Mountain Pea

Orbexilum sp.

This evergreen Mexican native plant makes a great groundcover in sunny or even shadier spots in your landscape.

The leaves are small and the delicate purple flowers even smaller, but mountain pea creates a nice little thicket and gives a lot of bang for your buck.

It’s fairly tall for a groundcover, growing to about 2′ tall and 3′ wide. It does well in bright sun and thrives in part shade. But if planted in too much shade, it will stretch for the sun, making it a little taller and lankier, and will have fewer flowers.

This is a great option to plant under large trees where you want to cover the ground in dappled light. Well-drained soil is best.

Mountain pea isn’t the most drought tolerant, but mine survived the terrible heat and drought of 2010 while being watered only on my legal days, so it does just fine, with a little care.