Vinca Flowers

Here are flowers from a variegated vinca plant (Vinca major). It is blooming in the spring of 2013 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.

Ground cover flowers

These plants in my mom's garden seem to make good ground cover.

This first flower appears to be a dwarf crested iris (Iris cristata). I checked a book out of the library entitled Better Homes and Gardens Compete Guide to Flower Gardening and it is described on pages 247-248. It says it is a wildflower that spreads via rhizomes and provides a dense ground cover. The flower can be blue, lavender, or white with yellow-white crests. It likes shade but if put in full sun needs moisture. Cultivars are listed as Iris cristata alba - white flowers or 'Shenandoah Sky' for light blue or 'Abbey's Violet' for deep violet-blue with white-yellow crests. It appears to me this flower is Abbey's Violet with the purples, blues, whites and yellows seen in the picture.

See another picture as this U.S. Forest Service website: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/regions/southern/RufusMorgan/index.shtml

The plants in the next picture are a little hard to identify. The plant with the flowers appears to be a weed known as ground ivy. See this web page at the South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service to see if you think it is a match. Another sample can seen at the Minnesota Wildflowers site. According to that site its scientific name is Glechoma hederacea and it is known as Creeping Charlie or Gill-over-the-Ground. Here is one last site that has a beautiful picture and very detailed description: http://www.treknature.com/gallery/photo160405.htm

The serrated leaf coming across might be a some sort of wild larkspur.

This last picture shows a flowering Vinca major vine with a variegated leaf. According to Wikipedia it is also called Large Perwinkle, Greater Periwinkle, or Blue Periwinkle. I have found this plant to very pervasive and a fast grower.

See more information on Wikipedia