Propagating Creeping Thyme

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Creeping thyme or Thymus serpyllum makes a great ground cover that is very easy to grow.  Once started it quickly grows and spread to fill out areas. Creeping thyme is an extremely easy plant to propagate.  Why is propagating creeping thyme so easy?  Let’s take a look!

I planted three small seedlings of creeping thyme a couple years ago and now it has grown into an evergreen carpet along our stepping stones.  Creeping thyme forms roots anywhere the stems touch a surface.  Essentially if the area is dark, roots will grow! 

How to Propagate Creeping Thyme

Even though our creeping thyme is resting on a stepping stone it still produces a copious amount of roots which makes an awesome opportunity to create more creeping thyme.  All I need to do is trim the area around the stepping stone then separate the rooted stems of thyme into individual pots or into new areas of the garden to cover.  This propagation process is known as layering.

You also propagate creeping thyme through cuttings. Just take a small 2 inch stem of the plant and stick it into your rooting medium. Keep it moist and roots will develop in a week to two weeks.

Why Is a Groundcover Useful?

You might be wondering why a groundcover like creeping thyme is useful?  Groundcovers are a living mulch.  In a garden anywhere light touches will help germinate a seed. You’ve heard the saying “Nature abhors a vacuum”, by keeping the ground covered with a mulch of some kind will prevent weeds from getting what they need to sprout and eliminate any vacuums.  It also keeps the soil cooler in the hot summer. 

Growing Conditions for Creeping Thyme

Creeping thyme can tolerate the hot summers here in Tennessee very easily.  By placing it underneath and around shrubs it can help keep the moisture in the soil where it will work for the shrubs.  Without some type of mulch the water will quickly evaporate.  Creeping thyme has very shallow roots and doesn’t need much water so planting it with other plants that use more water is a great idea. Creeping thyme would make an excellent groundcover for a formal herb garden.

Creeping thyme can take some light foot traffic which makes it a good ground cover for small pathways that are only used occasionally or stepping stone pathways.  You wouldn’t want to plant it in a heavily used area.  Light traffic will help it too root even better as the occasional foot pressing the roots to the soil will just help the thyme get a better foot hold into the soil.

Do you have creeping thyme growing in your garden yet?

Learn more about Propagating Plants

I’ve used an earlier edition of this book for many years to learn tricks for propagating plants in my garden. It has tutorials on various propagation techniques and goes through how many plants can be propagated successfully. Plant Propagation: How to Create New Plants for Free (Amazon Aff.)

10 thoughts on “Propagating Creeping Thyme”

  1. Thank you! A friend just gave me a patch of creeping thyme and we definitely need groundcover up here on the plateau. Your comments are very helpful. Katherine

    • Carmen,

      It smells a lot like regular culinary Thyme but just not quite as strong. It might do OK around your birds but I don't how they might take to it. It may not be able to handle heavy traffic from them.

  4. I love all thymes. A good one for partly shady areas is chamomile. A little taller than creeping thyme, but super easy to propogate.

  5. I had one that was not a culinary thyme, so I dug it out and replaced it with one which creeps and gets eaten. Much better.

    @Mickey, mine is (at best) in only partial sun

  6. I need to get some again! I planted several culinary thymes in a border around a new strawberry patch, & have others spread around the garden. It's always fun when I find stems that have self layered, & can poke some in somewhere else.
    I also love corsican mint for shady areas, and it's easy to propagate the same way, get a pot & make several devisions ….

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