A living mulch is pretty common but they do often compete with the crop. I've tried clover and rye before. Clover works very well but your veggies need to be well established first for best results and your soil needs to be as weed free as possible. Clover sprouts quickly direct seeded. Not sure the brand of straw i have access to but it is gorgeous. Finely chopped, beautiful texture and a pale bright yellow. Pretty much my go-to mulch for herbs and veggies, and others like basil and greens i plant thick enough to not need a mulch but will side dress/mulch with a pro-mix during the grow season. You could initially use a pro-mix as a mulch, then try direct seeding some clover thickly on the leading edge, maybe a foot around the bed....but just trying to visualize what your garden even looks like....or what veggies you are speaking of. Some need space to produce well, so competition from other plantings between means less production of crop. Something fast growing and trailing that has one main root structure may work in some cases, like the sweet potato vines or trailing nasturtiums. Re-routing the growth back into the bed if they escape. I've used them in my brussel sprouts/broccoli/cauliflowers bed before to perk up how dull those plants look most of the early summer. I have a corn area about 20x20 that did well with clover a couple years. Now will be a pumpkin/winter squash bed this year. (covered and not used last year). I've considered a living mulch, but a thick newspaper border covered with a bale of hay works so well and needs less tending and provides a soft surface off the ground for the crop to rest and ripen nice and dry during rainy weather... Google 'living mulch'. Someone may have good ideas and successful companion planting advice more current... since i first read of it years ago, my ideas and use may be outdated....

Neither "Scottish moss" nor "Irish moss" are mosses, so growing instructions suitable for mosses are not advisable for them. They are both varieties of the genus Sagina, which is a member of the Pink family. Saginae are native to cool windy moist climates. They thrive along the western seaboard of the British isles and on the US coast in Oregon. If you live in a hot-summer area, you should avoid them, and even in more moderate climates they will prefer shade and moisture. Think grottoes or shaded pools. Here is a link that might be useful: Sagina varieties

Hi Michiele, Landscaping around a pool that is in full sun, or at least in lots and lots of sun, can be very challenging. Often the heat that reflects from the pool and the pool deck are very hard on plants. When you are landscaping near a pool area, I think grass is always best because it can take the most abuse, from being walked on, having beach balls bounce through it, etc. To keep weeds to a minimum, put down a good quality woven landscape fabric, plant your grasses and add some mulch. When choosing a mulch, it is often better to use some sort of stone like river rock or lava rock because bark mulches tend to blow into the pool. Interplanting a taller ground cover like ornamental grass with a shorter ground cover can be difficult. Creeping ground covers like Asian Jasmine or Boston Ivy may tend to 'climb' up the clumps of grass. If you have a taller ornamental grass, then a shorter ground cover may get too shaded by the taller grasses and not fill in as well as you would like. You might try ice plant or creeping sedum. They also are creepers more than vining climbers so they would be easier to maintain. Both are very tough and can handle the reflected heat from the pool's concrete or stone surround. If you are going to have a taller form of ornamental grass, you could use ornamental blue fescue, fiber optic grass or blue-eyed grass as the shorter plant to fill in around the larger ones. It can be hard to combine ornamental grasses with shorter ground covers underneath them because the shorter plants can be overwhelmed by the larger grasses. A mixed planting of ornamental grasses, creeping groundcovers and dwarf shrubs can be used quite effectively if the plants are in scale with one another. You might go to the website for High Country Gardens (I think it is www.highcountrygardens.com) and look at their ground covers. They have a lot of uncommon plants that are suited to tough conditions. Good luck, Dawn

When were these plants planted? Except for annuals, which have only a single growing season to complete their entire life cycle, perennial plants like groundcovers need time to establish before they they start a significant spread. And groundcovers spread by different means - those that spread rhizomatously are not fazed at all by mulches, even thick ones. But those that root as they go or self seed may be slowed by a lot of mulch. Since both your choices fit within this second category, their development could be slowed by a heavy mulch but maybe you just need to give them sufficient time to settle in and establish.