Japanese garden juniper

* Common name: Japanese garden juniper

* Botanical name: Juniperus procumbens

* What it is: A low-growing, deer-resistant, bluish-green, stiff-needled evergreen that sends out arms 6 feet or more in a dense covering across the ground.

There’s also a readily available dwarf version of this plant called ‘Nana’ that’s a bit more compact and slow-spreading than the original.

* Size: Grows only about 10 to 12 inches tall and spreads 6 to 8 feet wide in 15-20 years. ‘Nana’ spreads more like 5 to 6 feet in that time.

* Where to use: Mainly useful where you want to cover the ground and hold down weeds and maintenance in a big, sunny area. It’s been widely used for decades on sunny banks and in sunny sections of Japanese gardens.

Japanese garden juniper also is useful under and around trees that are limbed up enough that full sun reaches the ground underneath.

* Care: Give it good drainage and lots of sun. It’s fine to thin out overly dense growth in spring or summer and to shorten any “arms” that are growing beyond where you want them.

Scatter an acidifying organic granular fertilizer formulated for evergreens around the base of the plants early each spring.

Keep damp the first season, then water is needed only in droughts. Junipers are some of the drought-toughest species.

The two main potential pitfalls are tip blight (a fungal disease that can gradually kill off branches) and voles eating the roots. Also, avoid planting junipers near apple, crabapple, and hawthorn trees because these pass rust disease from one to the other.

* Great partners: Shrub roses add color above the low mats of Japanese garden juniper. Ornamental grasses are good textural contrasts that also do well in sunny, dry spots. Weeping Japanese maples are good partners in a Japanese-garden setting.