and for those people who have a lawn that perhaps you've planted trees or shrubs or something's

going on with that lawn where it's maybe just not looking so vibrant in the shade because

remember anything that is traditionally grown as a lawn grass is not going to be a shade lover.

It might be shade tolerant, like me being tolerant to the way that my mom cooked Brussels sprouts when I was a kid and just steamed them and burned them and I would sit there and

Very very much dread eating them, but I would still tolerate them that is how a lawn treats not having a lot of sun. So you have to have a little bit of love for

some of these shadier options. Now it can be very hard to pick a grass that's going to do really well in shade but there are some great

ground cover plants that do well in shade that can be walked on from time to time and do have a nice beautiful appeal so I'm going to provide a couple

suggestions of ground cover plants and I've been putting a lot out lately on

epic gardening.com about ground cover plants because I find them to just be fascinating. It's a fantastic way to have a

semi-living mulch type of approach instead of just mulching with wood chips which of course there's nothing wrong with

but you may want something living right?

The first one's going to be golden star or green and gold ground cover as the name suggests

it has just creeping green leaves and then when the plants flower they have these

bright gold flowers the Latin name if you're curious is chrysagonum virginum there you go so this is a really good low growing

ground cover plant that still somewhat looks like a lawn and you can kind of hang

out on it a little bit. You don't have to just completely avoid

walking or stepping on it. Next one you have is a juga. That's a creeping evergreen that quickly fills in empty areas and it's got these

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