This has been an interesting year for me with the number of jobs with which people wanted to plant all or mostly native plants. When the gardens mature they will be as beautiful as any traditional, or non-native, garden. They will just look a little different and require slightly different and less intensive care. Almost all of my new clients, in recent years, want to plant something native, and this is so encouraging for all that it can bring to the garden. Many of the plants are just as beautiful as a lot of our non-native plants, but they provide important service to the ecosystem with pollen, nectar and their foliage. They provide important food for many insects, animals and birds.
I do spend a fair bit of time talking about native plants, but what is a native plant? A lot of larger nurseries and garden centers might sell plants labelled as native, but they might be native to the US or East Coast, while not being native to your specific region. Many of our smaller or regional nurseries (Blue Stem or Van Berkum) focus on plants that are locally native, and even have plants that have been sourced/grown locally and have the genetics to deal with our local climate, soil, etc. These are called Local Ecotype (LE) plants and are worth looking for at your nursery. This is important because many plants native to New England or even Eastern Massachusetts, may also be native in Oklahoma or Tennessee, however, the genetics of the plants may vary based upon different conditions.
OK enough of that and getting into the weeds. How do we know what plants are local to our area? BONAP or the Biota of North America Program is the easiest way to look into specific plants. Look in the left hand column and click on ‘List Plants by Genera’ under the ‘US County Level Distributions’. Up will pop an alphabetical list of genera of all plants native in the US. Click on ‘L’ and then click on Lobelia. You will see every species of Lobelia native to the US. If you click on the map for Lobelia cardinalis, you will see the distribution of the Cardinal Flower, like the one at the top of the newsletter. It is native from northern Ontario, where I am writing this newsletter, all the way to California and south to Texas.
As I was discussing before, a Cardinal Flower grown in Ontario is used to growing in rocky soil in wetland areas, in a part of the continent that rarely gets above 85º. While it is the same genus and species, as that grown in Louisiana, it may have some genetic differences based upon the soil and climate conditions. There may be real issues transplanting one from Ontario to Louisiana, aside from the issue to taking it across the border, because it may not be genetically acclimated to the heat, soil, rainfall, etc, even though it is the exact same plant. This is why you will have more success buying plants that have an LE or Local Ecotype designation. It doesn’t mean it won’t succeed if it isn’t LE, it just may have to learn to adapt to the local conditions.
Van Berkum Nursery, a wholesale perennial nursery I often write about, has recently purchased some land in NH to create New England Local Ecotype native perennials by growing plants in the ground that have been collected from across New England. The idea is that as the differently sourced plants cross-pollinate, their genetics will combine and create plants that are well-suited to growing in Northern New Hampshire or Eastern Connecticut. Kind of a brilliant idea for a Nursery that sells plants across New England. However, if you live on the South Shore of MA, buying plants grown by Blue Stem Natives in Norwell will give you a more localized LE plant. No need to overthink this, as I think you get the idea.
Getting back to BONAP, how do they know what is native in my state or country? Well they have utilized extensive research and documents. Basically, everything available that could provide this information. Take a look at their references if you don’t believe me.
So why is it important to have locally native plants in your garden? Plants flower and insects hatch based upon weather over the season, meaning, they don’t hatch or flower on a specific day, but they come when we have accumulated a specific number of Growing Degree Days (GDD). Read this older post on GDD if you want to learn more. This means when an insect hatches, it will always find the plants and food that they are hard-wired to need. Sometimes it is a very specific plant, like Milkweeds and Monarch Butterflies, more often it is a group of plants. If these plants are not present, they may not be able to successfully lay eggs, or their larval offspring will not get the nutrition they need to survive. Then birds and other animals will not have the food that they need to survive.
It must be exhausting to try to plant every necessary plant required by our local insects and animals. Yes, but you don’t have to. The whole concept behind Doug Tallamy’s work and the Homegrown National Park is that you start incorporating native plants in your garden, and, in the aggregate, we can rebuild our ecosystems. His website has a great tool to help you find the most valuable plants to add to your garden. These plants are called Keystone Plants.
Keystone plants attract the largest populations of native insects, thereby feeding birds and other animals. Some of the most valuable plants are our big trees, that people often cut down without a thought. Pine, Maple, Oak and Willow each host hundreds of insects and their larval offspring. Take a look at the HNP Keystone Tool. Put in your zip code and it will provide a listing of the most important plants in your region, broken up by tree, shrub, perennial, and ground cover. Along with the above mentioned trees, following are a selection of Keystone plants for my area: Blueberry, Chokecherry, Pussy Willow, Joe Pye Weed, Columbine, Aster, Yarrow, Goldenrod, Strawberry, and others.
But you don’t need to limit yourself to these. Variety is the spice of life. The more variety to your palette of plants the broader the variety of pollinator that will come to your garden. It will also attract more birds, that want to feast on these insects. This increase in activity will also help to manage any outbreaks of unwanted insects. It is our dead gardens from the overuse of insecticides and herbicides that have no defense to an outbreak of some unwanted pest, including ticks.
There are lots of plants that are nearly native, meaning they are not native here, but in neighboring states or a little further away. Plants like: Agastache (Anise Hyssop), Echinacea (Coneflower), Hydrangea quercifolia (Oak Leaf Hydrangea) provide great support for pollinators and can absolutely be a part of a native garden, just not the back bone. Also, while BONAP is an incredible resource, it has Agastache foeniculum as native in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, but not Vermont and Massachusetts. Seems a little crazy, so I love using this plant for its long flowering, incredible attractiveness for pollinators, and it makes a nice tea. Just because a plant isn’t native to your county, doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer.
Hopefully, I don’t come off as too preachy, as I am just looking to provide information that you can use in your gardens.
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