This is part two about ideas to help create a more sustainable garden. Not everyone, except for two of you that I know of, are willing to dig up their whole landscape and start over, so here are some more ideas to create gardens that are more sustainable and better for the environment. Here is link to previous newsletter if you missed part one.
As I said last time, if I can get a few hundred of you to start shifting your practices, then we can make a difference, and if you can share these practices and newsletter with your neighbors, then we can change neighborhoods and link them to other biodiverse habitats.
Create a Pollinator Garden – At its simplest level, you can take a 10’x10′ area in your garden and put in a few dozen native perennial plants that attract, feed and host pollinators. You can create plant lists by going to to this Grow Native Plant List or perform a search on the Native Plant Trust Plantfinder (previously N.E. Wildflower Society) A small garden can be a great place to start without digging up your whole yard, but if you really want to create a more beneficial space you need to increase the size and include some trees and other woody plant material along with the perennials.
Pollinator systems are far more complex that just putting in a few plants. The systems include insects, birds and other animals that are all reliant upon the actions of others, and plants are the critical glue in this biodiverse system. Some plants feed pollinators, others require the pollinators to produce seed, while others are host plants for pollinators to reproduce and lay eggs. Insect pollinators are food for birds, and pollinated fruits and seeds are eaten and dispersed by birds. Seeds and fruit on the ground are food for animals, and the plants are habitat for nesting and winter protection. Abandoned nests are then habitat for other animals and insects to lay eggs.
This is overly simplified, but shows how complex and interdependent these systems can be. Planting Milkweed is great as a host plant for Monarch Butterflies to lay eggs, but they need food plants to sustain them through the season. For more information on this, I encourage you to read anything by Doug Tallamy and look into his Homegrown National Park movement. If I were to start with a book, I would buy, Bringing Nature Home.
If you want to be a little more geeky, go to the Gegear Lab at Mass Dartmouth. Dr Gegear is focused locally on bees and other pollinators. He has some interesting plant lists and talks about these complex, biodiverse systems. He also performed myth busting research on color preferences for pollinators, reveling that color preferences are not necessarily innate but learned.
Native Plantings – The myth is that native plants are boring, uninteresting, unattractive, and are messy. However, that is not the case and many native plants will do well in the confines a cultivated garden. I could spend thousands of words talking about native plants and how they can work in the garden, but figured that I would just list some plants with links so that you can see an incomplete list of some of the best plants for your New England gardens. You can easily incorporate these into your hybrid gardens as space develops or plan new beds with combinations of these and others. I hope you can look through these and see a limited list of plants that can be beautiful additions to your garden that will support biodiversity and the animal, bird, and insect systems.
- Trees
- Amelanchier canadensis – Serviceberry
- Carpinus caroliniana – Musclewood
- Crateagus crus-galli – Cockspur Hawthorn
- Oxydendrum arboretum – Sourwood
- Tilia americana – Linden
- Shrubs
- Aesculus parviflora – Bottlebrush Buckeye
- Aronia arbutifolia – Red Chokeberry
- Calycanthus floridus – Carolina Allspice
- Corylus americana – American Hazelnut
- Ilex opaca – American Holly
- Lindera benzoin – Spicebush
- Morella carolinensis – Bayberry
- Rhododendron periclymenoides – Pinxterbloom Rhododendron
- Spirea tomentosa – Steeplebush
- Perennials/Grasses
- Agastache foeniculum – Anise Hyssop
- Andropogon gerardii – Bluestem
- Anemone canadensis – Canadian Windflower
- Chelone glabra – Turtlehead
- Geranium maculatum – Wild Geranium
- Helenium autumnale – Sneezeweed
- Packera aurea – Groundsel
- Penstemon digitalis – Beardtongue
- Sisyrichium angustifolium – Blue-Eyed Grass
- Zizea aurea – Golden Alexanders
As a final note, there are many improved versions or cultivars of native plants. While they are often better than non-native plants, they often lack the food or pollinator value of their strictly native parents.
IPM or Integrated Pest Management – Is a process employed by quality plant healthcare companies, that works to keep insect and disease in balance in the garden. So many of the problems in our gardens and ecosystems come from the constant broadcast of herbicides and insecticides that kill everything and create imbalance. It removes beneficial and harmful insects and creates an imbalance. Proper IPM is more expensive than having some turf company come out and spray, inject or broadcast across your garden, because the applicator is required to have knowledge of insects and disease, and then apply what is necessary. If you are taking care of your own lawn or have a company performing the work, employ an organic program and, if necessary, utilize products on a spot basis to address issues.
You may not realize it, but that inexpensive lawn care company is probably applying herbicides and insecticides to your lawn all season long killing everything. We have gotten numb to those little yellow warning signs left on lawns, but the synthetic chemicals are deadly to all insects, and they are dangerous for you, your pets, and your children.
Find responsible companies who can break the cycle and manage your lawns and gardens without the irresponsible use of these chemicals. Next newsletter, I expect to have fully vetted a lawn care company that has created an excellent organic lawn care program.
Organic Fertilizers – There is no excuse anymore to not utilize organic fertilizers and amendments. Their price has come down significantly in recent years and they are widely available. Go to Espoma, and their pages explain all the types of amendments for lawn and garden. Both Espoma and Jonathan Green have excellent organic lawn fertilizer and soil amendments.
No Phosphorous, organic lawn fertilizer, is the best way to feed your lawn (along with leaving lawn clippings). Compost and organic amendments are the best way to feed your plants as needed (based upon soil testing).
Barking Dog Gardens - Gardening in New England 