Pratia angulata

Pratia angulata is a charming ground cover with soft green foliage and white spring flowering, veined with purple. During autumn, its purple fruiting announces the arrival of winter. Excellent for creating volume effects or partially covering paths, it will quickly colonise your garden.

Native to New Zealand, Pratia angulata is a perfect ground cover with a creeping habit reaching 5cm (2in) in height and 50cm (20in) in spread. Its evergreen foliage is composed of small leaves measuring 5 to 10mm (1in) long, with a soft green colour and an oval shape evoking water droplets. From May to June, small star-shaped flowers with white petals veined with purple will give the plant a tomentose appearance. Once the flowering is over, small ovoid purple fruits appear, prolonging the plant's decorative interest.

This perennial is not capricious.

Vigorous and easy to grow, it can become invasive if not limited. It likes shady and partially shaded exposures, but also tolerates full sun very well. It prefers moist, ordinary, and humus-bearing soils but also withstands temporary drought.

In the garden, it can be used as a woodland ground cover where it can also be used to dress stone stairs, pavements, or rockeries. You can plant it with comfrey or mosses, for example. We recommend planting it in voluptuous blankets with shade-loving perennials to compose a contemporary, minimalist scenography in a Japanese spirit: use horsetails as a backdrop, animated by ferns. Alternatively, plant it with sun-loving perennials to dress an English garden path: use wild roses and climbing roses perched on chestnut supports, and clumps of grasses punctuated with scabiosa, sage, echinacea, and erigeron.