Blog Posts

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

1/22/2021

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.

Looking Back on 2020

1/3/2021

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!

2020 Garden Gift Guide (the Practical and Thinky)

11/30/2020

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

Gardening With the Wrong Prairie Plants

11/21/2020

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.

Seeding a Prairie Bed

10/26/2020

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.

How to Show Weedy Purpose and Avoid Fines

9/20/2020

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.

Letting Plants Find Their Way

9/2/2020

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).

Late Summer in the Suburban Prairie

8/17/2020

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!

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

8/4/2020

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.

Still Seeing Mulch Years Later? Plant More.

7/30/2020

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.

Milkweed and Flowers, Habitat and Design

7/22/2020

I struggle with finding the middle ground for advocacy. On the one hand are folks concerned primarily about plants as being hosts for insect larvae, yet not paying enough attention to the designed community of plants and how that creates the needed habitat for egg laying to even occur. And then on the other hand are folks who focus on the designed plant community while privileging flowers as being critical for adult pollinators, yet not paying enough attention to producing more insect young via host plants.

These two groups can broadly be labeled as wildlife enthusiasts and landscape designers, respectively. They both "get it" but from different ends of the spectrum that are essentially the same. The former group tends to eschew tenets of design -- succession, community, form, texture -- while the latter tends to eschew wildlife reproduction in favor of color and ambience. (These are broad generalizations, so forgive me if you don't agree or fit in neatly on one end of the spectrum -- I'm just making partially unfair blanket observations to get to a point.)

My new book will attempt to better align these two perspectives, as both are critical for the success of urban gardens that both appeal to and involve people and wildlife together. It is critical that people find nature-inspired gardens beautiful, while it is just as critical that wildlife find them beautiful as well. Just because one has host plants does not mean the garden is beautiful to wildlife, and just because one has a diversity of flowers doesn't mean the garden is beautiful to wildlife.

Take monarch butterflies who must have milkweed to reproduce -- especially in spring and summer. They also must have a community of plants that both provide habitat for other species in the same food web as well as providing ecosystem services year round (cleaning water, amending soil, cooling the air, preventing erosion, creating winter habitat for hibernating insects and bugs, etc). And a critical part of that plant community is nectar plants for adult migrating monarchs come later summer and into fall, especially a diversity of aster and goldenrod species among others (late boneset, ironweed, blue sage, sunflowers, etc). However, growing certain milkweed species will result in plants that may spread too aggressively or become too tall, or otherwise might need selective thinning to maintain a design that isn't a threat to the mow and blow crowd.

Sure, plant Asclepias syriaca, but it tends to work better aesthetically in a larger landscape or as a few individual stems in the back or middle of a border. Shorter, more clumping-like species such as A, tuberosa may work, or even those that are short yet also seem to self sow around like A. verticillata. And among these milkweed ensure you have layers of diverse native plants that provide flowers (and host larvae of other insect species) from April to October, along with an intermix of sedge and grass -- and even a clump of shrubs and trees -- that mutually support one another and even more wildlife than just one butterfly species all year round.

I suppose my greatest concern is this: that we might garden for one species at the exclusion of others while justifying that exclusion with whatever validates our point of view. That can be unkempt wildness without a nod to structural diversity and necessary aesthetics (uber gardening for one butterfly species even), or a focus on flower color and diversity for human appreciation / acceptance that may primarily support adult insect species at the exclusion of a diversity of plants that produce insect young. Are these ideologically-opposed perspectives? Heck no. But the balance can easily get out of whack as passions grow. Creating gardens that are as beautiful for all species together, at once, is a hard task that requires focus, knowledge, and in many respects a type of gardening that balances the very fine line of too wild and not wild enough. That's the gardener's dilemma in a world of mass extinction and climate change, where one species has privileged itself at the expense of others. How much do we "garden," and what does "gardening" look like in a world we've reshaped in our own image?

Lessons of a Backyard Meadow

7/5/2020

We moved to our home in 2007, and for a few years I mowed and fertilized and even watered diligently. Then I just got fed up with spending an hour every week in the heat as I watched an adjacent 1,500ft garden fill in and support wildlife. Until 2015 I neglected the back lawn, some 3,000ft or so, and as a result the tall fescue got a little patchy and weak. It burned bad every August and, in 2013-2014 some prairie grasses began moving in. Ok, I thought, the landscape of benign neglect was telling me something.

So in the fall of 2015 I scalped the back lawn hard, planted a few hundred plugs, and sowed some prairie grass and forb seed.

2020

In the spring of 2016 I mowed short to try and keep the fescue back and allow sunlight on to the soil surface more for seed germination. About June I stopped. I read somewhere that if you let a fescue lawn go to seed it weakens the grass; I'm not sure if that's true (let me know), but I do know that by the end of the first year I had little bluestem and sideoats grama in almost every square inch.

In 2017 biennial forbs really came on and totally smothered the lawn. The two workhorses were mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera) and black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta). These guys seemed to do a number on the fescue in the first half of the year, totally shading, outcompeting, and generally smothering -- of course, I did sow them fairly thickly. By the end of the season the warm season grasses had taken over the job, and in all but the shadiest areas where the warm season native grasses did not take as well, the fescue lawn all but vanished. But I still had a dearth of perennial flower younglings from what I could tell, so I kept planting a few dozen plugs here and there every spring and fall -- which I still do as I tweak, replace, augment, etc.

2017

In the annual mow that occurs every March, both the thatch layer and what the mower left behind is very thick, so I hand rake all 2,500ft every two years. I want to encourage all the flower seeds I know are out there from the past few years -- as well as the seed I kept throwing out -- and it paid off in two ways. First, in 2019 I had a massive abundance of various aster species and and an increase in slower growing forbs like Baptisia. More and more seedlings seemed to appear throughout the summer, and by fall I had a very showy aster display. However, that aster abundance primarily occurred right at the edge of a shade line from my neighbor's trees on the south side. Out in the full sun area, forbs that like it dry and sunny were growing fuller (while the warm season grasses were thick and lush.

This year is perhaps the thickest the space has ever been, and that's with a lack of June rain and tons of early heat. Forbs are starting to move in from that southerly shade line and are, surprisingly, affecting the density of little bluestem and sideoats grama around and under them. I want and need that grass layer -- that green mulch -- which is a superb weed barrier and soil moisture regulator, so I'm thinking it might be time for some sedge: Carex radiata or Carex blanda that can grow in the shade of taller forbs. Or, I need to do a June trim of many forbs.

I can say this for certain -- I have too many ironweed (Vernonia spp) seedlings. It really went to town this year germinating, and if I'm not careful I'll be left with an ironweed and indiangrass meadow.

I need to do a more formal survey of species density and diversity. While it's certainly not a prairie reconstruction, it is a garden that needs to mimic some of the attributes of a restoration. The primary plants I've added this year are groundcovers such as wine cups (Callirhoe involucrata) and wild geranium (Geranium maculatum).

I've also added some spreaders like Coreopsis palmata and Pycnanthemum virginanum to provide larger floral masses or drifts at low to mid level heights that match the stature of the shorter warm season grasses.

If I had to do this all over again I'd have killed the lawn in one fell swoop and employed a greater degree of patterns with which the garden could grow from. However, it has been fascinating to watch the plants convert lawn for me in slow motion, and to observe general behaviors in what amounts to a hodgepodge I'm backwards designing as I observe succession and competition. In the end, the ground is covered, the primary weed threat is manageable and woody (red cedar, siberian elm, grey dogwood), and there's always something moving in the plants: snake, rabbit, spider, dragonfly, bee, beetle, bird.

A Shady Sedge Meadow -- One Year On

5/27/2020

You can have a lush, gorgeous, wildlife supporting garden in shade. You can have native plants and not just the default hosta or astilbe. You can have a low maintenance space that requires no fertilizer, no supplemental watering, and only one annual mowing. But you'll have to replace some of the plants that bunnies eat.

Below is a quick trip through one client's front yard makeover: how we did it, what we used, and what issues have arisen after one year. The space was installed in May 2019 while the after images come from May 2020.

This Lincoln landscape is in an older, urban neighborhood that's well maintained (from a traditional mow and blow perspective). The front yard has several mature oak trees that provide shade to 85% of the beds, except for one corner that gets a few hours of late afternoon and evening sun. In that corner we placed more sun-loving forbs.

You'll notice the white flags, which will be the path, and blue flags that show the edge of the main area. We hope to extend that area further down hill in the future and take out more lawn; as the client says, their goal was to have less to mow and provide more for pollinators (as well as have lots of sedge -- but we'll get to that soon). I was also convinced to leave a few of the hosta on site, and I'm glad I was as they aid in some first year texture until the new native forbs get established.

We spray killed the lawn to limit soil disturbance; limiting disturbance means fewer weed problems, and dead grass provides a weed barrier, erosion control, and a temporary mulch for the first year. I usually arrive about an hour before my crew to start laying out plants. In this case I had about a dozen forbs and five species of sedge. For the sedge, I interwove and interlocked large groupings of Carex albicans, blanda, brevior, eburnea, and radiata. Each sedge provides different growth styles and texture, along with variable seed heads in early summer. Some of the shade forbs we used include:

Phlox divaricata (woodland phlox)
Aquilegia canadensis (wild columbine)
Geranium maculatum (wild geranium)
Anemone virginiana (tall thimbleweed)
Thalictrum dioicum (early meadow rue)
Solidago flexicaulis (zigzag goldenrod)
Symphyotrichum lateriflorum (calico aster)
Polygonatum biflorum (solomon's seal)
Asarum canadense (wild ginger)

The sedge has grown far more quickly than I anticipated -- partly because the soil is loose and rich, and partly because these species are adapted to shade. This good shade under oaks also increases soil moisture in the cool growing seasons (spring and fall) while keeping weeds down. Rabbits have gone after young forbs somewhat aggressively, so until those plants get established and start spreading, chicken wire cages have been employed. Other than that, the garden requires only an early March mow and no watering.

Can't have a meadow under mature trees? Sure you can. A sedge meadow.

On Not Pulling a Weed

4/11/2020

Weed mitigation is one of the most important aspects of creating a low-maintenance pollinator garden. Often, this mitigation needs to start weeks and months before the first plant goes in the ground in order to clean up a space gone feral. But what happens when weeds keep popping up, especially in that important first year after planting when weed management is critical?

Don't pull weeds if you can help it. What happens when you do?

1) You expose dormant weed seeds embedded in the soil that come up with that weed, and then they germinate and you have more weeds.

2) That wound in the bed, full of exposed soil, is the perfect growth medium for a weed seed to blow in on and germinate.

Just as in site prep as in weeding, the less disturbance you can create in the soil the better. This is why we are not advocates of tilling or sod cutting.

Sometimes it's best to deadhead weeds as they flower, especially if they are annuals like foxtail, either by hand or mowing; often in the first year of a meadow or prairie garden, mowing keeps weeds down and prevents them from competing with the native plants while the latter work on roots. Some deeply-taprooted, perennial weeds won't even budge, and you might have to kill them via other targeted means.

As for dandelions, let's welcome them in our beds. Not so much because they provide a good nutritional source of pollen for bees (they don't), but because they provide a solid green mulch and their taproots help open up clay soil. Green mulch is the key, because we don't tend to see wood mulch in prairies -- and there's a reason for that. Wood mulch can never work as effectively as green mulch, and can certainly never create the kind of ecosystem function (think runoff mitigation) or habitat that plants can. A densely layered garden is shading out weed seedlings while taking soil nutrients away from weed seedling's roots -- there's just no room to get a foothold.

We design gardens to get as much green cover as soon as possible. This may mean planting on 10-12" centers, or combining seeding with plugs. The latter looks like this: we design drifts and masses of forbs by planting plugs, then we sow in a matrix grass often alongside annuals and biennials. Sowing annual flowers with the matrix grass means we get even more cover sooner, but we also have some first year color since even perennial plugs will take a year or three to bloom. On some sites with very aggressive perennial weeds, it might be worth experimenting with very aggressive native plants.

Overall, try to refrain from yanking a weed and think about what it will take to restore ecological balance to your garden by using plants, otherwise you will be intensively weeding the rest of your life.

Most importantly, realize that every site presents unique challenges and opportunities -- there's seldom a one-size-fits-all solution. And even when we think there's a solution, nature throws a curve ball and we have to adapt after planting and rethink management.

Don't give up. Don't think it's too hard. This takes time. The garden you are making is one of the most important places for wildlife in your neighborhood. Keep at it. Learn. Let the space teach you. Evolve and thrive.

To Spray or Not to Spray -- Garden Site Prep and Reviving Biodiversity

4/6/2020

In a recent newsletter I shared with folks a plan to DIY prep garden spaces over the summer, just in case nurseries and landscapers had to shut down this spring and could not reopen until later in the summer or fall. Autumn may actually be the best time to plant -- with less weed competition, more steady rains, and cooler temps that reduce both human and plant stress during install.

I mentioned that in considering lawn removal or bed prep, herbicide may be needed to kill grass or to make repeated controls over extremely weedy areas. For the latter, you want to kill off the current vegetation, allow weed seeds to germinate and reach several inches tall, then kill off again and again; performing this regimen helps exhaust the weed seed bank, a bank that would otherwise ruin the aesthetics of the design, impede establishment for plants you do want (and paid good money for), as well as reducing management time the first year or two when weeding will take up 99% of your garden life. [A note on weeding post planting -- it's best NOT to use chemical control if you can avoid it since you might damage "good" plants or harm wildlife. However, pulling weeds simply brings new weed seeds to the surface. Clipping or mowing weeds before they bloom will reduce weed seed production and may be the best method of weeding as the garden establishes.]

What ensued after the newsletter were many emails, some using swear words, pleading with me to not recommend the use of any herbicides for any reason at all. I can not make that kind of sweeping recommendation at this time. And if you are willing to hear me out, here's why:

The selective use of some herbicides are essential to controlling invasive weeds. Prairie and woodland conservationists know this, and herbicide used selectively (to target specific species and specific plants or stands of plants) is critical to reviving diverse habitat for wildlife and ecosystem function.
Herbicide for lawn removal is not only inexpensive, but less polluting (one common chemical may also be less toxic than common organic treatments). To remove lawn effectively one would need a sod cutter, a machine that spews out noxious chemicals. More importantly, sod cutters also increase soil disturbance, which is the very last thing you want in prepping a garden site. That newly-opened soil now has exposed weed seeds ready to take off like gangbusters. When you spray kill a lawn you are leaving the dead lawn in place, which helps control weeds and reduce erosion by acting as a mulch layer. Sure, you could smother the lawn in cardboard and wood mulch, but doing so impedes air and water transfer to / from the soil, reduces soil moisture, increases pests, and makes the planting (and sowing) of a designed meadow garden significantly harder. In other words, don't sheet mulch.
Using an herbicide one time to prep a landscape for a sustainable, biodiverse, ecologically-thriving landscape is worlds apart from millions of commodity farm fields where a monoculture exists and demands multiple sprays year round for decades. Using an herbicide formulation in the home landscape that targets only foliage -- one that is not a pre-emergent -- reduces the impact of the chemical on wildlife, as does following product directions for factors like temperature, wind speed, and time of day
If you are an older individual, someone with sudden fatigue syndrome, have a bad back, or are in some other way physically limited by how much you can do, employing an herbicide can be a god send. Same goes if you have limited financial resources that can be better used on procuring plants, because the more plants you have the more sustainable and manageable the space will be -- aka green mulch.
I'm not an apologist for the wholesale slathering of our nation in pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides, or the large corporations who buy the government to increase profits while our planet's health deteriorates. I know our food and water is poisoned. I am as angry and horrified as the next person. However, the strategic and careful use of herbicides to revive ecological function and biodiversity in the urban environment (and reduce another chemically-dependent monoculture called lawn) is an essential component to sustainable design that actually protects the environment; from invasive weeds getting a foot hold to reducing site erosion, herbicides are an important tool among many. Each site is different, each landowner is different, requiring nuanced approaches tailored to each circumstance. No matter which method you choose to create a native plant garden for wildlife inspired by your local ecoregion, it's important to carefully consider the benefits and drawbacks of each method, including time, cost, labor, pollution, and long-term management goals.

In summary, the benefits of spray killing lawn or weedy beds to prep for a new garden are:

Less soil disturbance
Fewer weeds
Minimizes erosion
More affordable (and don't solarize -- it kills soil life and produces plastic waste)
Less physically demanding
Results come sooner (which means fewer weeds, less erosion / runoff, etc)
More ecological benefits sooner

In the end we ALL have the same goal -- to revive wildness wherever we can while being wise stewards of nature in the places we live, work, and play. We will get there. We have to .

Post Script ---- In reply on various social media channels, a common refrain from folks has been that wood mulch is a stupendous weed inhibitor. First, wood mulch has to be re-applied every 1-2 years, and if you apply it too thickly it's simply a topsoil layer that weed seeds love to germinate in. On clay you don't want a thick mulch layer otherwise the soil drowns, which means the mulch is so thin weeds still have an easy go and / or it washes away into storm drains.

Second -- and more importantly -- wood mulch inhibits self sowing and plant spread. We want our garden plants to spread ASAP in order to create both an ecological community and to out compete weeds (not to mention slow erosion, sequester carbon, shade / cool our homes, etc). Wood mulch keeps plants in a perpetual state of establishment -- a common refrain espoused by landscape architect Thomas Rainer. In my design practice, we often use a combination of plugs and seeding to create a dense, layered bed quickly, something wood mulch would negate. Working with plants in this way certainly requires greater knowledge about how plants act together in communities, as well as their life cycles above and below the soil line, but learning about them in this way is worthwhile and pays massive dividends. What did nature do before the timber industry invented wood mulch in the 1970s and 80s? Plants. Plants. Plants.

Adding Native Plants to an Established Bed

3/20/2020

As a garden designer I prefer to start from scratch -- I have a vision that's built from a client's vision, and it's often simpler to have a clean slate. Sometimes it's even more cost effective and ensures greater success. But for some clients the bones of their space works as is, especially many of the plants. So following are some things I may discuss with such a client on site and I hope they help you plan any changes you intend to make this year or next.

1) The first thing we need to know is what you like about the space and what you don't. What are some of the aesthetics you prefer, the textures and areas, the paths or seating areas. What plants are you less fond of, what management issues are you having, what are your goals for the space long term, from ecological function to maintenance to how the use of the space has evolved over time. Making lists are fantastic here.

2) Then I ask point blank: what plants do you want to keep, what plants are you fine seeing removed. This step is fun because it gives us a chance to think big and dream (and it reminds me of those weekends when, as a kid, my mom came into our rooms and closets with a trash bag and said "let's get cracking"). Often the plants that stay have sentimental value, provide a specific aesthetic experience the client values, or is a behaved species that doesn't have to go right now (even if it's not doing much for wildlife). On the other hand, plants that can go often look worse as the summer progresses, have little interest for humans and wildlife, or are aggressive.

3) If we're removing plants the garden design and install process may take longer. This isn't the case for shrubs and trees that can be cut down and ground up, but for aggressive species or weedy areas it often is the case. For older gardens that have gotten out of control, it can be beneficial to spend an entire growing season (mid spring to mid fall) continually removing unwanted plants. What this means is we may be pulling or spraying, allowing seeds to germinate again and again over months to exhaust the seed back in the soil so maintenance after install is a little easier. (Some plants with underground root stores can only be killed with spraying, so be prepared for the means justifying the ends.) Weeding the first year after install is the #1 issue for any new garden, and if we can keep on it then -- and even curtail it before -- we are doing ourselves and the new plants a big favor.

4) Of course, now is also the time to think about fixing retaining walls or sidewalks or washed out areas with drainage issues. This is often where we'll contract with a specialist. Any new hardscaping is best done before planting and will even alter how the plant design will turn out and mesh with the space.

5) Speaking of drainage and soil, there's also other site conditions to consider, especially when older plants are removed. Erased trees or shrubs may create new growing conditions -- think sunlight and water availability in the soil -- which changes our plant pallet. Even the removal of aggressive species plays a role, as well as if we leave those species in place because we'll want to choose aggressive natives that can hopefully better compete with the in-situ plants.

There will always be other aspects that crop up during a site visit as well as when the project develops, but this should help you think about where you want to go and what the process will be whether you work with a designer or DIY the garden.

Native Plants to Avoid in a Small Space

1/26/2020

It's easy to get excited about a new plant when you're gardening for wildlife in your local ecoregion, and that's especially so when the plant is small or just one or three of a kind. But often plants perform differently in home landscapes compared to the wild where there's more competition; even so, some plants just like to be the boss of others, especially when there's open space filled with wood mulch.

There are a few general habitat and design rules for small spaces that are pretty much universal (but can absolutely be broken in the right circumstances):

Choose shorter plants so they both won't flop or visually overwhelm the space
Avoid aggressive runners and self sowers
Keep the plant palette lean because too much can easily become unmanageable
Limit trees and shrubs to short or narrow species, and use only a very few or none
Keep a consistent average plant height with only a few taller species

Following are some popular native forbs and grasses whose use might be reconsidered if your garden bed is a few hundred square feet, along with some alternatives. Keep in mind that these plants are commonly native east of the continental divide, but can otherwise serve as proxies or examples for other areas.

Indian grass in early autumn

Indian Grass (Sorghastrum nutans)
The foliage is lovely in early summer, as are the autumn seed heads and fall leaf color, but it will self sow heartedly and flop in autumn. A good alternative is a shorter bunchgrass like sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula). Both grasses are clumpers that cover the ground plain, which is great for green mulch aficionados.

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Monarchs lay a lot of eggs on this host plant, but it will get tall and it will most certainly spread via underground runners until you have a milkweed stand and not much else. Try purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens), Sullivant's milkweed (Asclepais sullivantii) or butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa) depending on if it's a part sun (A. purp), full sun and moist (A. sull) or full sun and dry (A. tub) site in your landscape.

Blue Mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum)
Tons of insects come for the masses and masses of late summer blooms, and the fall color is a nice yellow. In ideal soil -- moist and loamy -- it will colonize fully. With drier conditions and clay soil, alongside other plant competition, it will mass and drift more modestly. I don't have an alternative, but can say that with plant density and root competition it's worth a try to contain.

Maximilian Sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani)
It'll get tall but more importantly it'll run. In its native tallgrass that's a good thing because it's a very beneficial plant for insects and bugs. A Coreopsis might be a good alternative.

New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)
It's going to get leggy and then it's going to get too tall and flop in almost every garden. The former is solved with dense underplanting, but you can't do much for the rest unless all your plants are tall to buttress one another. Maybe consider aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) or smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve); the former prefers it drier while the latter is more adaptable.

Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)
I think it was Sting who sang about fields of goldenrod. Maybe not. I've never had to plant canadian goldenrod because it blows in, and once it gets going it runs all over the place. Both showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) and zigzag goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis) clump fairly well in tight-knit plant communities, but they will spread moderately if in beds filled with mulch. Zigzag is considered a shade plant, but I've found success in sunnier spots where it spreads less, even though I would not call it aggressive even in ideal conditions or moist shade.

Gray-Headed Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)
This one is a common issue. Evolved to thrive in the tallgrass prairie where it has other tall plants to lean on, as a specimen it grows quite tall then bows down in a most penitent fashion. Better to stick with pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida) or even Mexican hat (Ratidiba columnifera), but the latter acts more like an biennial unless it's allowed to self sow as it prefers.

Gray-headed / gray-head / grayhead coneflower

The Easiest Native Plants to Grow (Not Really)

1/3/2020

I’m often asked what are the easiest native plants to try. That question might be asked by folks new to gardening, those transitioning to native plant communities, or those with lots of experience looking to make things simpler.

There is no clear answer. The easiest native plants are those fitted to your site conditions and the other plants growing alongside them. And sometimes “easy” means you don’t have to water, the plant doesn’t spread too much, or the plants doesn’t get too tall and flop over messily. These three scenarios don’t have blanket answers, but I could say that, in order: 1) match the plant to soil and drainage; 2) match the plant to site conditions and other plants; 3) maybe the plant is in the wrong spot, tended too much, or isn’t in the best plant community.

We’ve first got to take our cues from wild plant communities -- observing how specific species perform together in specific scenarios. But we also have to know that when we try our best to match these realities in suburbia -- at home or at work and school -- the outcome will always be a bit different. For example, the soil life and profile is changed and the environmental stressers are somewhat novel. But that doesn’t mean we can’t translate well and help support the same fauna (like insects) that use both wild native plant communities and their urban analogues.

E. pallida and B. minor surrounded by grasses.

Here’s a plant community that tends to work more often than not on sunny, dry clay sites around homes (50% sun is good, too, especially on a western exposure):

Baptisia minor
Heuchera richardsonii
Echinacea pallida
Callirhoe involucrata
Liatris aspera
Symphyotrichum oblongifolium
Schizachyrium scoparium
Bouteloua curtipendula

There are many reasons these plants work well together, from human aesthetic concerns to filling ecological niches and layers. The grasses, mallow, and alumroot all work as a ground cover or green mulch. The forbs serve as seasonal color and resources for pollinators of various species. There’s different texture, structure, and height for humans to enjoy. Many of the plants look good in winter. Some plants have fibrous root zones, some are tap rooted, and others have corms -- this mixing ensures plants don’t always compete at the same levels for nutrients, but also helps stem erosion and rainfall absorption as the soil layers are amended. Well, I could REALLY go on about all of this, but that’s for another time. If you crave more specifics please ask away.

Ultimately, the above plants are fairly low worry, adaptable, and thrive with loving neglect. You still have to "garden" of course -- weeding, thinning, replacing, cutting back in spring, etc -- but the above short list does tend to be fairly reliable.

Top Photos of 2019

12/11/2019

What a year for the gardens -- plenty of rain in spring (too much) helps in some cases, and then we had not enough in fall. In any case, here are some of my favorite images captured around HQ this year, many of which you have seen or will see in various other posts. Which one is your favorite?

Creating The 100ft Prairie-Inspired Pollinator Garden

11/16/2019

Implementing a native plant pollinator garden can quickly become complicated, especially when you're new to a lot of the design and ecological principles at play (plant communities, layering, root growth, bloom succession, reproduction methods, etc). From choosing the wrong plants for the site to matching those plants to one another, these are issues I've explored before on this blog. But it's not all that complex (well maybe it is), especially once you learn a few basic principles and dive in after you've done some healthy research. Let's attempt to distill what makes a natural pollinator garden beautiful for wildlife and people, all while requiring less management (water, mulch, fertilizer) than a typical garden.

This space is never watered even in drought years. It only gets an early spring haircut.

LEARNING ABOUT PLANTS

So yes, you have to research plants. You can't just trust a plant tag or even a sales person, especially because when you put a little legwork in you learn way, way more. So let's say you've just picked up a pale purple coneflower, Echinacea pallida. The plant tag likely says it needs full sun and dry soil. That tag can't fit enough pertinent info on there to help you garden with more success, such as: what TYPE of soil; how it actually performs in various conditions; what wildlife it literally grows. Is it even native to the local ecoregion? Go online and type a search in for "Echinacea pallida." Websites that I've found the most helpful in learning about plants here in flyover country include:

Prairie Moon Nursery
Prairie Nursery
Illinois Wildflowers
Missouri Botanical Garden
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Once you've read about the plants from these sites -- and even a local / regional book, such as Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains -- you'll know more than most folks and you can plant with much more ecological confidence.

Pale purple coneflower reaches above the mounding habit of dwarf wild indigo.

What you'll discover about Echinacea pallida is that it has a deep tap root, and planted as a plug it will take 1-2 years before flowering as it works on that tap root. You'll learn it prefers leaner, drier soils but can thrive in the moisture swings of clay soil. You'll learn it's a clumper that, in bare soil, will lightly self sow. Since it has a deep taproot it works well among other plants that have more fibrous root zones, that way the plants aren't always competing for the same resources. You'll learn its flower stalks get taller in more rich soil and that its basal foliage stays relatively short to the ground, with long, fuzzy leaves. Since its foliage isn't all that dense or large, other plants that require more sunlight -- including ground covers -- will do well right next to it. You may even discover in your reading that the dried flower heads, nearly jet black, remain all winter, and how cool they look with a backdrop of short prairie grasses (like little bluestem) as the winter sun filters in behind them.

Late October seed heads of coneflowers, stiff goldenrod, and little blulestem. Who says fall color is just for woodies?

KEY ASPECTS OF PLANTS & NATURAL DESIGN

So, what are some of the key aspects of a plant you should be looking for when creating your small urban garden?

1) Reproduction -- does it spread by seed or rhizome or both, and how aggressively?
2) Root Growth -- does it need room to spread or can it be happy with a limited vertical window?
3) Foliage Density -- the larger the leaf and more profuse the number, the more soil is shaded. That's good for suppressing weeds (as are plants with fibrous root zones)
4) Mature Size -- for your specific site conditions. A specific plant in full sun, plenty of moisture, and loamy soil performs much differently than when placed in gravelly loam or clay or part sun even if they adapt to both sites. Echinacea pallida is a good example -- tall and floppy in rich, moist soil where it's by its lonesome, but more suited to leaner soils with plant competition.
5) Flowering -- what time of year does it flower? Humans want flowers every day of the year -- and so do adult pollinators -- so plan for bloom succession in your garden using a variety of plant species (including grass and sedge).
6) Winter Interest -- does it have any special autumn and winter physical characteristic you might want to plant for?
7) Host Services -- which species of insects and bugs use the plant as a host for their young? Which use it for nectar and pollen? How do other fauna use the plant?

Learning about these seven aspects of a plant will help you plan the garden. For example, in 100ft you don't want more than one aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) since it tends to act like a small shrub getting 2-3ft wide and tall on average, especially in richer soils. On the other hand, you want more than 2-3 nodding onion (Allium cernuum) because the bulb takes a while to reproduce and the plants remain fairly inconspicuous for years -- so a grouping of 7-11 might be a good idea.

Gardens may appear differently from various angles. That's the appeal.

In general, you want a plant every 12 inches or less. You might want a thin 1 inch mulch layer after planting depending on soil type. However, you don't have to use wood mulch -- you could use a sedge as a base layer (Carex albicans or Carex blanda might work well), or you could sow in a low bunch grass like sideoats grama (Boutelous curtipendula). Why use a green carpet / green mulch / matrix beyond the fact we're mimicing natural plant communities and want less maintenance? Because one aspect of color theory is that an even baselayer of green -- especially when it's the same hue of green -- creates a legible calm upon which we can engage with and find a landscape legible or attractive.

If you want flower color ASAP in year one -- as well as weed suppression -- consider sowing annual forbs alongside the sideoats grama; plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) or clasping coneflower (Dracopis amplexicaulis) work well and fade out over time as perennials get going. A lot of garden designers have started using the biennial black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) as a nurse crop and weed competitor with its good basal foliage and self sowing habit; plus it all but disappears after 3-4 years as other plants fill in densely.

Grasses bloom too. Here's sideoats grama.

PUTTING THE PLANTS TOGETHER

So in a 100ft garden in 50% to 100% sun, medium to dry clay soil, a plant list -- massed by species -- for much of the Midwest and east might look like this (adjust for your region):

5 prairie alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) -- mid spring bloom, dense / large-leaved basal foliage, tends not to spread
3 dwarf wild indigo (Baptisia minor) -- mid spring bloom, open shrub-like foliage, taproot, black seed pods, tends not to spread, slow to establish
7 pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida) -- early summer bloom, taproot, black seed heads, light self sowing
5 purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) -- clumping, thin foliage early-summer bloomer, light self sowing
11 nodding onion (Allium cernuum) -- short clumps of midsummer flowers, upright / thin foliage, bulbs slowly reproduce
5 dotted blazingstar (Liatris punctata) -- thick clumps of mid to late summer flower spikes, corm (tubor-like root), tends not to spread
3 zigzag goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis) -- early fall bloom, slowly spreads by rhizome if adequate competition
1 aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) -- mid to late fall bloom, shrub like habit that shades out soil

If you askew wood mulch and weeds (wood mulch does NOT prevent weeds), place 50-75 sedge in the space. Or you can sow in a few handfuls of sideoats grama and some of the aforementioned annual and biennial forbs in spring to early summer.

The key to the plant list and design is this -- to mass the perennial forbs listed above. People scared of plants not lined up like a firing squad tend to view massing / clumping as a more legible and intentional space. Coincidentally, pollinators flying overhead can easier spot a clump of coneflowers instead of just one or two. And by the way, do not cut down this garden in fall or winter.

The mounds are aromatic aster and dwarf wild indigo. The vertical grass is little bluestem. (mid to late summer)

Another aspect of this plant list is that there's a diversity of heights, structures, and textures -- something we humans expect and enjoy in a planned garden. But that diversity of plants also means more opportunity for a variety of wildlife to use them in various ways, from feeding their young to getting nectar / pollen to winter seeds to shelter during hibernation and pupation.

What else can be said for this plant list? Zigzag goldenrod can be aggressive in the right conditions (loamy soil, less competition), but in a dense planting on 12 inch centers -- and many of those plants have similar root zone habits -- it's kept more in check while providing what we and pollinators desire. The blazingstar and onion will be happy since their corms and bulbs occupy their own zone in the soil. Indigo and coneflower will put down taproots below firbous grasses. There's a lot to consider but here's a secret -- observing these species in the wild (in prairies) will tell you a lot about IF they will grow together and HOW they will grow individually. When using plants that come from the same wild community we are one step ahead of the game in creating a sustainable space that's beautiful to both people and wildlife equally.

So what do you think? Is this helpful? Tell us what you've learned and what you might try differently.

Autumn Suburban Prairie

10/22/2019

Here are some images of the fall gardens at HQ over the last week (click to embiggen). I wish October lasted twice as long!

Native Plants, Racism, & the Colonizing Nature of Garden Language

10/7/2019

(From time to time I post thoughts in the spirit of the old blog which ran for a decade with a mix of subjects related to gardening, plants, nature, and environmental philosophy / literature. Today I share two thoughts with you that may be part of a new, larger project. This first section is a long thought that's been rolling around in my head for years -- this is my first stab at it, and to be honest, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the subject, especially in these warped nationalistic times:

There's a vein that runs through native plant detractors that is very disturbing to me, one which I don't condone on any level or think has any validity -- it's just frightening, in fact. Some clutch on to it for comfort and trot it out when the discussion devolves into emotion only. I'm talking about calling native plant proponents racist. The assumption equates plants with people, the culture of plants and ecosystems with the culture of people (white, western most likely), which is a way to practice dominion over nature.

Let's get one thing straight -- when a native plant advocate is labeled as racist it's a defense of privilege. We've assumed a hierarchy of species on this planet, constantly defending it with art, industry, & commerce. When our compassion for other species matches or supersedes compassion for humans, that's not racism -- that's liberation.

Native plants are social justice for all species. There is nothing racist about fostering equality for other species; however, human supremacists would lead you to believe there is. Those with privilege are threatened by decolonizing traditional horticulture, a horticulture which is grounded on new plant introductions, whether discoveries from around the world or new selections and crosses. Privilege is placing a plant in an ecoregion it did not evolve in, with fauna it did not evolve with, primarily because a human wants it there.

I think what's at stake is this idea that using only or primarily native plants in gardens is constrictive and speciesist, namely speciesist against human freedom / domination / privilege / supremacy. And then somehow the conversation devolves into an accusation of racism or purity along the lines of Nazi Germany. That's ridiculous hyperbole and an insult to those who suffered and still suffer under totalitarianism -- human and other. (For more on debunking the Nazi connection to native plant proponents, see this excellent piece and especially its links.)

A new garden ethic is not about denying human rights or freedom but expanding those of the plants & animals around us who are vanishing because we have been racist toward them, colonizing their culture and forcing it to conform to ours or die. If this feels threatening or makes you angry so you lash out, then we've hit the nail on the head, haven't we.

Make no mistake, fighting for justice on behalf of plants, animals, and ecosystems is directly related to the fight made for women, people who aren't white, people who aren't straight, people who live in poverty, people who don't practice Christianity, etc. When we allow for the freedom of wildness in our cities, for example, we are providing social justice not only for birds and bees and butterflies and milkweed, but for those humans who have no other access to nature but who benefit through cleaner air, cleaner water, and increased mental health.

In the end, we all agree on one primary point -- biodiversity is threatened at a level never before witnessed by humans because we are the cause. As we move forward to mitigate mass extinction / mass genocide, it's important we remember that native plants aren't divisive among the silent majority -- 99% of the tallgrass is gone, but the wildlife that uses it are still among us hoping for a revolution of compassion and an end to human supremacy.

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And here are some thoughts on language -- how we use it to go down two different roads in garden thinking:

1) Knowing the names of fauna means we have to consider their rights more thoughtfully in garden design

Here's a new theory based on a growing sample size: when we learn the names of fauna in our gardens -- spider, beetle, bee, and wasp -- we learn their life cycles and what they need to thrive. But this will then also mean our gardens (how plants are arranged) and plants (origin and ecosystem services) will often need to change, which is a direct challenge to human privilege. This is why some garden designers get worked up or outright defensive when asked to i.d. a species because, in part, the garden design process has been complicated by considering other species alongside our own. While naming is considered a classic act of ownership in environmental philosophy, in this case naming may be a gateway to equality.

2) It matters how we discuss gardens because our words reflect, inform, and develop our values.

If, for example, we discuss gardens using primarily words like "texture," "form," and "color" we aren't necessarily valuing nature or wild interactions within it like we may assume we are. When we idealize plants as objects, putting them on a pedestal of visual gratification for us, we are practicing not only privilege but supremacy (the same idea goes for calling plants and gardens "magical"). This practice gives us tacit permission to see other species and the garden in a way that primarily if not totally benefits us alone; instead of gardening as part of a web, we garden as the top of hierarchy.

There is no reason a garden can not be beautiful to both humans and countless other species, but if the texture, form, and color are not appealing to specific species of fauna then the garden is not performing its primary role. Unfortunately, knowing what species of fauna are using the garden, and how they are using it, requires a more intense, complicated, and research-based step that prevents the garden from being an easily digestible painting we walk by and admire for a moment.

In a time of mass extinction it is not enough to discuss or design gardens purely for aesthetic value; doing so is an archaic and destructive way that continues a colonialist mindset over place and cultures for the benefit of a powerful minority. If we can't evolve our words, how can we evolve our knowledge and compassion for nature in meaningful ways that cultivate a deeper beauty beyond flower color and leaf form?

Why You Shouldn't Clean Up the Fall Garden

9/24/2019

Nature doesn't cut down spent flowers or rake up leaves each autumn, and if we're going to garden for wildlife and less maintenance -- for bees and butterflies and aching backs -- then we need to take nature's lead in the way we garden.

When you walk in a prairie or forest each October there won't be animals putting detritus into compost piles or plastic bags to be hauled away, and I challenge you to get a picture of that occurance. Removing spent material from the garden is removing fertilizer, rich topsoil, habitat, and food -- or simply put, it's gardening against nature.

Fertilizer
Do you see how trees drop leaves around their root zone? Yes, unless it's super windy. But trees are smart -- they are fertilizing themselves. This is one reason many organic lawn care firms advocate mulching leaves over a lawn (and mulching the lawn during the growing season), because dead leaves are rich in nutrients. The same goes for perennial flowers and grasses in a garden -- leave most of what you cut down in the garden, breaking it up a little by hand if you want to. You can do this in fall but, as we'll see below, it's better to wait until spring.

Topsoil
Leaves and other plant bits are broken down naturally over time by soil life, incorporated into the soil by bugs and micro organisms and bacteria and worms and ants and moles. This adds fertility to the soil and increases water penetration and storage -- it's the cycle of life. When you remove leaves and stems from the garden you are literally removing healthy soil.

Food
Leaving flower heads full of seed can be critical for winter songbirds whose resources dwindle as the season goes along. Seeds tend to be high in fat content and lots of other good nutrients critical to a bird's ability to produce both energy and heat in the colder months. Of course, once spring comes, flower stems and grass clumps used for food and shelter from snowstorms become prime nesting material.

Habitat
Plenty of creatures overwinter in garden litter, from queen bumblebees to mourning cloak butterflies to black swallowtail larvae to all manor of frogs, spiders, beetles, and bugs. Inside plant stems may be larvae of native bees, since roughly 25% of native bee species use cavities found in wood or stone as nesting sites. This is one reason why, in early to mid spring, you should leave 12-18 inches of stem when cutting back the garden -- you will soon see swarms of bees coming to lay eggs in hollow stems or to excavate pith before egg laying begins. After a few weeks the "ugly" dead stems will soon be covered by new green growth as insects keep doing their thing.

It's important to see the garden not just as a human space, but also one for other species and for nature in general -- think 50/50 at a minimum. Of course, gardens are about beauty for all species and certainly for us garden makers, and so the question has to be asked: in the depths of winter when there's less obvious beauty, would you rather see a flat moonscape or a rich tapestry of texture, form, and hues of color (brown is a color) with birds flitting in and out? Don't treat your garden like a living room after the kids go to bed, putting all the toys back on to shelves and in storage bins. Let nature be natural and enjoy the show.

Three Goldenrods Critical for Pollinators

8/25/2019

No, it doesn't cause hay fever (that's our native ragweed), so let's get that out of the way first. Goldenrod pollen is heavy and sticky, not airborne like ragweed's pollen, so to have an allergic reaction to goldenrod you'd most likely need to be in physical contact with it.

Which is exactly what insects and various bugs want. This group of plants is like a 20 course meal. While goldenrod pollen has become less nutritious since the advent of the industrial revolution due to air pollution and climate change, it is still critical to the health of various insects and especially solitary native bee moms caching their larval nests with food. From bees to migrating insects, to beneficial predators relying on the hive of activity around blooming goldenrod, this group of plants could not matter more in both large landscapes and smaller urban gardens. Here are a few that are worth trying for a variety of site conditions and that won't spread nearly as aggressively as Canadian goldenrod (Solidago canadensis).

Oligoneron rigidium (Solidago rigida) -- Stiff Goldenrod
You do not want this in rich, loamy, moist soil as it will become far too tall and flop. In the prairie where it's try and ultra competitive, you'd rarely see it top three feet, but in a pampered home garden four to five is common. One of the earlier blooming goldenrods in late summer to early autumn, the flat-topped umbels are perfect perches for a variety of species -- including monarch butterflies who seem to favor its nectar. Stiff goldenrod is ideal for dry, sunny sites and benefits from similarly-tall plants to support it and increase root competition. Check the 100 or so species known to use this goldenrod.

Solidago flexicaulis -- Zigzag Goldenrod
Another case of the more rich and moist the soil, the more tall and potentially floppy it gets. However, this shade-loving, dry-loving goldenrod is an ideal creeper for tough locations under trees or on the north side of a building. It's also incredibly fragrant (I like to tell people it smells exactly like my dearly-departed grandmother's perfume). Usually about two feet tall and spreading to several feet over many years, this plant will bring in the pollinators where the sun don't shine.

There are a plethora of goldenrods to fill our third slot, so let's cheat. There's showy goldenrod (S. speciosa) with a nice upright flame of blooms, but it can get 4-5 feet tall even in dry, sunny locations (shorter if faced with more root competition). Missouri goldenrod (S. missouriensis) looks like Canadian goldenrod but is only 2-3 feet tall and less aggressive, preferring it dry and sunny. If you have a larger area that's wetter and you just need something to go go go, try grass-leaved goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia), which takes full to part sun in medium to moist soils but will spread. If you have blazing hot sand or gravel soil try the 2 foot tall old field goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis), perfect for slopes or barren areas where little else will grow; here's the list of pollinators noted to use S. nemoralis.

Don't Deadhead Flowers

8/15/2019

A mid to late summer culling of blooms might seem beneficial, but there are several instances when leaving the flowers is the better option.

For new plants, removing spent blooms will encourage resources to be drawn up out of the roots to produce more flowers, thus taxing the plant. There is little else that's more energy and resource intensive than flowering. If you have a young plant resist the urge to deadhead so the plant can focus on root development instead.
Leaving spent flowers means you're leaving seeds for autumn and winter wildlife. Feeding the entire ecosystem should always be our goal.
The seeds that wildlife don't get will turn into free plants for you. More plants means more flowers and more coverage on the ground so weeds can't get a foothold. We design gardens with self sowing in mind -- thinning seedlings is easier, and cheaper, than buying new plants and allows the garden to teach us what it wants naturally. Use plants natural tendency to spread and you can also eliminate the need for wood mulch.
Have you ever seen snow piled atop a coneflower or rattlesnake master? Winter interest isn't just about tree structure or bark color or evergreens. So many of our perennial native plants offer outstanding contrast and architecture in winter -- which is one reason of many not to cut down the garden until late winter or early spring.

Echinacea pallida ready to feed birds and look cool in winter.

There are instances when cutting back a plant to produce more blooms for us and pollinators is a good idea. For example, late summer and fall flowering perennials can be sheered back 50% before July 4 to increase color for us and pollen / nectar for insects. Think asters, goldenrods, ironweeds, et cetera. That sheering also reduces the mature size of a plant, often leading to a more compact specimen.

Stop deadheading and let nature take the lead -- it might be wonderfully surprising and rewarding for all of us who enjoy the garden.

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