Category Archives: Natives

Native Spring-Flowering Trees and Shrubs

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Spring gardens are a bounty of colors and fragrance. Here in southwestern Connecticut, the pink candy cotton flowering cherries compete with the sweet fragrance of  koreanspice viburnum which is vying for attention with the assorted gumball colors of azaleas and hybrid rhododendrons.

For some, these garden standards define Spring, but it’s important to realize that many are one-trick ponies, offering a few weeks of color in the garden and then that’s it. They do not support local wildlife by offering their leaves as larval host plants, their flowers, especially the frilly double ones, do not offer nectar to pollinators and they do not produce berries or nuts that will feed songbirds and small mammals in the coming months.

If you’d like to make your garden more wildlife-friendly without sacrificing any of the color, fragrance or spring pizzazz, here’s a look at some native spring-flowering trees and shrubs that will be a treat for you and for the local birds, bees, butterflies and more.

What’s blooming in your garden right now?

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3 Native Spring Ephemerals for Your Garden

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Erythronium americanum

Spring ephemerals, plants that bloom for just a few weeks in the early spring and whose foliage dies back by mid-summer, are a great source of nectar for early pollinators in your wildlife garden. They are also a colorful way to … Continue reading →

Red Chokeberry ~ A Brilliant Addition to a Wildlife Garden

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Aronia arbutifolia 'Brilliantissima' berries

I’ve been toying with idea of planting red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) in my southwestern Connecticut garden for years. On paper, red chokeberry sounds perfect. It’s native to Connecticut and much of the eastern US, has bright red berries to feed … Continue reading →

Garden Designers Roundtable ~ Designing with Native Plants

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This month on Garden Designers Roundtable we’re exploring the topic of Designing with Native Plants, an issue that is near and dear to my heart. But, truth be told, one that I also find a bit baffling…why are we singling out native plants as in need of special design help?  They’re just plants, aren’t they?

When it comes to including native plants in a designed landscape, I have three simple words to say  - JUST DO IT!

Right Native Plant, Right Place

Native plants are just plants. They are not fool-proof or no-maintenance. They’re not all weedy-didn’t-I-just-see-that-growing-on-the-side-of-the-road plants. Native plants can be as lush, beautiful and colorful as non-native plants.

When using native plants in your garden you still need to consider your garden’s site conditions – sun, soil, water, wind, etc. – just like you would before planting any other plant. You can’t just plant any native plant in any garden condition and expect it to survive just because it happens to be native to your area.

It’s still a plant and you, the gardener, must meet its basic needs in order for it to live.

Designing with Native Plants

Native smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens) and non-native lacecap hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) are ideal garden bed mates.

One important thing to keep in mind is that using native plants in your garden doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition.

Native plants play well with non-native plants and, personally, I believe both should have a place in a residential garden.

While there’s no magic ratio of native to non-native plants that will work for every gardener, the Planting Pyramid is a good place to start to figure out what might be best for your garden.

Whether you’re planting native or non-native plants, you still need to keep in mind some of the basic principles of garden design. Garden design concepts such as color, unity, movement, focal points, and texture, to name just a few, are the same regardless of whether or not you’re designing with native plants. Repeat after me…native plants are simply plants.

PR for Native Plants

A view of the demonstration garden at the Native Plant Center at Westchester Community College.

Native plants seem to suffer from a general lack of good PR. I’ll be the first to admit that some native plants are difficult to incorporate into a typical residential landscape. And yes, some of them can indeed be found growing on the side of the road.

And let’s face it, sometimes native plant enthusiasts aren’t exactly helping the cause and showing how easy it is to find a place for native plants in your garden.

On a recent visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Demonstration Garden at the Native Plant Center at Westchester Community College, I was greeted by an exuberant mass of 5′ tall late summer-blooming perennials separated by winding paths of grass. I thought it was lovely but could also see why Jane or Joe Gardener, who is thinking about adding some native plants to their home garden, might be overwhelmed by the idea of planting some of these native perennials.

Native Plants for New England Gardens

Incorporating native plants into your garden is easy. Remember, they’re just plants after all. If you’re not sure which plants are native to your region, check out sites like Plant Native or your local native plant society.

Here’s a look at a few native plants that will be right at home in gardens in Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island or any of the other New England states.

Cercis canadensis

Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) is an early spring bloomer that is also a colorful understory tree for woodland gardens.

Tiarella cordifolia

Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) is a welcome nectar source for many pollinators. I’m partial to the running tiarella cultivars that quickly form dense ground covers.

Chionanthus virginicus

White fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) is an underused native gem that can be used as a focal point or as part of a mixed planting.

Rhododendron maximum

The pale pink flowers of Rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum), used here as a large, evergreen privacy screen, add a subtle elegance in mid-summer, long after other exotic rhododendrons have flowered.

Panicum virgatum 'Huron Solstice'

Who needs invasive exotic ornamental grasses when ‘Huron Solstice’ switchgrass offers green-grey foliage that turns brilliant shades of wine red in the fall?

Clethra alnifolia - Summersweet

The intoxicating fragrance of summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) will stop you in your tracks in the late summer garden. And the local pollinators find it irresistible, too.

Pinus Strobus 'John's Find'

‘John’s Find’, a cultivar of our native white pine (Pinus strobus) is a quirky focal point.

More Ideas on Designing with Native Plants

For more tips and ideas for incorporating native plants into your designed garden, check out these posts from my fellow members of the Garden Designers Roundtable:

Thomas Rainer : Grounded Design : Washington, D.C.

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Mary Gallagher Gray : Black Walnut Dispatch : Washington, D.C.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Native Plant for Shade ~ Spigelia marilandica

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Every garden has its trouble spot(s) – that place where nothing really seems to work. In my Connecticut garden, one of those trouble spots is a low-lying partially shaded area that periodically gets flooded.

After a heavy rainstorm, there’s usually a puddle there for several hours. And after each of the recent ’100-year storms’ – haven’t there been 2 or 3 in the past decade?? – the water collects there for days on end.

Spigelia marilandica flowers

Spigelia marilandica flowers

What I needed was a plant that could tolerate that periodic flooding but also survive without any supplemental irrigation.

A plant that would grow in the shade but also add some color to my garden. And one that would be attractive to an array of winged wildlife.

I stumbled upon what might be the ideal solution for this shady trouble area the other day – Spigelia marilandica (Indian Pink).

Getting to Know Indian Pink

◊ Indian Pink is native to the southeastern US.

◊ Blooming in June, the red flowers, with their yellow crowns, are a favorite nectar source for hummingbirds.

◊ Spigelia marilandica grows to about 1.5′ tall and wide, making it the ideal front or middle of the border plant.

◊ Indian pink tolerates partial to full shade and grows in lots of different soil conditions, including moist to dry soil.Spigelia marilandica

◊ It is considered pest and disease free although I’ve read differing reports on its deer-resistance. Like any newly introduced plant in my garden, I’ll be spraying it with deer repellent for the first season, just in case.

◊ Hardy in zones 5 – 9.

◊ Grow Indian pink with other native woodland plants like ferns, wild geranium (Geranium maculatum), and foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia).

Do you have a favorite plant for shady trouble spots in your garden?

In Praise of the Flowering Dogwood

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Cherokee Princess

Here in southwestern Connecticut, the flowering dogwoods are in bloom.

Once a familiar sight in our landscapes, Cornus florida,  also known as common dogwood, is frequently being passed over by many homeowners looking for a flowering tree for their gardens. Too common? Perhaps. Victim of some bad press? Possibly. Under-appreciated? Definitely.

Part of the reason for this trend is the fear of planting a tree that may succumb to a known landscape disease, dogwood anthracnose. While dogwood anthracnose is a real threat, there are many simple things you can do to ensure your dogwood remains healthy – a key to fighting most landscape diseases.

For habitat gardeners, a flowering dogwood should be an indispensable part of their gardens. These small understory trees support an amazing array of wildlife - the red fall berries are a favorite of  songbirds and small mammals and the leaves are used by spring azure butterflies as a larval host plant.

To find out more about this under rated gem, I invite you to visit Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens and read my latest post, Flowering Dogwood ~ An Underappreciated Beauty.

Tiarella cordifolia – Native Groundcover for Shade

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Tiarella cordifolia ' Stephanie Cohen'

My new botanical obsession has got to be Tiarella. I’m a little late to the tiarella (a.k.a.  foam flower) party, having really just discovered them last year.

That’s when, in my search for shade-tolerant ground covers, I planted both T. cordifolia ‘Running Tapestry’ and T. cordifolia ‘Black Snowflake’ in shady spots in my garden.

Outta My Way

My obsession reached a new high last week while attending a Garden Writers Association meeting in Boston. Attendees were treated to an incredible amount of swag, including a Droll Yankees birdfeeder, SmartPot 15-gallon container and even some EcoLawn grass seeds.

While I’m thrilled with all my goodies, I have to admit my heart skipped a beat when I saw a box of foamflowers from Plants Noveau suddenly appear in the back of the room. Right away, I was doing the math — one box probably held about 20 plants and there were over 60 people at the seminar. While I’m all for sharing, I was not leaving there without a free Tiarella!

I leaned over to my friend and fellow garden blogger, Joene Hendry, motioned to the tiarellas and told her I was going to grab myself one as soon as the lecture ended. Did she want one? Sure, she said, but I could tell from her response she hadn’t been bitten by tiarella-mania like I had.

As I was plotting how many steps it would take to get to the box and who the most likely GWA members were that I would have to elbow out-of-the-way, in walks Angela Treadwell-Palmer with more boxes of tiarella. Hallelujah!

Plants Noveau had generously donated enough plants so each GWA attendee got at least one — and in my case many more than one — of their new Diva-rella series of tiarellas called ‘Stephanie Cohen‘.

Foamflower Fast Facts

♦ Tiarella cordifolia is native to the eastern US and is hardy in zones 3 – 8.

♦ Tiarellas prefer rich, well-drained soil and a site with full to partial shade. T. cordifolia ‘Stephanie Cohen’ is supposed to be more tolerant of dry soil than other tiarellas. That’s great news for those us with lots of dry shade.

♦ Tiarella cordifolia’s have heart-shaped leaves and many cultivars have leaves with interesting markings or that are deeply lobed and cut. They are an easy way to add texture to a shady spot.

♦ White frothy flower spikes cover tiarella for weeks and weeks in the spring.They are a good source of nectar for early pollinators.

♦ Since foamflowers are considered deer resistant, they are a carefree substitute for hostas. Combine them with other shade stalwarts such as heuchera, Solomon seal and ferns.

♦ Many tiarellas, for example T. cordifolia ‘Octoraro‘, spread by runners, making them exceptional ground covers. Others, like ‘Stephanie Cohen’ are considered clumpers. They are best used in an area where you want them to stay put.

Here’s a look at a few other tiarellas to add color and texture to your shade garden…

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Are you growing any tiarellas in your garden? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences with them.

‘Winter King’ Hawthorn ~ The King of Your Winter Garden

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Winter King hawthorn - Jocelyn Chilvers

Winter King berries photo © Jocelyn Chilvers of The Art Garden

The winter garden can be a dreary place. Typically we think of conifers to add color to a winter garden but there are some other options.

Deciduous trees, especially those with interesting shapes, bark or berries, are also appealing additions to your winter garden.

One of my favorite small trees for adding clor and interest with beautiful bark is Japanese Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia).

But for adding interest with bright, colorful berries, ‘Winter King’ hawthorn (Crataegus viridis ‘Winter King’) is one  tree that can spice up your garden all year long, especially in the winter.

More About The King

~ ‘Winter King’ has a rounded form with noticeably horizontal branches and few thorns. It grows to about 20′ tall and wide.

~ White flowers cover the tree in May. Some people find their fragrance a bit funky so keep that mind when choosing a planting site.

~ Berries turns a brilliant red in the winter and persists on the tree long after other trees have been striped clean by the birds.

~ Hawthorns are wonderful additions to any wildlife garden. They hold their berries well into the winter and are an important food source for squirrels and birds.

~ Tough, widely adaptable trees, hawthorns are ideal for use in open, windswept areas. ‘Winter King’ prefers moist, well-drained soil and full sun but tolerates poor, even compacted soil. It is hardy in zones 4 – 7.

~ Hawthorns can be susceptible for rust disease so plant in an area with full sun and good air circulation. ‘Winter King’ is considered to be quite disease resistant, making it a good substitute for many crabapples.

Crataegus viridis "Winter King'

Winter King cloaked in his autumn robes. Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service.

Incorporating ‘Winter King’ Into Your Garden

~ Because of its small size, ‘Winter King’ makes an ideal street tree. Just don’t plant it under, or too close to, utility lines.

~ Make ‘Winter King’ the focal point of a small island or foundation bed. Add some other wildlife-friendly native plants like goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) and sweetspire (Itea virginica).

~ Plant ‘Winter King’ in a spot where you can truly appreciate it in the winter.

What’s the king (or queen) of your winter garden?