Blog Posts

Urban Meadow at UNMC

7/16/2021

In the fall of 2020 a dozen volunteers sowed nearly two acres of parking lot margins at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. We used over 50 species and broadcast some 200 seed per foot. Why so much per foot? Because most of the areas where killed lawn and / or on slopes. Erosion control blanket was placed over most of the two acres, and this spring we sowed in more grass and annuals.

It was very dry in May and most of June, so seed germination is not what it could have been. However, those seeds are still there in teh soil and 2022 isn't that far away. We'll do more seeding next spring where some areas are struggling, but in areas where density is good (see below), we should be ok as much is coming up in the cool shadow of both weeds and annual / biennial / perennial flowers. In time the composition will change, but right now -- today -- the mid-summer flush is on. Soon, many of the annuals and biennials will die and set seed, and next year more and more perennials will take over the flower show. Prairie up.

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It's Time to Stop Saying "Native Plant Nazi"

6/23/2021

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Over the last 7-9 years I've heard this term tossed around a lot. While thankfully not as as prevalent a term today, it is still used. Just this week someone employed it on a social media thread and, to be honest, I partially lost it because by this point we should be more cognizant of the repercussions (especially after this year). Here's what I said:

"Anyone using this term is practicing and defending human supremacy by invoking another term that brings up horrid images of supremacy and genocide. It's ignorant, disgusting, and uncalled for. In many ways, horticulture is an act of supremacy, and to call that out will always upset, alienate, and confront those we wish would look more reflectively at their practice as gardeners and professed lovers of nature."

For too long there's been this ideological impasse between native plant gardeners and those that use a large proportion of exotic plants. The latter group accuses the former of being racist, xenophobic, and exacting unreal purity standards, while the former accuses the latter of not really caring about nature and continuing a tradition of ecological destruction that's part of larger cultural systems of power. I've fallen on "both sides" many times, but to be honest, I live in the grey with the majority -- which is probably where we'll make the most strides since, ultimately, we all agree on the importance of nature in any form, the need to garden ecologically and naturally, and that human-caused climate disruption is real. How we turn the tide is as much about what we do as it is what we say as we get there.

As I explore in my book A New Garden Ethic, when anyone from any perspective starts name calling and labeling, the jig is up. Those who are slinging labels are: 1) tacitly aware of their precarious situation and 2) feeling afraid, angry, cornered, and called out, so need a way to easily dismiss challenging ideas. When the latter happens it's simple human psychology 101 and totally natural. For example, it's my book's job to call out people and make them uncomfortable, to elicit self reflection, and to force a reconsideration of our perspectives. Insist that someone who finds immense beauty and purpose in gardening with a majority of exotic plants that they should be employing more natives, and of course they're going to feel that their identity / profession / passion are being undermined -- and thus their world, which is seemingly becoming more destabilized by radical thinking, will need to be defended in order to right the ship and have, once again, a clear sense of self and order. This is all covered in chapter 3 of A New Garden Ethic -- and is labeled as one step of five in processing grief.

But using the term "native plant nazi" says something much more insidious about the person using it. That term simply has no place in any discussion no matter how heated it is or how aggressive / radical / ideological / passionate any perspective may be.

Ultimately, any conversation about native and exotic plants is not about the plants themselves. Instead, the conversation is really about human privilege and supremacy, about confronting ecological injustice, systemic genocide across species, and a society dominated by an economic system which not only marginalizes groups of humans but entire landscapes and geographies for the temporary gain of a very few. Until we start having these larger, deeper, and more uncomfortable conversations, there will be no progress made on the complex cultural reflection that a garden is, and the meaning a garden will have in a time of mass extinction caused by one species (and keep in mind the entire planet is now a garden, for better or worse). Unfortunately, it's hard for any of us to step back from our first, passionate responses -- responses that are necessary and part of any worthwhile conversation -- and to listen objectively, search deeply and feelingly, and begin to reassess our belief systems in light of challenging ideas.

For a more comprehensive conversation on the phrase that instigated this post, I can't think of a better source than Nancy Lawson's erudite piece with extensive links entitled "Depoliticizing the Wildlife Garden."

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Prairie Up -- Making Urban Meadows

6/19/2021

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Our focus as a boutique design firm started as native plant gardens, pure and simple. At the core is a commitment to wildlife, sustainability, habitat, and climate resilience -- all of which mean diverse and dense plantings tailored to each site. But over the last two years a new angle has emerged, and it's all about de-lawning urban and suburban landscapes. Roughly 50% of our gardens are lawn-to-prairie conversions. From a few hundred square feet to thousands, we're excited to shift the paradigm with you and create examples that we hope inspire others to bring nature closer.

In the fall of 2019 Bellevue University (in Bellevue, Nebraska) contracted with us to design and select 5,000 native plants for a new 8,000' meadow that would serve as a living lab for science students. The entire space was once lawn, and now includes a state-of-the art nursery and bio pond. In mucky, cold rains a group of volunteers spent days and even weeks installing plugs. In the spring of 2020 we sowed in a healthy dose of annual forbs to provide some weed suppression as well as first year color, along with grasses that will become the matrix / green mulch. We did that seeding again this spring, especially the grasses which had a lack of rain last year -- a theme again for this year, but the maturing perennials are providing shade for seeds to germinate better this time around.

We hope you'll drive by the garden if you're in the area. We're currently working to get a two acre site at the University of Nebraska Medical Center going, 100% seeded and suffering from 50% less rainfall this spring. Every garden is different, with fresh challenges and opportunities to help us learn together. Prairie up.

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Sedge Meadow Garden Examples

5/12/2021

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Of course you can have a beautiful, ecological garden full of native plants in dry shade. And of course you can even have a meadow -- it just might not be as tall as a full-sun prairie garden composed of warm season grasses, but that can be a benefit. Gardens with shorter plants might look less weedy to others, and in smaller spaces this is a boon. Take our modest 200' shade meadow at HQ where we're using Carex albicans and Carex pensylvanica, along with a few forbs (Solidago flexicaulis, Geranium maculatum, Aquilegia canadensis, Thalictrum dioicum).

The C. albicans is a clumper that lightly self sows, but C. pensylvanica is a runner that fills in the gaps. Between the two species you get excellent coverage or a living green mulch which you can leave as is, or bring in some drifts, masses, or dotting of flowers with various habits and seasonality. Check out this short video of a 5 year old sedge meadow created by Roy Diblik to see how these sedge develop. And below, enjoy a client's developing Carex albicans space, and another's newly-planted shade garden composed of four intermingling sedge species (with 10 flower species).

You can even use these shade tolerant sedge in a different setting, like full sun. Carex sprengellii and Carex blanda are two we can add to the list. All can do well beneath the shade of taller plants, and in the case of C. blanda you'll have an aggressive, spreading groundcover that (like the others) greens up earlier in the the spring. If you don't have taller plants to throw some shade, a consistently moist soil could work -- especially for C. sprengelii. But of course there are dozens and hundreds of sedge that fit every site condition and plant community imaginable; I'm just trying to push sedge as much as I can because we're only scratching the surface of what they can do in a layered garden community.

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American Gardens

4/18/2021

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I was recently asked what an American garden is, and here is what I said:

Since we are a country of immigrants we’ve brought over a lot of landscape traditions from other countries and, unfortunately, too often used these traditions to colonize indigenous peoples (human, nonhuman) and ecosystems. So I think in the 21st century an American garden is about facing our history of colonization and cultivating indigenous wisdom -- especially through plants and the ecosystems they create over time. When we learn from plants and local ecology we become more balanced, more centered, more aware, and more compassionate -- and what that can do for a garden and our community is exponential. Ultimately, a garden is an art form, it’s not REALLY nature, but when we get closer to the source we get closer to the power of gardens, plants, and wildlife in our human lives.

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On Giving Plant Advice

3/21/2021

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It's that time of the year when social media is flooded with folks posting images of their landscapes -- often trouble spots like under large shade trees, dry corners, and wet low spots -- asking for plants that will do well in those areas. Before you rush to offer advice, try to both educate and challenge the online community to get us closer to true success in such spaces. Usually, people asking for plant ideas are relatively inexperienced and just starting out, so if we suggest the wrong plant they may quickly get discouraged. What is the wrong plant?

One that spreads too easily or takes over.
A plant that withers and dies.
A plant that just sits there, never growing, just subsisting.

And why do these things happen? Because we haven't asked the good questions about the site or the gardener in order to make the most informed suggestions for long-term success and empowerment. Parameters we need to consider:

Ecoregion (not USDA hardiness zone); zipcode works.
Amount of sunlight and at what time of day (sunlight has different UV rays at different times of day, some more powerful than others).
Slope and drainage (on and off site).
Soil type (even a soil test)
Current vegetation (are there weeds that need treating, and / or what are the plants the new ones will need to mesh with).
How the space will be used by humans.
The aesthetic goal (just cover the ground, block a view, prim and proper, wild...).
Management style of the gardener (hands off, helicopter parent...).
Budget

There are more we could add but this is enough for now. Can you see why these are all important factors in creating a successful garden of any size? I know we just want to offer quick advice that makes gardening seem simple, but sometimes simple can lead to unnecessarily hard when we don't stop to think and plan a little bit before exploring plants, plant communities, design, and management. My biggest fear is that the social media advice I run across -- advice that is well intentioned but often not applicable -- will ultimately frustrate gardeners. But maybe asking these questions will, too, making the process seem more like those paragraph-long math problems from junior high. Still, they are necessary parameters to consider and will save us headaches over the long term. So ask the tough questions and get us thinking better.

Culver's root, Veronicastrum virginicum, medium to moist soils in full sun (gets 4-6' tall and slowly spreads as a clump)

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How We Talk About Native Plants

2/17/2021

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In A New Garden Ethic I make the case that any conversation or debate we have about native plants is less about the plants and more about human privilege and avoiding environmental grief; because this is what's really at the core of how we approach the topic, as well as gardening itself, emotions are automatically rich and complex. Gardening is a very personal act, an expressive art, and like the students in my writing workshops, it takes time to learn how to speak to one another about our lives and to do so honestly so we can make constructive changes.

All that being said, I've run out of patience with some native plant proponents who are overly aggressive and hardline in their perspective. Yes, that will sound odd coming from me, someone who will always advocate for 100% native landscapes (please don't argue with me on what native is). The problem is we have folks in horticulture whose identity and livelihood is tied up in seeing plants as either pieces of art or commodities to earn a living from, or both; of course the conversation is going to escalate, it's human nature, especially at the start of a conversation where we all feel like we have something to defend that's intimate. (This is why many equate fundamentalist religion and native plants -- it's easy to feel judged, it's almost pre-built into our pscyhe.) I mean, we can't even discuss renewable energy without hand grenades going off about various socio-economic issues.

I'm never going to mix lots of exotic species into my garden designs, and I'm going to shake my head at overly designed landscapes many times a day, but I also know that even though all of us approach gardening differently (because we all are different), our end goals and desires and concerns are almost always similar: climate change, mass extinction, habitat loss, beauty, resilience, low maintenance, etc.

This is where I want to change how we talk to one another. I wouldn't call it an olive branch, but it's something I've learned talking about climate change: first you have to listen and find points of agreement before you can delve into the issues you see causing problems. A good pun doesn't hurt.

How can we discuss native plants without getting red hot in three seconds? By asking questions where we can find common ground in our own experiences and stories:

1) "Ok, we clearly don't agree about native plant percentages in a designed garden. Let's put that aside. What wildlife do you enjoy seeing in your garden?"
2) "Why do you like to garden? Why does it matter to you?"
3) "What can we do to address climate change and mass extinction in our private gardens, and then perhaps further out into our neighborhoods?"
4) "You love your heirloom daylily collection? Cool. No one's asking you to rip it out. But how can we increase ecosystem function with them? Maybe a ground layer of sedge, purple poppy mallow, or geranium. Maybe late-season flowering perennials that can help cover up the daylily foliage that gets ratty by late summer."

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Low Maintenance Garden Myths

2/11/2021

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Native plants are not low maintenance. You're likely to hear from folks that they are -- that just using natives means you can stand back and let the magic happen.

Your garden is STILL a garden -- an unnatural space that has little resemblance to what your natives plants evolved with in the wild. We're not only talking soil microbes but plant competition above and below ground, not to mention a host of other disturbances that constantly help shift plant communities from year to year and create dynamic stability. Your garden is a pampered space by default simply because 20 plants aren't trying to exist in the same square foot. Your garden needs tending -- but the tending will look different than the regimented, joyless slog that commercials suggest is necessary.

What does low maintenance mean?

1) It does not mean no maintenance.

2) Plants carefully researched to suit the site (soil, sun, slope).

3) Plants carefully researched to match one another in a dynamic community. This means considering seasonal and annual succession, root habit, above ground habit, etc. For more, see our online class "Fundamentals of Garden Layers."

4) Less weeding because you used way, way more plants than a traditional garden -- we're talking plugs on 6-12" centers, perhaps even combined with seeding a green mulch around them. Plus, you count on and want the plants to reproduce to give you more plants for even more ecosystem function.

5) Less watering because you matched plants to the site and to one another. So plants that like it dry are placed in dry conditions, plants that like it moist are placed in moist conditions, etc. The knowledge required goes well beyond a simple plant tag.

6) Plants that don't spread aggressively where you don't want them, creating a monoculture. This means you have to research the plants to know something about their behavior such as: how they propagate, how easily they propagate, in what site conditions, etc.

And the big one....

7) Low maintenance is also about a shift in perception to accepting that plant composition changes over time and we want that. Plants are not marble statues that never move and always look the same. Plants move, proliferate, diminish, self organize, and generally show us what and where they want to be. The problem is in traditional design and horticulture we treat plants like collector items and gardens like canvases, when plants are living organisms interacting often unpredictably with other living organisms, and we are simply managers. How we manage a garden dictates how much maintenance we feel a garden requires.

For example, if you believe plants should never spread and are constantly yanking seedlings, you may think the garden is high maintenance; same goes if you put a moisture-loving plant on a sandy slope and discover you have to water it every two days. Management is different than maintenance. In management we don't obsess over every plant or detail in a bed (no helicopter parenting), but let the plants guide the conversation a little bit more; we can let the plants lead because we researched the plants heavily before installation and studied wild plant communities and understand what they will do in the years to come. Obviously, every garden space is different and we can't predict with 100% accuracy what plants will do in that specific space, but the more knowledge you bring to the table the less maintenance you'll do. Instead, you'll be managing, learning from the plants with patience over the years, never assuming the garden or gardener is a failure if a plant performs in a way you didn't desire it to perform.

Gardens need tending. Even a lush, layered, natural garden using native plants in similar communities that are found in the wild. They shouldn't need fertilizing, watering, annual mulching, heavy weeding, or chemical spraying if you're planting them considering natural layers. But they will need management because things happen: storms, late freezes, voles, extreme drought, extreme flooding, natural lifespan, etc. You'll likely need to mow the space down every spring vs every week if it were lawn -- that is less maintenance off the bat, but not no maintenance. You'll need to thin, add, and replace -- but not constantly and maybe just once a year.

Maintenance tends to be joyless and soul sucking, a battle of wit and will; management is giving up some level of control and tending the space when it tells you it needs it. In this way management is a constant surprise that some may find challenging, and others inspiring and in sync with their own rhythm. If you can get to a place where plants are co-conspirators in habitat and design revival, then maintenance will never exist for you.

Coreopsis tripteris can reach 7 feet tall and spread aggressively by runners in loam (not so in clay). Careful placement and research to inform expectations will dictate "maintenance."

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Questions on the Mt. Cuba Coneflower Trials and Pollinators

2/1/2021

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I've written and erased a version of this post several times the last week trying to get the ideas down right -- this is a complex topic. Ultimately, I just want to ask questions and express some concerns I've not seen addressed elsewhere in my professional circle and see where it leads us (hopefully, somewhere helpful).

I'll say two things first: 1) I'd rather see a garden of coneflower cultivars than lawn or daylilies and 2) I have intense respect for the work Mt. Cuba does. We'd be in the dark without Mt. Cuba, yet this trial is just one preliminary, necessary step forward and not a final clear-cut answer.

If you don't know, the Echinacea trial evaluated coneflowers in the mid-Atlantic based primarily on garden performance -- how the plants grew, looked, and lasted. However, one issue regarding pollinators really stands out to me: the trial noted the number of adult pollinators visiting the blooms of cultivars, and used this to say which would be of best value to adult pollinators. This doesn't fly (pun intended) for a few reasons:

1) What species were visiting the blooms and how were they using the blooms? Until we have these answers we can't even begin to understand value or benefit or what's occurring in the ecosystem. There are nuances to nectar and pollen use, as well as life cycles and habits of various pollinator species, that help us get a much more complete picture of what's going on. I'd also like to know what pollinator species were showing floral fidelity.

2) What is the chemical and nutritional make up of the nectar and pollen? What amino acids (nectar) are being provided and what's the protein content (pollen)? Sure, it may very well be a cultivar is providing something a straight species can't -- or vice versa. There's also the nuance of these things being affected by climate, ecoregion, etc.

3) What's happening to UV markings on petals that plants use to communicate with adult pollinators? What about aromas? What about electromagnetic fields?

4) Tallamy's study a few years back on woody cultivar larval hosts indicated that changes to leaf color (leaf color effects larval host ability), specifically purple, greatly reduces larvae -- whereas variegation doesn't. Dr. Annie White looked at adult pollinators and flowers (species and cultivars) on herbaceous perennials and found mixed results on her preliminary study, but species plants had the edge. We know double-flowered coneflowers are terrible. However, I still wonder if, by selecting over and over for one trait (bloom color), we're creating a loss of genetic diversity that may translate into increased chances for something to be amiss in the foliage for larvae.

There's still so much we don't understand, especially on a region by region basis. Certainly, I also don't want to see these cultivars placed anywhere near remnant ecosystems that harbor straight species Echinacea, either (which would be my house). To fully understand the above issues will require a significant amount of resources we probably won't ever have; but I think it's as problematic for folks to say something like "see, when we manipulate plants it's all good and may even be better for wildlife" as it is for someone like me to say "we should always use straight species natives no matter what everywhere, every time, period."

And I still believe we can't have this conversation without also considering how we manipulate plants for commercial gain and / or to please the aesthetic desire of one dominate species, along with the messy ethical implications behind human supremacy that readily colonizes plant culture. But I wrote a book on that.

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Fundamentals of Natural Garden Design

1/26/2021

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I believe there are a few critical choices that gardeners must practice if they want their native plant garden to be both sustainable (with lots of ecosystem function) and look less weedy next to the traditional monoculture landscapes that dominate urban areas:

1) Selecting plants that are behaved and relatively short (under 3ft). This means doing research, as plants can spread / grow differently based on soil type, moisture levels, and levels of plant competition. This is one reason gardening by ecoregion vs. hardiness zone is a good idea.

2) Planting in drifts and masses. The larger the bed, the larger the masses and drifts. And you can do this in layers (ground, mid height, architectural).

3) Limiting blooms. In a smaller garden (under 1,000ft), having no more than 3 plants in bloom at any one time may show more control and less visual cacophony.

4) Employing a monochromatic base layer. This green mulch / matrix not only replaces annual wood mulch applications while fighting weeds and conserving soil moisture, it helps tie the landscape together and make it more legible. Consider how lawns do this.

5) Plan for winter interest. Many of our native grasses and herbaceous perennials carry much structural and textural interest deep into winter. Using the same principles as #2 above, we can hit two birds with one stones (please leave birds alone -- their numbers are falling fast).
Of course, every site requires nuance with the above points, so they are not hard and fast rules but more like core guidelines. And when we use native plant communities we increase ecological function, especially wildlife habitat.

If you want to learn more, try our online class "Fundamentals of Garden Layers." We'll dive into the above even further in Benjamin's new book Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (spring 2022).

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Prairie is Everywhere -- And it Can Heal Your Home Landscape

1/22/2021

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Chances are you have a native prairie, meadow, savanna, or grassland near you. Chances are your region was recently covered in prairie. Where you see a farm field it was likely prairie. Where you see a shopping mall it was likely prairie within the last century.

From the Gulf Coast of TX and LA, to the Palouse of WA and OR, the Great Basin desert step of UT and ID, large chunks of CA, the Mescalero Sandsheet of southeastern NM, and the Piedmont of VA, NC, SC, and GA, not to mention others like the longleaf pine savannas of FL, SC, AL, MS, LA, TX, or meadow remnants in TN and AR. Prairie is everywhere, not just in the center of the country.

As disturbed landscapes heal themselves, prairie / meadow is often the first stage of restoring ecosystem function; we can use principles from this natural succession in ecological garden design by first planting prairie and meadow plants that, over time, give way to a more woody or open canopy forest structure (if that is actually the late-succession / climax stage of your area). This succession rebuilds and heals the soil, increases water infiltration, and out competes weeds among a cadre of benefits. If you are converting from lawn -- even if you live in Maine -- the first step is likely a meadow.

So yes, if you can tell, I'm often asked if the principles, design ideas, and even plants I espouse here and across social media channels are relevant to Pennsylvania, Florida, or California. And while we should all be gardening with the local ecoregion in mind, we share many of the same plants as well as many of the same principles regarding ecological succession, matrix garden design, as well as the vast list of ecosystem services a garden can provide (cleaning air and water, providing habitat, reducing a structure's energy use, etc).

These ideas form the fundamental approach of my forthcoming book, Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (spring 2022), and are explored more in depth through online courses. Ultimately, what we can learn from one another across the country when it comes to sustainable and resilient garden design far outstrips what makes our gardens different. The things I've learned from southwest gardeners concerning drought tolerant landscapes is profound, just as I learn from conservationists in the southeast about the differences and similarities of their endemic grasslands and their struggle to reclaim ecological heritage.

Chances are, if you stop to research your ecoregion and locale, you'll find a prairie remnant that can teach you much about how to rebuild ecosystem function and habitat in your highly-disturbed home landscape. From lawn to meadow, from meadow to open woodland, from open woodland to forest, we can easily deliver habitat connectivity where we live while helping species adapt in a time of human supremacy and climate change.

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Looking Back on 2020

1/3/2021

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For all the angst, suffering, and downright conflict last year presented us, it also seemed to go by really fast. I walked the garden more times than ever in all seasons, and found great delight in discovering nuances I'd have glossed over if I had been busier -- even though I definitely was busy installing some 100,000 square feet of gardens this year.

Below please enjoy a quick stroll through some of my favorite landscape images of the front and back beds at HQ. If you follow me on social media (FB, TW, IG), you've seen the collages of client spaces as well as seasonal changes at HQ. My best to you all in this new year -- prairie up!

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2020 Garden Gift Guide (the Practical and Thinky)

11/30/2020

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Here are the practical and the dreamy for the garden lover in your life. Or, what works well for me after much trowel and error. And NB -- these are Amazon links, but I encourage you to get them from local shops when you can.

Fireman's Hose Nozzle
Tired of sprinkler nozzle handles breaking off? Or ones with odd water pressure? Try a fireman's nozzle, especially this one which I've had for years with no problem at all. Takes a licking and keeps on watering.

Expandable Hose
Gardens hose are a necessary evil, which is one reason I try to design drought tolerant gardens. The coil, kink, are heavy, and take up lots of space. Not an expandable hose. While it might rip if dragged too much over sharp stones or metal, and shouldn't be left out over winter, I'm smitten. It shrinks to half its size when drained and is as light as a feather -- and seldom if ever kinks. Bam.

Soil Knife
I don't need to try any other soil knife, or any other hand tool. This one saws through roots, cuts twine, treats clay soil like butter, and opens bags and boxes and more. #1 tool in the garden.

Gloves
I've spent decades trying to find the perfect garden glove -- one I can use while planting, watering, cutting, or hauling stone. There is no perfect glove, but this one gets close. You'll find others that will probably work just as well from different brands, but what I like about this design is a complete coating on the back of the hand (think abrasion and water resistance). There's a cooler summer work glove option, as well as an insulated autumn / winter option.

Books
These are garden design books that changed my perspective and helped me grow (I'd suggest my book but it's not a design book -- however, the next one will be, in 2022).

Planting in a Post-Wild World -- Thomas Rainer and Claudia West
The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden -- Roy Diblik
Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains -- Jon Farrar (ok, not a design book per se)
Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden -- Jessica Walliser
Pollinators of Native Plants -- Heather Holm

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Gardening With the Wrong Prairie Plants

11/21/2020

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how we choose garden plants; it's almost always about how the plant looks. And one thing that happens is a gardener may choose a native that isn't meant to live a long time, but when it dies it leaves a hole and the gardener feels like they have a black thumb in year two and three. This happens a lot with early-succession plants, or colonizers.

I'm thinking about Ratibida pinnata and Rudbeckia hirta. The former is a short-lived perennial meant to vanish over time when it's in a thick, naturally-layered and resilient bed. If you use it on its own there are many problems: it's too tall (flops) and too open (weeds can easily compete underneath). In a tallgrass prairie it's one of the first plants to move in but won't stay around in large numbers until the area is disturbed, often via fire.

Rudbeckia hirta is more like a biennial, with basal foliage the first year that's good at weed suppression, and in year two it flowers but by late summer is getting leggy and / or dying back in ugly fashion. So if you have an open garden bed, Rudbeckia looks great for a while, and it will even reseed, but you have to wait two years to get a similar show again, and by then weeds are back and the bed may look lopsided.

And maybe a big part of the issue we have with plants like the above is that we tend to treat them as static, sculptural individuals. These plants evolved to grow in a rich, lush, layered, dynamic, ever-changing landscape. A traditional garden bed is too often the opposite -- specimens placed individually apart from others in single layers with wood mulch meant to look the same for a decade. For example, if you put a grouping of Ratibida pinnata (a tall plant) behind a grouping of shorter Asclepias tuberosa, it's going to 1) look weird and 2) behave in ways detrimental to the health and longevity of the bed. Those Ratibida are going to slouch over the Asclepias and fade away. These plants did not evolve in this kind of community.

This drift of Rudbeckia hirta occurred only one time -- in the second year of this meadow.

One way to rectify the situation is to bring in sedges -- Carex radiata, Carex praegracilis-- or some bunchgrasses like Bouteloua curtipendula and Schizachyrium scoparium. What we're doing is building the layers and community, creating some buttresses for the taller forb, and ensuring weeds will have no long-term foothold or new space to move into. It's also going to look so much better -- fuller and more uniform in all seasons.

If you walk into a prairie it's more likely you'll see small groupings or even smatterings of individual Ratibida and Rudbeckia. Now, in a home garden where it's critical to up the aesthetic show, we can bring in more of each species in larger masses -- but we still absolutely have to have the main component of the wild community they came from, plant layers underneath and alongside, especially the grasses. We can up the layering and seasonal show even more by including Callirhoe involucrata, Liatris punctata, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium, Baptisia minor, and Solidago flexicaulis -- all weaving in and out of the sedge and grasses like we'd see in a prairie, but brought down to scale and floral impact for the home garden. If we don't have those other forbs in the mix, then in a few years (if we're dependent on the Ratibida and Rudbeckia) we'll have few to no flowers at all.

So let's bullet point the above:

Choose a diversity of plants from the same wild plant community.
Include plants from various functional layers: groundcover, mid height, tall architectural.
Have roughly 50% of the bed in sedge and / or bunchgrass.
Plan to replant early-successional colonizers in a few years if you want them to stay around.

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Seeding a Prairie Bed

10/26/2020

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With cooler weather comes seeding season. After a few hard freezes and before the new year is the best time to sow, giving seeds ample time to be stratified and break dormancy for spring germination. Following is a brief guide on creating a custom seed mix and sowing it by hand.

Generally speaking, a prairie-style seeding has the following ratios:

50 seeds / ft
50% grass (25 seeds / ft)
50% forbs (25 seeds / ft)

Let’s break the percentages down further on our 50/50 mix into functional groups that fill various ecological niches:

35% warm season grass
15% cool season grass and / or sedge
10% legumes
10% annuals
30% perennials

Why are we using these percentages? While some site and / or aesthetic goals will require different percentages, this is generally a solid breakdown to hit as many goals as possible at one time. The warm season grasses will do the bulk of the matrix work, while the cool season grasses and sedge will help with weed control and site stabilization in the shoulder seasons when they grow most actively. Legumes add nitrogen to the soil, while annuals provide first year weed competition, erosion control, and color. Perennial flowers will do the bulk of the aesthetic show, and within their 30% is a mix of early successional species as well as those that take longer to establish but that are also longer lived. Now, let’s take a look at a sample list and seed weights; do note that this is a very basic list using illustrative species and is not necessarily meant for application.

THE SEEDS

Since you’ll be buying seed by the ounce, you’ll need to know how many seeds are in an ounce; that information (along with more details on germination codes) can be found most easily online at Prairie Moon Nursery for each species you’re using.

Calculating seeds per foot
Here's a sample calculation for Sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), assuming it alone would comprise the warm-season grass category:

50 seeds per foot x 0.35 (35%) = 17 seeds per foot
17 seeds per foot x 2,000 square feet = 34,000 seeds
34,000 seeds / 6,600 seeds per ounce = 5.15oz

For a 2,000’ area at 50 seeds per foot on bare soil, our seed list might look like this:

35% warm season grass (17 seeds/ft)
Bouteloua curtipendula
6,600 seeds per ounce, 17 seeds per foot, 34,000 seeds = 5.15oz

15% cool season grass / sedge (8/ft)
Carex brevior
29,000 seeds per ounce, 4 seeds per foot, 8,000 seeds = 0.28oz

Carex rosea
53,000 per oz, 4 seeds per foot, 8,000 seeds = 0.15oz

10% legumes (6/ft)
Amorpha canascens
16,000 seeds per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 0.375oz

Dalea purpurea
15,000 seeds per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 0.375oz

10% annuals (6/ft)
Coreopsis tinctoria
87,500 seed per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 0.069oz

Chamaecrista fasciculata
2,700 seeds per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 2.2oz

30% perennials (15/ft)
Zizia aurea
11,000 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 = 0.36oz

Echinacea pallida
5,200 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 = 0.77oz

Asclepias tuberosa
4,300 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.93oz

Pycnanthemum tenuifolium
378,000 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.01oz

Rudbeckia hirta (pioneer / early successional)
92,000 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.043oz

Liatris aspera
16,000, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.25oz

Ratibida pinnata (pioneer / early successional)
30,000, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.13oz

Symphyotrichum laeve
55,000, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.07oz

Total weight of pure live seed -- 11.162oz

There’s probably not a magic bullet on creating a custom seed mix. Generally, I’m trying to give you a middle-of-the road baseline which you can tweak. Warm season grass seed may do best with a late spring seeding -- but it also might not be practical, which is why doubling its rate in a dormant seeding may be a good idea. Seeds of any plant type can be eaten or washed away or just never do anything, so I subscribe to the more-is-better-if-you-can-afford-it scenario. When you buy seed you should see a tag that shows PLS (pure live seed); this percentage is calculated by taking into consideration seed purity, germination rate, and seed dormancy. You can use PLS to increase or decrease rates of each species based on the expected germination rate. See, it gets quite complex, and if it’s too much for you right now just know that the most important aspect in a seeding is diversity -- diversity of species, niches, and ecosystem function so we create resilience. The above list could easily benefit from increased diversity in habit, succession, bloom color, bloom time, and bloom sequence, for example.

In the end, we simply want to cover the ground ASAP and we want competition ASAP; the more plants we have with a diversity of functional groups, the sooner a garden can perform ecosystem services. Several studies of prairie restorations show that the ratio of survival from seed to mature plant is generally around 5-10%, so if you want 5 plants per square foot you’ll need to sow 50 seeds per square foot.

BROADCASTING SEED

A person can do 1 acre tossing seed by hand in under a day, and most people reading this book probably won’t be sowing anywhere near this size. To get a more uniform seed distribution when hand sowing you’ll want to use a very slightly moistened or dry seed carrier, a medium that bulks up the mix. Most folks use compost, sand, sawdust, or vermiculite at a rate of 0.5 cubic feet (3.75 gallons) per 1,000 square feet. However, for small areas, you can eyeball it -- one handful of seed per 4-5 handfuls of carrier. I prefer vermiculite, which isn’t heavy like sand or compost and, to my eye, provides the most even seed distribution with the carrier (you can also see where your seed has landed very easily -- broadcasting on top of puffy snow that does not have a surface layer of ice on a sunny day also works well). You do not want to hand broadcast on a windy day -- generally, less than 10mph is good, and 0 is best. Walking with the wind to your back is also helpful as a light breeze can help carry the seed forward as you broadcast.

Divide your seed mix + carrier in half; walking one way broadcast the first half, then walking perpendicular broadcast the second half. Be stingy as it's better to have too much than not enough, but you won't hit every square foot and you don't necessarily have to. In the first growing season mow the area down to 4-6" when weeds get 8-12" tall. In the second season mow or trim the space at 12" tall to continue depriving annual weeds of flowering and setting seed.

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How to Show Weedy Purpose and Avoid Fines

9/20/2020

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No topic is hotter than how to avoid and / or work with weed control when they come with a stern letter. In my town, any report filed online by a neighbor must be followed up with an inspection and letter. Sometimes it really is a weedy landscape full of invasive threats, and sometimes it's a well-intentioned gardener who, for a myriad of reasons, has a garden that's a bit too wild.

I've written before on how plant selection and management is critical, and how gardeners often don't give these things enough research and attention. But if you are in a predicament where you can't start from scratch -- or do a significant makeover -- there are some strategies to employ which show your landscape has purpose, at least to the casual passerby.

Let's explore our garden at HQ, which has had its run ins with the law. And that's ok -- you can't change minds or policies by playing it safe with a monoculture of lawn. So first up, the oldest part of the 1/4 acre suburban lot:

Let's all agree that this is a "wild" garden by any standard definition of traditional suburban landscaping. There's no lawn for starters, but further, the plants are diverse, not tiered by height, and spreading organically. Some would call it messy, some would call it lush and healthy. I want you to put post-it notes or fingers over the wooden bridge, arbor, and fountain. What happens? It's a patch of (pretty? functional?) weeds. Someone has clearly let it go (I confess I have this year purposefully, as a way to repair damage and let the plants fill in some spots, teaching me what / how / where to manage next year -- a very different kind of gardening for sure).

But include those three hardscape features (bridge, arbor, fountain) and something happens -- the garden is shown to have purpose. It is an intentional space. Not only that, but these linear, hard objects give the eye some place to anchor upon, making the plants more legible. It's a simple trick, and while it won't please or convince everyone, it will likely convince those who matter most. Other objects one could use are sculptures, benches, and trellises.

This second image is our front yard, and the plants were chosen even more intentionally because it is a more visible space (it's not behind a fence). So to start off, read the posts I linked to above about plant selection and management. While plant choice and management -- thinning, adding -- count for a whole lot, so does a six-foot-wide lawn pathway moving up the middle of the two beds and up around the front of the house. That delineation serves as a place for the eye to rest and to be anchored, and a welcoming access point to move through the wilder landscape; it also ties into the rest of the lawn-dominated suburban neighborhood even if the lawn is not 100% perfectly-manicured fescue. In addition, there is a small sign saying that this is a pollinator garden with a website for more information.

These small strategies can go a long way toward both avoiding and working with weed control. So while your first priority is likely to be removing really tall plants or those that flop over onto sidewalks -- and some that have spread too easily -- your second priority is to include a bench, an arbor, a path, a sign, or a sculpture to show intentional gardening and not just laziness. If we're going to change minds we can't forget that especially in lived, urban areas, there are still de-facto gardening rules -- and playing with them, bending their seeming constraints, can lead to some real creativity, satisfaction, and ecosystem function (wildlife habitat, storm water runoff mitigation, soil stabilization, air cleaning / cooling...). Prairie up.

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Letting Plants Find Their Way

9/2/2020

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Our goal is always to put the right plant in with the right plant communities. In a hybrid approach where ornamental layers are placed purposefully with plugs, and a matrix of grass is sown in, the realization that plants are not static but dynamic will soon become evident. It’s our ability to embrace that dynamism and competition that sets apart natural gardens from their traditional counterparts.

In a smaller garden we’d be wise to choose plants that are generally behaved clumpers -- they won’t spread too much by runners or sowing. But even site conditions can affect these plants, as clay soil and dense, layered vegetation will inhibit plant reproduction (in general) while loamy or sandy soil with less plant competition will encourage it (in general). If the majority of plants that are best suited to your site tend to have aggressive natures, it’s best to use ALL aggressive plant species so they butt heads, collide, and help keep each other in check.

We also shouldn’t place plants based on their mature size. If a plant tag, aka thorough internet and book research, shows a full grown plants gets 3’ wide we should still plant it 12” from its neighbor. Why would you do that, especially when plants cost money and losing even one can be like a shot to the heart? Because our goal is to cover the ground ASAP, preferably in the first year and definitely by summer of the second year. Place your plants based on size at the time of installation; over time, the more robust species and specimens will out compete the lesser ones, and that’s ok as long as the ground stays covered in the future.

Once those plants get going and are competing healthily it’s time to crack open a hard lemonade. You can crack open another one when you start seeing plants move around and find their own way -- which is exactly what we want as they fill in, create layers, and augment the design we kickstarted. You can always thin and transplant -- that’s what gardeners do -- but you’ll be surprised and even thankful at what the plants teach as they shuffle, thrive, and falter. Let that dynamic purpose have its way, especially since you planned for it by using multiple layers and plants suited for the site. You’ve also planned for plants to fill niches -- layers of succession and layers of seasonality, as well as layers in time.

Consider Rudbeckia hirta, a freely-self sowing biennial that can often be the scourge of the garden creating a monoculture. However, you can be a Rudbeckia whisperer. Black-eyed susan as first year basal foliage that is well-suited to erosion control and shading out weed seeds in the soil surface. You’ll even get a few first-year flowers to appease neighbors and bees. In the second year the fuller flower flush will appear alongside some of the early-establishing perennials, and in year three -- once the perennials have really started to fill in -- the Rudbeckia seeds will have less light in which to germinate. If you seeded in a bunchgrass matrix, the grasses will now allow the black-eyed susan to create little charming stands or solitary spikes of flowers, in balance with the competition provided by the grasses.

One final strategy to consider when using a matrix is based on how grasses tend to dominate in both a prairie and a garden. In some ways we want lots of grasses, as they are effective at erosion and weed control while providing critical wildlife habitat. Still, we obviously want flowers (and so do pollinators and spiders and birds). Something to consider when choosing forbs is to select plants the spread by rhizome or root runners, as well as those that tend to produce good amounts of seed. That last point is counter intuitive to what we explored above, about not using free-seeding flowers in a small bed; and that still holds true for a small bed. But in larger areas approaching several thousand square feet, we want to have at least a few plants that cast their seed around -- and maybe we especially want those that drop seed near the mother plant to create larger colonies, masses, and drifts.

You can see there’s a lot to consider, but I wouldn’t want to do without at least 40-50% grass cover because of their many benefits to ecosystem function -- either using them in intermingled or matrix designs. If you find grasses starting to tip the balance too much, say 70%, management like early summer mowing, dormant forb overseeding, and definitely planting more plugs in fall will all turn the tide.

*The above is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Reprairie Suburbia: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (2022).

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Late Summer in the Suburban Prairie

8/17/2020

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Here in eastern Nebraska this growing season has been met with a late April snow, cool / moist May, very hot and dry June into July, then an early fall in August but still fairly dry. The plants keep plugging along, even if some are shorter than usual (Eutrochium, Vernonia, Silphium). Please enjoy some images of HQ. If you want to stay on top of all the plants, gardens, and wildlife we run across, Instagram is the way to go!

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On Manifest Destiny, Violence, Racism, Prairie, & Liberation Gardening

8/4/2020

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The other night I was reading part of a book I bought as research for my unwritten Oklahoma memoir (because I apparently like to think about 5 different projects at once). It was a collection of accounts from Native Americans who survived the 1868 Washita Massacre led by Custer on peace chief Black Kettle's encampment along the Washita River in western Oklahoma -- a massacre that happened an hour upstream from where my family homesteaded three decades later.

Returning Cheyenne who fled the event found mutilated bodies stripped naked and placed in sexually suggestive poses. I'd tell you more details but I can't stomach it.

This level of violence hasn't ended though. Maybe it takes on different forms at times and becomes more subtle and sinister. We live in a violent culture founded by violent means. Every luxury is given to us through a series of violent acts in a supply chain of subjugation and irreverence and supremacy.

I completed a rough draft of the new garden book's first chapter yesterday morning, a chapter that explores what prairie is and its ecological history using this material as the basis for a lesson on garden design. But then I realize -- garden design is a luxury given to us through a series of violent acts. This house I live in and land upon which I garden, the plants erased, the plants grown with fossil fuels in pots produced by fossil fuels shipped with fossil fuels extracted in sensitive and often public ecosystems sold for cheap. I don't know how long it might take for a lush, natural garden filled with native plants to undo the damage done by our privilege, but I suspect it won't occur in my lifetime or my son's. If ever.

Is gardening an escape from such "dark" thoughts, something to soothe and heal our emotions and get us through? Of course. But if that's all it is then it is an act of denial, of turning one's head or sticking it in the sand, ultimately making gardening hollow and almost as egregious as what we do to other species and to one another.

If having our hands in the soil is to make the kind of difference we intend it to have, we need to reckon with the history and reality of what we do, where we are, and how we live. That's not unpatriotic or destructive -- it's liberating as we sabotage the power structures that limit our compassion and strength.

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Still Seeing Mulch Years Later? Plant More.

7/30/2020

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If you planted a garden 2-3 years ago and you still see lots of wood mulch, then you need more plants. You're probably still seeing a decent number of weeds at this point, too (mulch isn't a magic weed bullet and, if too thick, often creates an ideal seed bed). So, you know, more plants. More layers. More density.

And if you are planting a garden today think about where you do AND don't want to be in 2-3 years:

1) Only put down 1" of mulch if you're using it. More mulch = less plant sowing while generally inhibiting forb and grass growth.

2) Put plants on 12" centers (12" apart) and no more.

3) Consider mixing potted plants and seeds to increase coverage. In spring sow grasses and annuals among what you planted. In mid to late fall consider a dormant seeding of perennial forbs among what you planted. (Maybe what you plant is the highly designed part, or plants that need a head start because they work on roots first like Baptisia and Amorpha and Silphium).

What do you do if you're on a constrained budget?

1) See #3 above. The best advice is to plant the architectural plants -- trees, shrubs, and perennial flowers -- that take longer to establish and serve as the backbone for the design. You may also want to plant aggressive species and let them start to self so or run asap.

2) Get plugs. Most landscapers and nurseries get their plant material from wholesalers, and that requires a business license. But you can also get them (if you're east of the Great Plains) via Izel Native Plants which works as a middleman for wholesalers to sell to the public. That means if you need plants in quantities of 32 and 50 you can get them for a much better per-plant cost.

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The Deep Middle

Urban Meadow at UNMC

It's Time to Stop Saying "Native Plant Nazi"

Prairie Up -- Making Urban Meadows

Sedge Meadow Garden Examples

American Gardens

On Giving Plant Advice

How We Talk About Native Plants

Low Maintenance Garden Myths

Questions on the Mt. Cuba Coneflower Trials and Pollinators

Fundamentals of Natural Garden Design

Prairie is Everywhere -- And it Can Heal Your Home Landscape

Looking Back on 2020

2020 Garden Gift Guide (the Practical and Thinky)

Gardening With the Wrong Prairie Plants

Seeding a Prairie Bed

How to Show Weedy Purpose and Avoid Fines

Letting Plants Find Their Way

Late Summer in the Suburban Prairie

On Manifest Destiny, Violence, Racism, Prairie, & Liberation Gardening

Still Seeing Mulch Years Later? Plant More.

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July 2007 - May 2017

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The Deep Middle

About

Archives

Original Archives1,257 posts fromJuly 2007 - May 2017

Garden Timelapse

Original Archives

1,257 posts from

July 2007 - May 2017