Need some advice on ground covers.

A little background is probably in order.  I grew up in eastern Nebraska where outside of town trees are rare, fence rows (Osage Orange may be a good windbreak, but it is ugly IMO), creek bottoms, and an ocassional farmers wood lot.  We moved to exurban Atlanta and bought 6 1/2 acres of mostly hardwoods, and took out just enough trees to get the house built.  I have too much shade to get much of anything to grow.

The problem is that the dogs run in the backyard and track dirt into the house.  There are some ivies that seem to do pretty well and are durable enough to stand up to the dogs.  My wife doesn't like that idea because she feels (may be right) that it provides to many hiding places and hiways for snakes and other critters.

Any other suggestions?

It all depends on what you and the misses want. Ivy can get away from you and take over. Go online to some of the plant websites and see what they say about shade loving perennials, keeping in mind that any plants or ground cover will giv cover to the critters, both creepy crawly and otherwise. Hostas could be good, but attract deer who eat them. Lilies, day lilies, tiger lilies all could be good. There are thousands of plants out there, you just have to find the ones you like. Good luck and let us know how you make out. Just to let you know, my wife and I have been in our home for eight years and we are just now finishing up with the basics of planting, ie the permenant plants that we wanted. Now we are doing maintainance and planting annuals for color. Try to pick plants that bloom at different points in the growing season so you can have color almost all the time. This past year we had pansies in that really lasted through the winter into spring so we had color. Just a thought.

Guess I should have been a little wordier in my origional post.

btln75: I'm well aware of the problems with keeping ivy trimed. I have a good bit of ivy, primarily in rock retaining walls. The walls are fieldstone, not nice trimed flat surfaces. Most of the rock came out of the hole we dug for a basement (they don't call this part of Georgia Rockdale County for nothing). I used wet clay to fill the gaps, and hopefully the ivy helps keep it in place. I have flower beds of azaleas, hostas and day lilies that do pretty well, but not for what I'm looking for here.Hostas and day lilies aren't durable enough for dogs to run on, and don't grow close enough together to keep the dogs feet off the dirt.

Oldman: I have a St Augustine hybred grass that does very well in some places, but the areas I'm talking about here the ground never sees sunlight.

I appriciate the interest and thanks for the responses

Every day on the green side of the grass is a good day

And they claim pets love it...http://www.turfheadquarters.com/ser...StoreFront

ron 45:

Thanks for the info. A quick look at the website seems like this might be a good solution. I will research it more tomorrow when I have more time. I was begining to beleive that my options were either ivy or more vacuum cleaners.

I will post what I decide and how well it works. Probably have to install in small sections. Us State employees aren't doing real well right now (not as bad as some, but not good either). Should have gone to work for the feds. Less work for more money.

I don't want to acheive immortality through my work, I want to acheive immortality through not dieing - Woody Allen