Native Plants Forum

well there you go.. but tag both forums.. so we can keep up .... plzzzzz

There is a Native Plants Forum, but for some reason it shows as just Plants if you're using the H**z website and not GW. I see sweet_betsy posted the link above.

I didn't do a restoration per se at this house, but I made a concerted effort to include a lot more natives. I stumbled upon a native plant nursery not too far from me -- I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store the first couple times I went there. There's also a native plant nursery mid-state that specializes in restoration projects and opens for pubic sale days in the spring and fall -- have been there a couple times, too.

I don't know if it's due to planting a lot of natives, the fact I've been working from home so am around to notice more things, or both, but there seem to be a lot more birds hanging around this spring.

It's an ongoing battle at my place. Working on a riparian area and also an area around a tree in the middle of my yard . . . it was covered in rock mulch so I am having to sift out all the rocks and try and fish out the degraded plastic under . . . eventually for a (mostly) native wildflower and shrub garden. The whole back side of my house is an ongoing restoration project, both the physical aspects (rain garden, rain barrels, dry well, dealing with drainage) and restoring the soil and woodlands around the big trees at my house. It is slow going . . . the biggest success so far has been FINALLY getting our leaf mulching system up and running. I have 33 trees on my property, many of them large red and white oaks . . . I hope to create at least some mulched islands around the trees by the end of this year, but who knows. Right now that rock mulch area takes precedence. Eventually I'm hoping to transform the whole area to islands of native woodlands with just mowed paths between. It's about 1/4 acre. I got a new computer so haven't transferred my photos so can't post them. I really was trying to write a blog about the whole process but that too is slow going.

Yeah I guess I am restoring native plants to the landscape. I'm not under any illusion that I'm taking the land back to the condition it was in the 1500s, but I'm using native plants and creating habitat in a structural sense.

Prepped this area beginning last fall and seeded yesterday

Woody -- I have a mix of natives and non-natives, too.

I'm enjoying everyone's stories of what they are doing in their gardens. Some of you seem to live near vulnerable areas that you have to be so careful of invasives, which I'm sure is a lot of work.

Pinkmountain - You have a project on your hands. Sounds like you are doing a thorough job of it, from top to bottom! We added rain barrels, but I haven’t figured out how to set up an irrigation system with them, which is what I’d like to do. I hope you will post photos when you can.

Mxk3 - You are so lucky that you have a lot of availability where you are.

Like Woody and mxk3 - I have made a conscious choice to use both natives and non natives. I started vegetable gardening only in 1980, when a new friend introduced me to his organic vegetable garden. And when my kids were little that was the extent of my gardening. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that I started to look around at the property and decide to start making changes.

At that point I was interested in adding natives, but didn’t find it easy to find them. I did manage to add quite a few but they all didn’t succeed. Most of my shrubs are native. I have a Maple that sends tons of helicopters raining down every year, but with a price tag of over $1,000. to remove it, two of them actually, and the prospect of no mature trees for shade, made that an easy decision. I am not near a vulnerable area and we deal with the seedlings as do our neighbors who also have Maples that rain helicopters. Seems like the developer of our neighborhood planted them in most of the yards.

Woody, I think you do make a lot of sense, that with climate change, natives might not necessarily be the best fit for our changing climate and landscapes.

Skip, I love your photos…looks like it is going very well! I especially like the retaining wall in the front of your house. It is the perfect color. I’ve seen some light colored retaining walls that end up looking stained. And I like the way you blended it into the landscape.

I just added another order of native perennials this spring, bare root and some of those did very well and one fizzled out. I’d like to start more from seed. I do have a small property and some of the meadow plants that I love are more than I can handle because they spread a lot and they are very deep rooted, so that was disappointing.

In general, if you pick the right plant and the right place and plan it properly, natives are a pure joy and in many cases outperform non-natives. It's all a matter of finding the right growing conditions and how to mix and match. To me, it's a lot of fun. Helps to have colleagues who run a native plant nursery to collaborate with! I've tried my hand at some propagation, boy do I suck at that!! Again, it is tricky. I still like experimenting though . . . but like I said, right now I am working on rocks. And a huge community garden plot full of tomatoes. So yes I love natives, but also my homegrown tomatoes for canning . . . (note to self, next year make friends with a tomato farmer, maybe you can trade them some oaks or hickory seedlings . . . )

@woodyoak - in general, I agree exactly with your comments. However, I would like to expand upon what you wrote about the monarch. Yes indeed, the adult monarch butterfly is very much a generalist when it comes to its feeding habits - heck, I’ve seen it happily feed on Autumn Joy sedum flowers when they open up! However, its larvae is very specific as to what it needs to feed on - milkweed. Without milkweed = no food for larvae = no butterfly. Many of the native insects feed very specifically on native plants at some point in the equation. Bird populations also come into this discussion at some point because their primary food source is larvae as well, and they need those host trees which produce high quantities of those - which often the trendier ones we tend to plant these days don’t host anywhere near the higher numbers the native ones do. I think one of the big challenges the native movement has been experiencing is educating the general public about the inter-connectivity of all this.

Lalennoxa - I’m well aware of the milkweed connection for monarchs...! Two neighbours have a joint milkweed patch for them. But the adults also need a good food/nectar source to sustain them on their long migration. and the September-flowering heptacodium provides that - for the monarch and other butterflies, hummingbirds, bees preparing for hibernation, etc. The tree can be swarmed by monarchs and other insects. So milkweed provides what the monarchs need at one stage of their life but the tree provides what they - and other insects - need at another stage of their lifecycle. So it is a non-native plant that is of high value to native insects - and to our garden aesthetically. I’m saying look at issues more broadly and not just to focus on one aspect (i.e. whether the plant is native or not.)

What is really interesting about this discussion, is that I added Milkweed, years ago and have a very good size patch of it. I rarely see a Monarch in my garden. I saw exactly one last year until the fall when a few showed up on my aster. This year, I've seen exactly one. Not even a pair. And I grow organically and have not used pesticides or even synthetic fertilizers since 1980.

I believe Woody is in an area that is near the migration path, is that right Woody? I seem to be nowhere near one. I've seen one Monarch cat in the past 10 years and I still have a photo of it. [g]

The idea that natives are not adapted for present conditions is misconstrued. Maybe the natives that were in your particular location prior to development or disturbance aren't adapted. An old growth forest understory species isn't going to be suited to a new suburb, but a native plant from a nearby floodplain where organic material is routinely washed away and silt and clay deposited might work quite well in a yard that was bulldozed before development. The other issue you might have is that the native plant is not suitable for the way you are managing the land. Tilling, amending, mowing, woodchip mulching, fertilizing, irrigating, pesticide applications, giving each plant tons of space; few wild plants are found in conditions similar to this.

I'm not saying non-natives don't also provide resources to other organisms such as nectar, fruit, seeds, leaves, bark, and nuts for example, but research suggests it's more nuanced than that. You know about coevolution, ie. monarchs and milkweeds, monarch larvae will only eat milkweeds and close relatives, if there is no milkweed or honeyvine around, what good does nectar really do for the species' survival? If you don't believe in evolution, then call it whatever you want, close relationship or dependence, these specialized relationships have been observed in many speces. There are dozens of less conspicuous moths and butterfly caterpillars that need other native plants like perennial sunflower, goldenrod, wild strawberry, oak, birch, maple, pine, poplar, and willow. Research has found that the non-native relatives support fewer caterpillars, so a japanese cherry will have 60% less caterpillar abundance than a native wild black cherry. Norway maple will have fewer caterpillars than a native red maple. All these caterpillars are the almost exclusive food for baby song birds. No caterpillars, no baby birds. The only thing that comes close nutritionally to a caterpillar is a sawfly larvae.

Dozens of bee species rely specifically on goldenrod, Rudbeckia, and/or sunflower pollen. Bees in the genus Macropis need Lysimachia floral oil to rear their young. There is a species of ant that will only live in acorns that were hollowed out by acorn weevils, you lose the oak you lose them both.
It gets even more complex, pollen has different ratios of lipids and proteins, for example a native bumblebee will prefer the native Tradescantia pollen because it has a better protein:lipid ratio for rearing it's young. There are almost always exceptions, as in some non-natives are still very ecologically valuable, but generally natives will produce greater abundance.

I'm not trying to say don't grow non-natives, just want to point out that reasons to grow natives reach beyond just being better adapted to the site.

Some of you guys are older and have been gardening since the 80's or earlier, but just know that MOST of the deforestation, habitat loss, and carbon emissions that are causing today's problems have taken place since 1986. You're on an exponential curve of change, each year more is lost. You might have seen some clean up of industrial pollution and burning rivers, and a couple decades of improvement domestically, but now we have more problems with total habitat loss, invasive species, bird declines, insect declines, and the industrial pollution problems have just been spread out over the rest of the globe. We need space for humans and all our stuff, and conservation efforts often fail to produce the outcomes we need. We need natural resources and ecosystem services for our own survival, so the last approach we have left to increase these is to try to incorporate wildlife habitat and native plants into the places where we live and work.
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118 see what the National Academy of Sciences has to say about it.

Skip, you clearly have spent a lot of time studying all of this. And you have reason to be concerned. I guess the question I find myself asking after reading your comment, is what your expectations are from the general public? Not just gardeners here either, but so many people that don’t garden at all.

How do you envision going from where we are now to where you believe we need to go? And do you believe that you have an actual reasonable and realistic roadmap?

pm2 - yes, we're on the migration route for monarchs. In a good migration year, there are streams of them moving through this area. It's quite a sight to see and when the heptacodium tree is swarmed with them, it is breath-taking! I try to plant things (native and non-native....!) that bloom late so migrating and preparing-to-hibernate things have food sources as late as possible. By late summer gardeners and the garden tend to be getting tired :-) We think of planting early-blooming things for early beneficial insects - and because we want to see color after a long winter! I try to keep reminding myself to plant for late-season color and food sources for insects too... (I don't succeed as well as I should!)

Skip - I'm getting a negative generational vibe from your response....! All I will say is you don't know me, my garden, or how I garden. And you are not understanding what I'm saying. I think, in a climate-changing world, creating a functioning ecosystem is more important than focusing on whether the components are 'native' or not. On a geological timescale everything is native in a broad sense as the continents have been one landmass at least twice in geological history.

Woodoak - don’t worry, I’m the Queen of looking at things broadly - it’s the Empath in me :-).

Woody I'm not generalizing you in particular and didn't mention you specifically, although I did address something you brought up. I have heard from plenty of people of all ages, but particularly older people, that things were worse before and everything is always changing and there's nothing to worry about. Shreds of truth in there, sure, but not entirely true either. Also "everything is native" is a farce. It takes thousands of years to become "native", plants change very slowly. I heard an interview recently with a scientist who said it takes a million years for something as complex as the Amazon to arise, it's pure human hubris to think we can recreate ecosystems we've destroyed, or whatever we replant is just as good. Things are literally going extinct at a much faster rate than ever before. Offer native life a bridge into the future, that's what I think, because as I pointed out, many non-native plants only support part of the lifecyle.

Maybe you have a great biodiverse, sustainable garden where non-native plants are playing a beneficial role, I'm not singling you out, but offering some thoughts on your argument.

I thought this thread was going well. Very encouraging to see what people are trying to do in their own little corner of the world to make things better.

Unfortunately, a negative slant has crept in. I can’t be the only one to see that. Woody, certainly felt it the same way that I did.

Skip, I made a comment that attempted to draw you in a direction that the conversation might go that would skip over conflict by trying to get you to think of the bottom line, of people not just insects and natives. I hoped you might stop long enough to review your expectations to see if they are realistic, because believe it or not, your comment seems to be presenting expectations you have for others, not just yourself.

Now you are taking Woody to task, disagreeing with what she has said, referring to something she said as ‘a farce’. You are creating conflict here with that approach.

I am trying to understand that you are worried and want to ‘fix things’, but, take a breath and think about how you are going about that here.

What happened in 1986?

Just to chime in on the natives vs non natives. When i first started gardening about 7 years ago, (not very long!), I was a native purist and only planted natives, no fertilizing, little extra watering, etc… Well, because I wasn’t a very experienced gardener, it was pretty much a flop for years. Not much grew, so not much benefit to wildlife. I didnt know then that natives can actually be very picky about where they grow. I just thought natives grow best. Well, they do where they choose to grow but not necessarily where we want them to grow. I finally gave up and started planting a mix of natives and non natives and suddenly I had a functioning garden! I‘ve gained experience and just noticed the other day that at least one of my garden beds is mostly native. So encouraging people to add natives is great but recognizing the place for easier exotics like bulbs and lavender and such is also great and beneficial to wildlife.

Been doing restoration since the 70s, and the issue is that the rate of destruction is growing exponentially. I've seen the degradation in native forests I've managed. In particular, due to invasives, devastating diseases, and increase in herbivore populations, particularly grazing pressure from deer, many forests are not longer able to regenerate like they used to. I just read an article in a forestry journal about the role about the increasing importance of native plant tree nurseries in reforestation, since natural seed sources are diminishing. I work in reforestation, and almost all tree nurseries we deal with are having a big growth in sales . . . https://www.americanforests.org/climate/want-to-plant-billions-of-trees-invest-in-nurseries-first/

I'm also seeing a big movement for more natural landscaping using natives, inspired by Piet Oudolf and his many peers and devotees, a lot of interest locally in native wildflower patches for all kinds of wildlife. And as far as natives, there are natives that thrive in disturbed environments, so there's really a native for every situation even changing growing conditions due to climate change, but I am not some kind of "must only plant natives" pedant. Only saying I love working with them for the many subtle joys they bring so while doing "restoration" work I prefer seeking them out and using them if possible . . . the main thing IMHO is to know the reproduction and life cycle habits of what you plant, and manage the spread of your plants. And that's not just for non-natives. I planted a Virginia rose, Rosa virginiana also known as "Pasture Rose" in honor of a deceased mentor, in my tiny suburban yard and it "invaded" under the fence constantly to sucker in my neighbor's vegetable garden. I finally tore it out, wasn't going to work. Although it was native, it was the wrong plant because it was planted in the wrong place. The word "pasture" should have been a giveaway! :) But I only knew it as "Virginia's rose" and that was my mentor's name . . . now I know. It smelled divine when in bloom, as a side note.

On the flip side, the beautiful Musclewood/Carpinus carolinia that I got from a native plant nursery garnered all kinds of compliments and did unexpectedly and exceptionally well in my tiny urban row house yard. So happy I was able to find the right native at a native plant nursery. Musclewood, along with silverbell, Halesia sp. are rare finds and for not any particular horticultural reason, other than they don't have the history of plantings the way some of the non natives do. The same could be said of Sweetbay magnolia at one time. Never saw it anywhere, but when the rage became rain gardens and natives, I'm seeing it very often now in nurseries and in landscape projects. So small suburban homeowners by creating demand, can go a LONG way to supporting the spread of more native plants . . . I hope to spearhead a resurgence of silverbells!! I planted 3 Halesia monticola's and I had to mail order them from CA. The nursery has been now sold out of them for two years! No particular reason they aren't available more other than they haven't seen the demand yet in the commercial market. The same could be said for native grasses and now they are exploding in popular offerings . . .

I have a tiny English cottage garden with a lot of non-natives outside the front door too, in homage to my late mother's favorite plants, peonies, roses, carnations, thyme walkway, etc. My yard benefits from zoning it, like a lot of yards could. High maintenance stuff close to the house, areas landscaped "wilder" further away . . . with an eye for creating "views." I can keep an eye out on the seeding and spread of the non natives close to the house, and encourage the easy care natural spread of the natives in my native wildflower garden . . . etc.

Edited to add as far as the "right" place to plant Rosa virginiana (Pasture rose) if you've got some place you don't want people traveling through, and want something pretty that smells nice, plant a row of them and you'll soon not be able to hack through the thicket . . . they are thorny devils too, to keep away the grazing herbivores . . .

Pinkmountain, I've had the same experience with virginia creeper. It is one of the few things that volunteers in my yard, that may have been native to this property at one time. That and sensitive fern, which I'm not sure is a native. I am now ripping Virginia Creeper out all the time. It was completely under control for decades and due to the encouragement of the natives movement, I thought, 'oh, that's a native, I should encourage it to grow here.'. It is taking over a 90 ft long area and climbing up and over and under my fence onto the neighbor's property. So what I have done is given myself a big job to do and a headache, that I was specifically trying to avoid.

Edited to add:

I think the natives movement as a broad idea is great, and it would be nice if they could stay on track with helping to interest people and excite people to the idea of natives. More importantly, what would speed things along, would be making natives more available, more accessible.

I've often wondered why those in the natives movement are not focused in on trying to persuade those in charge of what is planted in the strips along the highways, to make some changes to natives? And I mean actually specific to the neighborhoods, communities and towns along Rte 95 for example. Not just a broad swipe at it, like someone somewhere, deciding, 'oh, let's just sow a wildflower mix along miles of highway, with these 3 seeds in it'

It's amazing what a wonderful opportunity strips along the highways could be. Edited again: Maybe. Perhaps there is a reason that has not been done.

Where do you live Pinkmountain, and exactly where are you doing restoration, and of what sort?

https://www.segrasslands.org/

@prairiemoon2 z6b MA

Yes, Ive often wondered about the sides of the highways too! My mom told me about a state, I forget which, that had a native wildflower enthusiast in charce of the state highway transport or something. He did a wonderful job of preserving natives by simply changing the mowing schedule to less frequently and when it is best for the natives, in the fall I think. She said you could drive over the state line and immediately see the huge abundance of wildflowers vs the other states. I dont know why all states don’t do that. I wish they would. It would go a huge way in helping preserve eco diversity, endangered species and such.

Grace, that sounds great. I'm glad someone is having some success at making use of that land. After I suggested it, I wondered if the fact cars are spewing exhaust all along the highway is an impediment to much of anything growing there, native or otherwise.

Prairiemoon, I want people to think about the capacity for good that their land has. All the information is out there, I don't want anyone to just listen to me, I want them to think about it for themselves.

I dont want to sound combative but we can have more than one opinion in a conversation, and I don't like beating around the bush. I'm not attacking the character of anyone here, if you feel personally attacked by the information I present, well sorry but that's not my intention. I am just going to disagree with any statement I know to be false. I thought 'farce' was a polite way of saying it.

I got into native plants because my property had no landscaping and I noticed almost all of the weeds around were invasive plants. Then I started to notice there were almost no native plants anywhere. So I decided to grow them on my property, it was really that simple and reactionary. I learned about all the benefits later. Im sharing the information I learned and if anyone is triggered by that, feel free to disagree.

Mary Tulen, 1986 was a date that stuck with me from the documentary A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough. If I remember right the fact was that the amount of CO2 emitted between 1986 to roughly the present equaled all previous human CO2 emissions. It's meant to demonstrate that things have changed faster in the last 35 years than the previous 10,000 or more, we are no longer operating within our historical understanding.

Let's get back to the question "Is anyone here doing any native plant restoration gardens?"

Interesting responses to Skip's replies as I thought woody's comment about his/her own native and non-native plantings derailed the original goal of this post: "Is anyone here doing any native plant restoration gardens?"

And my answer is "yes" but not in a professional sense--more as an enthusiastic homeowner and gardener and overall nature lover. As others have noted, I also am battling invasives and my particular nemeses are Japanese stilt grass, yellow arch-angel, smart weed and garlic mustard. When I moved into my house more than 10 years ago, the stream in my yard was surrounded by Jewel-weed and different bee-balm varieties. Now it's everything I listed above with nary a wildflower in view.

Regarding the Monarch butterflies: We are on the Monarch migration pathway and love seeing them come through. Two years ago my single Asclepias exaltata had 32 caterpillars on it at one time. The plant was only 3 feet tall with a few stems! Needless to say I catered to those caterpillars and successfully released every last one I put in the Monarch tent...24 in total.

Hi Skip, thanks for responding to my question.

Unfortunately, I am finding the aggressiveness of people everywhere in promoting their own viewpoints uncomfortable. Everyone has a view, an opinion, but from my perspective there is a line, where you don’t cross it to attempt to twist someone’s arm to accept your opinion as more valid than their own. When I feel that is happening, I feel I need to speak up.

So while you don’t want to sound combative, that is exactly how you sound to me. And when you say ‘ you don’t want to beat around the bush’ - do you mean you don’t want to stop and listen to other people’s point of view and consider theirs, you just want them to accept yours?

No, you are not ‘attacking the character’ of anyone here….what? What does someone’s character have to do with native plants and their garden? That is an odd thing to say, Skip.

Do I feel personally attacked, no, I feel that you want what YOU want, which is what you should do with your own life goals and your own property, but, really, you’re not in a position to have any expectations of what my goals are or what I do with my property.

This is a garden discussion forum, not a classroom. No one has assigned me to sit in on a lecture on native plants. I started this thread because I am interested in the subject and wanted to hear how other people were working on this. You’ve stepped way over the line Skip and in reality someone taking your approach does not interest or excite or encourage anyone to learn more about natives, just the opposite. What kind of approach do you call that, any way? [g] Seriously.

When I asked you the questions about what your expectations were of the general public and how you envisioned getting from where we are to where you think we need to go, I suspected you had unreasonable expectations, but, I’m really shocked at your attitude. It’s way beyond anything I would have guessed.

Everyone here has a perspective, not just you Skip. People have been sharing their own information, their own experiences, and you aren’t even listening because you are so intent on hitting everyone over the head with the ‘information you 'feel' you have learned'

I hope you can hear what I am trying to tell you Skip. This was a lost opportunity to have a positive influence on a number of people posting to this thread on this subject. I'm very happy that there are others here that have a much more reasonable approach and expectations.

Jay I've worked in mid west Michigan and currently south central Michigan, but also extensively in SE PA. I have a half-hearted blog about some restoration efforts but I'm not going to post it because I am sad that it just got started and hasn't been kept up. My Mom died right as I was starting to blog, and a lot of things then cropped up to keep me away from doing it regularly.

It was at Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in Bucks County PA that I first met your fellow Chicagoan Dr. Gerould Wilhelm and learned of his work on using floral inventories as tools for conservation and restoration. There is a lot of stuff you can google online, but the simple way I approached it when I taught it was "In order to 'restore' a piece of land, you have to have some way of evaluating whether or not you have been successful, some type of marker for what you are restoring it to." Wilhelm and many of his other botanist colleagues have come up with systems that evaluate the "pristine" quality of a piece of land (for its conservation value) by inventorying what kinds of plants are commonly found on the property. Plants are given various values depending on how fussy they are about having specific habitats and how sensitive they are to disturbances. If you have a lot of plants growing in an area that are very sensitive to disturbance, then obviously you are looking at habitat that hasn't had much disturbance. BUT that is for conservation. Wilhelm was asked about "restoration" and he said he has seen land degraded but never fully restored. So if a piece of land has a conservation value of 10, it might go down to a nine or eight, but he has never seen a six go back to a nine or ten . . .

However you also have to know something about the geography and overall character of the land, because some habitats are just naturally disturbed, the plants there are adapted to changing conditions. Examples in my zone would be dunes and beach areas where lake levels fluctuate, and along rivers where it is sometimes dry and other times flooded. A lot of very hardy plants are "native" to those areas and can prove very useful in restoration because sometimes they are more hardy and less fussy than plants adapted to very stable environments. Some of your better landscape plants are native to disturbed areas. The now much beloved native darling river birch is an example of that. Can survive both prolonged wet and dry spells.

In my case, I used a model where we visited relatively pristine areas (ones not highly developed with a fair number of native plants that you wouldn't see in very disturbed areas) and used that as a model for what might be possible to "restore" using natives. I was restoring a rocky hillside that was adjacent to an abandoned gravel pit with a pond below where it flattened out. We went to a nearby state game land that had seen little serious disturbance, where we found a site with a hillside adjacent to a pond on the flat ground. We did a "floristic inventory" of both that site and our candidate for restoration, compared the two, and then identified some areas where we might move our restoration site closer in appearance and function to the model site. The idea is you look for patterns and associations of plants that naturally occur in a model site, and attempt to recreate them in your restoration area. In our case, we had to figure out how to mitigate runoff from an adjacent paved road, the main source of the continued disturbance . . . that entailed a really weird "rain garden" on top of a hill adjacent to the road.

Sometimes in restoration you can't find the exact plant, but you try and figure out what role or function it is having in the plant community and try to come up with something as close as possible. When you can't find your ideal plants, that's where you start to get into plant propagation like me . . . but I only dabble.

Currently I am using that same technique on my own property, which is a bottomland forest adjacent to a riparian creekside area on our property. Across the street was my model forest, 22 acres, but the owners hired some horrible lumber company two years ago and high graded the whole thing, took out all the big valuable trees for just the lumber in the trunks and left huge piles of debris of the tops. It looks now like a tornado went through there and destroyed it. Who knows if it will ever bounce back. Meanwhile, I use what I knew about that property to save little vignettes of what once was . . . sigh.

For a really, really dense discussion of restoration, here's a video of Dr. Wilhelm discussing it . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRpV0MPa2OI

As a side note, something similar to the above is what they did at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, when they created an area of displays of native Michigan habitats. They went to pristine areas of the state with prime habitat examples, did floristic inventories, and then tried to recreate the same conditions on the grounds of the Arb for visitors to see. I went to a very interesting lecture there on their efforts to get certain types of plant communities to thrive. They got funding for a native bog to display rare native orchids and other plants, but that one proved very difficult to create in an area where it wouldn't be naturally. Obviously some habitats were easier to recreate than others in another place . . .

Great Lakes Gardens at Matthaei, https://mbgna.umich.edu/matthaei-botanical-gardens/gardens/great-lakes-gardens/

Pinkmountain - I’m glad you decided to continue the discussion. I’m going to be dropping off the thread, but I hope you and others can continue it, if there is an interest. I appreciated the way you have shared your efforts to restore habitat. You are trying to do something about a situation that is really frightening. I realize that and am not really any different, I find it frightening as well and I’m sure we all find the world’s problems overwhelming.

I can’t speak for others, I can only say that I have had lots of enthusiasm along the way to also do something about it. Have made the attempt with the resources I have. I’m still making the attempt. I could have used more support and encouragement at different times but wildflower and conservation groups in my area have other goals and agendas that don’t really reach out to people who are just trying to do what they can and need it to be made more accessible. So, I suppose they were doing the best they could and we are all trying to do the best we can.

I just popped over to the Native Plants forum and not a lot happening there from my perspective. Not a lot of newcomers being nurtured. And Houzz has not even put a link to the Native plants forum and apparently no one there seemed to think to complain about that or to follow up until there was a link in the directory. A simple thing really.

Everyone on this thread has made an effort and expressed an interest, just by contributing to this thread. I was enjoying hearing from members that I already know, how their interest is growing in natives and how that has been working out for them. And hearing from GW members I don’t know, like you.

I started this thread because I met someone on another GW thread who was explaining how they had been working on a property for 4 years on a riparian area and I wanted to hear more and maybe see some photos. They had only posted to GW 3x and I thought a newcomer, maybe it would be helpful for her to see if there was anyone else here doing the same. It happened that she’s had trouble signing into Houzz, so she hasn’t posted yet. But the atmosphere on the forums here in regard to natives, I’d have to say it is challenging.

From my perspective, any effort or interest on someone’s part in native plants is something to appreciate and celebrate and build on. People need to be met where they are and nurtured and encouraged by those in a position to do so, if that's at all possible. Maybe it's not. They have limited resources, challenging properties, time restraints, energy restraints, competing priorities and yet they still have an interest in trying to do what they can. They would appreciate being heard and supported. Certainly it is an approach that has been very successful over time in many endeavors to draw people in and encourage their interest and support.

And this limited exposure I’ve had in the past week or so to those on GW involved in native plants, I’m sure is not the whole of it and maybe there are people here that are being welcoming and supportive. This is just what my experience has been as a newcomer to natives at GW this week.

I am impressed by the scope of what you personally are trying to do. I share your sorrow over lost pristine natural areas and mature trees. I’m sure a lot of us do. I wish you good luck in your efforts.

I'm a huge believer in modeling and copying others. That's one of the main things I get on Houzz and GW. I see what others are doing that I like and try to copy their examples and recreate/interpret it in my own way. It's the same way with designing a native garden, think about what you love in nature and see if you can recreate it. As a tiny example, in my last urban row house garden in the middle of the city, I really missed my Great Lakes. We had a tiny postage sized yard, but I planted musclewood which also goes by the name "blue beech" and looks a little bit like a beech tree, and a small Japanese maple. They stood in for my much missed and beloved beech maple northern hardwood forest. A small little fountain filled with Lake Michigan and Lake Superior beach stones reminded me of my favorite beaches where I collected them. And then there was my pride and joy, a dwarf Japanese white pine, which stood in for my home state's tree, the white pine. No way could I have grown the real deals in that minuscule spot, but I could look out in my garden and still see some beloved colors and textures.

You grew up on Lake Michigan? Where did you move to?

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people have not had much experience at seeing native sites or undisturbed sites. I can't remember a place like that. I grew up visiting Maine and some summers in a beach community, but what I've seen is disturbed sites for the most part. I used to go to a camp in Maine that was in the woods, but I swear I don't remember seeing anything growing there. It might be that the closest I've been to an undisturbed site, is a photo in a book.

I do remember driving through a rural area in the night, in the summer growing up and I still remember the way the air smelled. I never smell that any more. I remember fireflies which I haven't seen in decades.

Pinkmountain, thanks for getting back and sharing! I love what you said. I'm pretty much in agreement with everything you said. Me, being in the Illinois native plant society, and working with plants of concern, we are very familiar with Gerry Wilhelm and his ideas, and his bible. I've been growing a lot of my plants from seed the past few years. It's the only way I can have some rarer or hard to find species.

Asclepias purpurascens in the wild

Wild Aletris farinosa

Seedings to be planted.

Leadplant and Helenium amarum

Prairie in progress

Don't want to wade too deep into this discussion because I'm no expert. I'll just state that I always include some natives in my home gardens and have had some great successes and several miserable failures. I've found that not all natives are happy in cultivated gardens, and others can become thugs in small spaces. OTOH, many are quite happy and content so do your research.

Someone upstream said they have difficulty locating native plants. You might try contacting your county Extension Service and/or Soil and Water Conservation District (or some similar agency). Many local governments are into naturescaping parks, retention ponds, nature preserves, etc. and they all have naturalists on staff. Reach out to them and they might point you to some native plant sources nearby. Good luck with your project!

Since there’s a lot of knowledgeable people here, I have a question about the invasive honeysuckle rampaging across the midwest. Specifically, is there any hope? It’s so incredibly invasive everywhere and so hard to eradicate. I see it everywhere I go to the almost exclusion of other plants. Does nature ever autocorrect, as it were? Are we just doomed? It seems it’s way past the point of being bound by any puny human efforts.

There's a lot to be said for trying to be an example for others. I bet the majority of John Q Public just doesn't know about the great big world of native (to their area) plants, or if they do think they're unruly/too big/don't work in the home landscape. We can be an example in our own sphere of influence. If we incorporate more natives and other people see them and like them, maybe it will encourage them to plant them in their own spaces -- modeling and copying, like Ipinkmountain mentioned above. I had never seen a native hibiscus moscheutos, all I've ever seen for sale in the "regular" nurseries are the hybrids. One of the native plant nurseries I mentioned above did some municipal plantings in the city I work, and when I saw native hibiscus blooming I instantly fell in love -- they are now one of the highlights of my late summer garden. This nudged me down the path of using more natives -- when I went on a quest to find taller plants, I turned to natives because of those municipal plantings; the interest was already there, but seeing them "in real life" provided that spark that got me to get more.

Using them well makes a difference, too. The average homeowner doesn't want a "jungle" -- which, unfortunately, is probably the image a lot of people get when the hear the word native. They just may not know how attractive many of these plants can be or that many of them can be easily and attractively worked into the home landscape. So if we can incorporate them well into our own gardens it might inspire others, and since they tend to grow exuberantly if grown in their preferred conditions, we'll probably have enough to share!

Which leads me to another problem -- ease of availability, and it's a big one. I already had an interest in natives, many years of gardening experience, and the knowledge that if I knew where to look I could probably find what I was looking for. It's not easy to find natives, and a lot (well, most) of the big, full-service nurseries in the metro area just aren't selling the variety of stuff they used to, the trend is toward smaller plants and new "hot" introductions -- I've ranted about that before on the board. But, MI is blessed with a wealth of fantastic nurseries, so with a little effort I located a few places that specialize in natives (one not too far from me, either!). But seriously -- is John Q Public going to do that? No. Well, at least milkweed is "hot" right now, so that's available pretty much everywhere, and that's all right in my book :0)

Interest in native landscaping is growing I think because some landscapers are creating such wonderful examples. The landscaping issue of "right plant, right place" is the same with natives as it is with any other perennial plant. For most people, landscaping is done without much thought and previous knowledge of the plants that are installed, hence the average nursery or big box is going to emphasize ubiquitous plants that can thrive almost anywhere, and a few common things that look good in the pot in the store. However, there is room for innovation. I was just on the web site of a prairie plant mail order nursery that sells "kits" of matching perennials that are selected for certain types of conditions. Its never going to be a huge market, but I also think it is one with potential for growth. Done properly, native plantings can be resilient, which is the new catchphrase.

As for restoration, that's another matter. Weedy non-natives thrive in disturbed conditions. In order to restore the native vegetation, one first has to stop the disturbances. That's easier said than done. The various Asian honeysuckle shrubs are a prime example. They like partial shade, the hallmark of the disturbed native forest, and deer don't eat them. Between paths and edges and smaller and smaller "islands" of habitat, and an exploding deer population, the native forest is losing its resiliency. The restoration project I mentioned in my previous post was in an area overrun with honeysuckle. It takes a landscape-wide and systematic management plan to eradicate it. You are dealing with trying to tamp down the seed sources, and honeysuckle seeds can persist in the soil for a long time, not to mention they are spread by birds. Research says the farther away your restoration site is from a big sink of a seed source, the more likely you are to have success. And you must control deer browsing for natives to have any chance of surviving.

I just noticed this response, because Houzz doesn't always send me notification which according to my settings it should. sometimes I get a lot of notifications, others time not. Not one all day today or yesterday, and when I come back and look I see threads I've been following that have had more comments. Just to let people know, you can't always rely on notifications.