No Rolling Stones Here: Gardening With Moss

Looking for something new and different to grow? How about a plant that needs little care, can be grown indoors or outdoors, never needs pruning, rarely if ever needs fertilizer, spreads on its own or it can be easily moved and propagated?

This plant is generally thought of as a ground cover and inaccurately considered to grow only in shade. Some species can even be walked on and make it feel like you’re walking on a cushiony cloud.

This miracle plant is moss. And while you may simply see moss in your yard or property, there are over 450 species of moss in New York and there are gardeners who cultivate it both outdoors and indoors. In fact, there are several moss gardens on Long Island, and there’s a 20-acre property in East Hampton that has a rather famous moss garden.

I remember being taught that moss only grew in shade, but this is far from the truth as I’ve found moss growing in all kinds of situations. On rocks, on trees, on stone walls and even in my sunny, compacted crushed stone driveway. Until last year, moss totally covered my neighbor’s detached garage roof, but it retained so much moisture that the shingles and wood below it began to rot. Gone is the beautiful carpet of green replaced by gray layers of asphalt shingles.

As I began thinking about mosses a few weeks ago I wandered around my property and became more and more aware of the myriad places where it’s growing. At the base of trees, on the stumps of pruned out shoots at the base of a white birch. On one spot of lawn I always feel the soft resilience of the layers of Sphagnum moss in one area that makes it feel like I’m walking on a pillow.

I read more and more about mosses and found that many species make great houseplants and that there are nurseries specializing in both indoor and outdoor mosses finding that not only are mosses used to line large wire hanging baskets, but that people grow moss collections in terrariums large and small. Why terrariums? Because one of the elements that most mosses need is high humidity. But then I wondered, how in the world do the moss clumps in my stone driveway survive? Indeed, some varieties are incredibly hardy and resilient, but not all are walkable.

Moss, especially the large group that we refer to as the Sphagnum mosses, are used for a number of purposes. Sphagnum moss is what peat moss is made from. It’s cut in sheets or harvested from old bogs in Germany, Canada and in parts of Michigan. The peat moss industry sees sphagnum as a renewable resource, but this is a bit controversial as it takes thousands and thousands of years for a peat bog to get the point where the peat can be harvested, let alone rejuvenate. And some Sphagnum is innately sterile and has been used as wound dressings before the advent of gauze bandages. Then there are the ancient buried peat bogs that have been under intense pressure hundreds of feet below the Earth’s crust. These ancient peat bogs turned into coal, the fuel that powered the world for nearly two centuries.

Moss is not your everyday plant though. Unlike our annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs, the mosses are nonvascular (thus very, very short) and they don’t reproduce like vascular plants that have flowers and seeds. Mosses reproduce from fragmentation when small pieces of moss break off from the mass and are blown or washed away or carried to a new area by animals where the moss reestablishes. They also reproduce from the production of gemmae, which are small, multicellular structures that detach from the parent plant and develop into new individuals.

Many mosses can also be reproduced by making a slurry using moss, buttermilk or yogurt, and a blender. The slurry is then sprayed on the ground, on rock walls or other substrate where the slurry is applied and then allowed to establish. You can find detailed instructions on doing this here: tinyurl.com/sakpwhb6. And if you want to start an indoor moss collection in a terrarium there’s a great article here: tinyurl.com/3e39f5sp. And while you may find mosses growing in full sun and other places, it’s best to start in a shaded area first.

While some mosses are “walkable,” most are best used as an ornamental or functional groundcover. They are great in shaded areas where you might have random sizes of flagstone pavers or flagstone walkways where mosses can be used to fill in between the pavers. Keep in mind that you should rarely or never use fertilizer on mosses and don’t use them in or near areas where you’ll be using winter ice melters like salt.

Selaginella lepidophylla, which is also called the resurrection plant or rose of Jericho, is often sold as a moss (it is not) and can grow to a foot tall but is not hardy and will need to be grown indoors. In fact, despite Costa Farms selling four varieties of this plant as a moss, it is not. Then there’s Irish moss, or Sagina subulata, that really looks like a moss but the giveaway that it’s not even moss related is that this plant has tiny white flowers — and true mosses don’t flower. Another interloper is Spanish moss, or Tillandsia, often sold as the air plant. It is not a moss, but a flowering epiphytic plant.

There are true aquatic mosses that are often used in freshwater fish tanks. These include the peacock moss and java moss, which are both in the Taxiphyllum family. Leptodictum riparium is also an aquatic moss, but it’s hardy and often found growing on waterfalls, along rivers, streams and in areas prone to flooding. It can often be seen hanging down the deep slopes of mountain streams or clutching to the ledges of waterfalls.

Mosses have been used for centuries in Japanese gardens, and it’s not uncommon to find Japanese gardens that are entirely devoted to mosses. You can also find these types of gardens in the Pacific Northwest, where the winters are not as harsh as in the Northeast and the growing seasons tend to be mild and humid. Something for East End gardeners to think about in terms of a similar climate, but I don’t think the mosses will thrive in our dune and coastal areas prone to prevailing winds off the ocean and saltwater bays.

So, have I gotten you curious to explore this added avenue of gardening? One of the best books in recent years on the subject of moss gardening is “The Magical World of Moss Gardening” by Annie Martin. But once you’ve read the book, where can you buy mosses that don’t grow in your backyard?

A company known as Moss Mountain sells a kit that allows you to study and grow mosses. The kit costs $85 and you can find it at their web store at mountainmoss.com. Another source for mosses is TN Nursery, where you can buy 10 types of moss, many of which are available in 5-, 10- and 25-square-foot packages with the 5-foot sizes starting at about $60. Go to tnnursery.net and click at the top of the page where it says “live moss.” There’s also Moss Acres, which you can find at tinyurl.com/v8fcdtcx. There is some great reading at this site as well as design ideas (including moss walls and moss tiles) and additional reading.

If you’re going to do this as an outdoor project just make sure the species or varieties you use are hardy in our climate zone. It’s an interesting project and one that will appeal to both the gardener and artist in you. Keep growing.