The word groundcover is exactly what it sounds like. Anything that covers or touches the ground is a cover. Manmade or vegetative groundcovers serve to keep soil from eroding and moving to another vicinity. Mountains would soon be back in the ocean if trees, bushes, grasses and flowers didn’t hold the soil in place. Newly plowed fields are not left to sit too long without a groundcover crop of some kind planted shortly after. Much of mans early thoughtless land clearing projects did not take into account erosion and top soil that had taken Nature thousands of years to produce. Hence the Great Dust Bowl of America was man’s fault and many suffered mightily and reclamation was slow if at all in some instances.

Turfgrass lawns are one of the best renovating ground covers that we can invest in. Using grasses, flowers, ivies, mosses, wildflowers, and some not so well known covers such as Dichondra, we can restore and keep the soil where it is needed. Natural groundcovers return oxygen to the atmosphere as a by-product of during photosynthesis. Other practical groundcovers are shrubs, mulch materials, wildflowers, and even wild native grasses.  Trees are even groundcovers if you look at it from God's point of view.

No plants-no Oxygen! Groundcovers are desperately needed in cities just to help fight pollution alone, and loved for their ornamental and erosion factors. In simple terms a living groundcover is the air filter system put into place as our planet develops.

In many instances plant life alone cannot take care of the problem and many new biodegradable and non-degradable products have been in use to help fight erosion, keep unwanted weeds in check, and help retain as much moisture as possible for growing vegetation. Seed mats are just one of the many products that can be easily used in these instances. Some of these organic in nature and some are from manmade fibers developed to let seedlings grow and absorb water and nutrients.

Jute and wheat straw are just two examples of organic types that decompose overtime while permanent vegetation takes hold. Seed mats offer an alternative to loose material that can be washed or blown away if not held into place by other methods.