Moss can be a beautiful garden addition

J. Paul Moore, who owned a garden center in Tennessee for more than 30 years, can't count the number of times people asked him how to kill moss.

He and other experts, however, say moss deserves more respect, as a versatile and beautiful addition to any garden.

"It's stunning in the winter when everything else is dormant and dull. It's like a little emerald island," says Moore, who's got an entire moss lawn. "It changes with atmospheric conditions - it's ever-changing."

And it looks better than his grass lawn did in Nashville's hot dry summers, he says.

Moss provides a variety of shapes and textures, and can work in everything from a container to a whole lawn, like Moore's.

"Mosses offer year-round green," says Annie Martin, author of "The Magical World of Moss Gardening" (Timber Press, 2016). It thrives in a surprising range of climates; she once harvested some moss off a hot tin roof in June and found it to be a species that also grows in Antarctica.

Some lessons on how to garden with moss can be found in Japan, where it is more valued. Dale Sievert has created Japanese-style gardens at his home in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and for public gardens in Wisconsin and Chicago.

But this type of formal garden with great expanses of moss wasn't actually what he found most interesting when he visited Japan. Rather, it was how often moss was used in private gardens along city streets, in front of businesses and homes - just a couple square feet in a planter, or the space between a sidewalk and a building.

"That's how they garden with moss, in these little tiny spots," he says.

So, he says, start small. One possibility: Instead of using mulch, plant moss to cover the ground under a perennial that's bare at the bottom and bigger on top. Or start even smaller: in a flowerpot. Sievert has about 300 containers planted with moss, where they thrive even in the Wisconsin winter.

If you want to encourage moss to spread, remove weeds and grass, provide moisture and keep it clear of debris; don't let leaves and sticks pile up. You can also move it around to where you want it: Mosses don't grow from seed, but they do spread from any part of the plant.

"They can grow from a leaf or a stem or rhizoid," says Martin. "Just cut them up or tear them up."

You can also buy moss to plant. Martin sells many species online from her moss nursery.