Need help planning Native Borders
* Originally posted in Landscape Design, I thought it might be more appropriate here.*
I need some help filling out my border gardens. I aim to primarily use native plants, we are south of Buffalo, NY, Zone 5b/6a.
Quick tour starting at the bottom, a paver & cobble walkway leads in from between the house and the garage (bottom right square) The patio is 14'w X 20'l and is slightly higher than the yard. Grass slopes down away from it slightly and levels off behind the garage. My son's playset sits about the point it flattens out. The octagon is a veg. garden 7 raised edge beds and a pyramidal trellis in the center.
I primarily would like to treat this as a prairie garden, more grasses and taller perennials, though the back gets much more shade throughout the day and could fo more of a woodland garden. I'm in need of ideas.
LEFT EDGE - Bed is four feet deep, about 73 feet from front to back. Usually dry, late afternoon shade in front, heavier shade in the back. Mainly volunteers and leftovers from the previous owner. Not sure what to do with most the space. Would
TOP EDGE - 7 feet deep, 50 feet long, Semi-dry and gets morning/early afternoon sun. I planted 3 multistem Eastern Redbud trees last spring, so I need to account for their future growth. Currently, the area consists of the trees, lots of Columbine, Purple Coneflower, and Oenothera. A few slow growing Baptisia hiding here and there as well.
RIGHT EDGE - 3 feet deep, 53 feet long. Late afternoon sun for the mid section, top and bottom remain in much heavier shade from the garage and surrounding trees. There are three Spicebush along this wall, but haven't grown much in the 3 years they've been in. Tips for feeding them? Between the spicebush, there is primarily Prairie Coreopsis and Monarda fistulosa
BUTTERFLY GARDEN - The yard is roughly divided in half by our butterfly garden, primarily Anis Hyssop, Butterfly weed, Smooth Blue Aster, Prairie Coreopsis, Pale Purple Coneflower, Button Blazing Star, Monarda, Hairy Mountain Mint, Orange Coneflower, Little Bluestem and Prairie Dropseed. This is perfect how it is, would love for the rest of the borders to fill in as well as this has.
UPPER RIGHT - Here I spread a wildflower mix in front of a bird bath on an old apple tree stump, with a clump of Sawtooth Sunflowers behind.
UPPER LEFT - Former compost area, became too large, too weedy, so now it is scaped clear. Gets full sun in very early morning, then is shaded throughout the day. Thinking of making a seating area here, most secluded part of the yard. Maybe benches and some lights?
PATIO - Most convenient area for groups of people and grilling, but bakes throughout the day. May add a pergola or canopy this year. But garden wise, to the right is the wall of the garage, I would love to add some trellis and have some climbing vines here. Virginia creeper or trumpet honeysuckle perhaps? To the left, there is a rose/swamp mallow and some Solomon seal (in constant shade from the fencing around it) in the corner, and some purple Iris that I would like to do something more with. More of them? Something to compliment? Should I take out the narrow strip of grass on this side and bring the garden right up to the patio? What should I use to give this space some impact?
Comments (6)
Related Discussions
Help critique front native wildlife garden plans
Comments (18)I'm not well-versed in conifers, but do have a list at work from a presentation given by our Ag. Agent "Underutilized Trees & Shrubs". If I can remember, I'll bring it home; anything suited to our area should do just as well in yours. Right off the top of my head, two deciduous woody plants with good winter interest are the river birch (betula nigra) 'Heritage' and redosier dogwood. 'Heritage' is better suited to our hot summers than white birch, and is resistant to many of the pests and diseases; as it matures, it also develops a lovely an interesting exfoliating bark. There are a few different varieties of the redosier dogwoods now, with different coloration. They thrive in full sun to part shade, but will have better winter color in full sun. Winterberry holly is deciduous, and you need both male and female plants, but will have a beautiful display of bright red berries in winter - for the birds or to cut and bring indoors (use them as supports for your forced paperwhite bulbs ... great combination). I'm glad to see you've chosen the serviceberry (shadbush, amelanchier, etc.). Check the different varieties for the characteristics you prefer - some have more vibrant fall foliage than others. The berries are very attractive to wildlife (I didn't realize chipmunks climbed trees until I saw one gathering berries in one of the serviceberries at our park). The berries are edible for humans, if you can get to them before the wildlife does! They taste a lot like blueberries. One of my favorite local nurseries is also a good resource for information, rarefindnursery.com. Even if you don't order anything from them, you will find a lot of photos and information and I've always found it to be reliable. Ah, sweetbay magnolia (magnolia virginiana) - another native, semi-evergreen, very fragrant blooms (heavy in June, intermittently thereafter), seeds are colorful and food for wildlife. The undersides of the leaves are silvery, making a nice display when they flutter in the breeze. Choose an upright or multi-branching variety, according to your needs. Like serviceberry and river birch, they do well in a moist soil. Ninebark (physocarpus) is another deciduous native, for sun or partial shade. 'Diablo' is a dark red leaved cultivar with contrasting clusters of tiny pale pink flowers. I'm sorry, I should never get started....See Moreneed help with shrub border
Comments (13)I like the bloom and foliage of Judd Viburnum, but it doesn't seem tall enough for being in the background. (The scent alone makes it worth a position somewhat forward.) Some of the other plants you mention seem fine. I think the buckthorn 'Fineline' would serve you well. Another thing I'd consider in the mix is Winterberry Holly. Some of the cultivars can be spectacular shows in winter, but might need supplemental water if the soil is dry. One thing I think you will need to factor in is shade produced by the nearby tree. If it produces too much shade on the hedge, you can expect thin, lanky foliage... which will not produce a good screen. You may need to limb the tree up some to get enough sun below its canopy. Also, select varieties that can tolerate less than full sun. Take a look at the Univ. of Ill. shrub selector link below. Here is a link that might be useful: Shrub selector by zone...See MoreNative garden exhibits - need help learning about easements....
Comments (1)Maybe these links will help: Your Conservation Easement Easement Brochure Land Conservancy NJ Green Acres Program...See Morerecommendation for native meadow border
Comments (5)Your choices for grasses are great. Love them all. Just make sure you plan for the future and don't have them planted too close together. Growing grasses from plugs may take several years to have a desired effect, so buying started plants in 4' pots might be worth looking into. Heck, if you or someone you know has a clump of these grasses they are willing to part with you can easily divide it into 4 parts using a shovel or saw and have mature-looking grasses by the end of this Fall. Black-eyed Susan and oxeye are great, but I question their longevity. They are prolific seeders, but that adds to maintenance issues. If low maintenance is a high priority, go with taproot plants. They generally live a long time and are pretty easy to maintain. Plus they don't need to be watered since the roots go deep. Perhaps establishing the grasses should be the first priority. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on buying plugs of black-eyed susan or oxeye unless they are very cheap. Buy an ounce of seed of each, throw down in bare spots after everything else is in, and you will have more than you know what to do with of both. I collect both varieties of seed each year and it's remarkable how easily the seed grows. I literally have thousands of black-eyed susans just from seed planted last year. Here is a link that might be useful: Improved Ecosystems...See More
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoUser thanked Kaillean (zone 8, Vancouver)
8 years agoThanks for all of the great info. I'll need print out and dive deeper into some of the suggestions.
I don't think that I made myself very clear at the start. Basically, I'm not very good at visualizing how to group and clump plants. I've tried looking through images to replicate and made spreadsheets of color, height, spread, bloom time, and it all seems sensible at the time, but when I go out to place and plant, things don't seem to make sense, so I get patches of good developed layouts, then other areas with evenly spaced rows that don't look that great.
To me, the best looking area of my yard is the butterfly garden set of plants that I got from Prairie Moon Nursery. This is from two years ago, but give you a pretty good idea. The best part was that it came with a suggested planting grid.
I understand that the "native" label is broad and is specific to its place. As my botanist friend has explained to me, Western New York was once part of the "prairie peninsula". After being thoroughly scoured clear by the last of the glaciers, our region along Lake Erie came to support many of the same plants that grow in the Midwest, carried here by wind and animals as everything slowly worked its way back into this region. The beech-maple forests worked their way back in as well, but this area was much less wooded at the time of settling than much of the North East (being closer to the Midwest than the Atlantic Coast).
One of the local Restoration/Conservation groups has put together this handy guide. But like with a lot of recipes, I know the ingredients, I just don't know what to do with them! :)
Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper Native Plant Guide
Also, I go by the range maps that Prairie Moon Nursery and few others have for many of their plants. My very stringent (haha) method is to see if they consider it present and native to my county (Erie).
A few more photos for context from earlier today. This is the bottom center of the drawing. The path leads from the driveway to the fence and out into the yard.
The next two photos give a good view of the path, patio, and back of the garage. There hasn't yet been any spring yet to attempt a spring cleanup.
Not sure what kind of grass is behind the garage, looks like this through the winter but greens up within the next month and stays lush and green even when the rest of the grass has started to brown from summer drought, stays green late into the Fall too. Though it is also a pretty good tell of the shadows in the yard, it doesn't tolerate shade well. The green area behind the garage only gets sun in the late afternoon and the grasses runner's never root there.There is no shade in this area, apart from the house and garage. I've thought about adding some trellis structure to the garage wall for years, but maybe I will finally tackle it this year. Lonerica sempervirens has been high on the list of options, would need to work out what to add to the bed along the wall as well. There is a drainage pipe below grade here, so I can't dig too deep, but adding some evergreen interest would be great for some year round interest.
This area contains nothing of real note. There is some Solomon Seal (Polygonatum biflorum) that has crept under the fence from the neighbor, but if it can be moved, it would be nice to give its little creamy hanging flowers a bit more prominence. Next to it is a Russian sage that I keep around because the bees love it, and I trim it hard in the summer to dry and freshen the smell of the basement. It too can move. The purple iris are in here, but as mentioned by one of you, I don't truly know what kind and where they are from.It would be great to take better advantage of this area and extend the garden all the way to the patio.
From that corner, you can see the back of the yard and the onely trees that provide shade to the yard. Leafless, it is hard to tell, but these overhang the fence quite a bit blocking the sun for that back area for most of the summer.The small table is really the only shade in the yard and is the most private as well, so in the summer, I do occasionally set up a chair side table to relax in after working out there for a while.
- 8 years agolast modified: 8 years ago
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoThanks for the photos. I will spend some time considering combos for you. Repetition is useful, either using several plants in a clump or drift for smaller perennials, or using them repeatedly along a bed for larger perennials and shrubs.
Amsonia hubrichtii, Baptisia australis, and Physocarpus 'Coppertina'/ninebark is a combo of natives and their cultivars that is a long term favorite in my garden. If you want a smaller ninebark, look at 'Tiny Wine' which though it isn't tiny, is far smaller than 'Coppertina' and most of the other average sized ones. This was the first spring after planting, but I still like the combo, even when not blooming because of the nice foliage contrast. I initially had a hosta as well, but the voles ate it. All of these are in full sun and you can see that the Baptisia has finished blooming, the Amsonia is just finishing bloom, and the ninebark is getting ready to bloom and the flowers will be followed by bright seed capsules. Amsonia has gorgeous gold fall foliage, so between the nice foliage texture and color contrast and specific attractive aspects of each, the plants have a long season of interest.
User thanked NHBabs z4b-5a NH
NHBabs z4b-5a NH