Periwinkle Flower
Tips On Growing the Periwinkle Flower
The actual name for the periwinkle flower is Vinca minor vine. This is an excellent ground-covering perennial, and can even be used as a substitute for grass in lawn areas so shady that grass won't grow. You do need good drainage if you're sewing these plants, but it grows well underneath large trees, where grass doesn't do well because of a lack of light.
The Vinca minor vine is relatively short in stature, like the deadnettle. It may grow only three to six inches off the ground, but it sends out stems trailing behind it. It boasts evergreen leaves and it may spread out as much as eighteen inches. The plant provides an excellent ground cover, and it sprouts a lovely lavender-blue periwinkle flower in the spring, and sometimes in the summer as well. Vinca minor is an aggressive-rooting plant, so it may kill weeds, but also any plants close by whose roots are not strong enough to survive this invasiveness.
The most common periwinkle is usually described as an herb, a forb or a perennial vine. It's not native to the United States, but does extremely well here. Its most active period of growth is through the spring and summer months. Common Periwinkle has foliage that is usually a fairly dark green in color, and blue flowers with obvious seeds or fruit. This plant retains its leaves from one year to the next, and it has a fairly long lifespan and grows at a moderate rate. The average common periwinkle flower will grow up to about four inches high and it may maintain this height over a period of twenty years.
You can find common periwinkle in garden stores and nurseries. It can't handle extreme cold temperatures of less than -30F, but does fairly well in areas with winter temperatures above that frigid level. It has a medium tolerance level for drought.
You can find the periwinkle flower in most of the contiguous 48 United States, and it does exceptionally well in areas where winters aren't too severe. Some of its relatives also grow well in these areas – like the herbaceous periwinkle and the bigleaf periwinkle.
The common periwinkle can be propagated with a bare root in a container, and you should provide a soil level of at least eight inches when you plant. It is not toxic to livestock or other plants, and it does best in areas that receive about thirty to sixty inches of precipitation a year. It needs about 130 days without frost to grow at its peak rate, and the preferred soil types are pretty much any soil type, from medium and fine to coarse. This is a hardy plant and provides excellent groundcover with very little weeding or maintenance.