My arborvitae hedge has naked legs thanks to the bunnies who keep chewing off all the lower side branches. I’ve discovered the best plant to cover up those bare trunks is yellow corydalis.
The plants bloom from May to October with ferny foliage and sweetly-scented yellow flowers. I’ve grown yellow corydalis for a number of years now, but it wasn’t until our droughts last year and this year that I realized how tough this plant is.
As I mentioned in my Garden Winner post on yellow corydalis, ants like to spread the seeds around, but the new little plants aren’t particularly numerous and definitely not a nuisance or invasive. They pull out easily and if you have an area to fill like I do, you can just plunk these freebies in the ground and they’ll establish themselves without any special attention. In fact many times last summer and this summer I forget to water them during prolonged dry spells and the seedlings still survived.
I started with three plants, but because I keep replanting the seedlings that appear I already have more than 30 plants helping to cover up my bottom-bare arborvitaes.
Yellow Corydalis grows 12 to 15 inches tall and wide in full sun to part shade.