Reflections From a Year in the Native Garden
A Nebraska gardener contemplates more flowers, more spiders, less work and the magic of slowing down
Impatience is rewarding. No, really, go with me on this. I’m as anxious as the next person to see my young plants mature and the garden be lush and full of life in every season. From that anxiety and hope comes a hawk’s eye. I’m watching every detail unfold in the landscape — every new bud, new bloom and new insect. I’m forced to slow down and observe, and it’s magical. My desire for more makes me visually catalog the changes two or three times a day, which, in the end, adds to my appreciation of how nature works and how gardens evolve both as ecosystems and places of aesthetic delight.
What am I saying? Enjoy the anxiety and impatience of your garden because they hold their own lesson in loving a landscape. But, boy, I sure wish that bur oak I planted as a street tree a few weeks ago was already 50 feet tall.
Here’s how my gardening year went, and what I learned through observation and error.
What am I saying? Enjoy the anxiety and impatience of your garden because they hold their own lesson in loving a landscape. But, boy, I sure wish that bur oak I planted as a street tree a few weeks ago was already 50 feet tall.
Here’s how my gardening year went, and what I learned through observation and error.
I need to do more thinning for a few weeks for less maintenance overall. Failure is never failure when you learn something from it, especially when it comes to how plants spread and reproduce. I’m a huge fan of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), but sometimes they spread too easily by seed — particularly when the beds aren’t thickly planted and layered well.
In my front gardens, which need to show a bit more order given how public they are, I spend my June selectively removing seedlings of both plants so others can thrive. Down the road my garden will be more balanced and require less work. This year I also added plains shortbeak sedge (Carex brevior) and Richardson’s alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) in order to thicken and bulk up the ground layer, hoping to slow down any self-sowing of more aggressive species.
In my front gardens, which need to show a bit more order given how public they are, I spend my June selectively removing seedlings of both plants so others can thrive. Down the road my garden will be more balanced and require less work. This year I also added plains shortbeak sedge (Carex brevior) and Richardson’s alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) in order to thicken and bulk up the ground layer, hoping to slow down any self-sowing of more aggressive species.
Letting some plants spread will mean fewer weeds, and I have to let go and trust them. On the flip side, in my backyard meadow I want black-eyed Susans and little bluestem, among others, to play out their aggressive natures as they outcompete and smother the fescue lawn they were sown into. This is hard to do, as it’s natural to want to keep plants in their place like sculpture. But for me, trusting some plants to take care of things is working marvelously.
After scalping and de-thatching over 2,000 square feet of lawn two autumns ago, I chose specific plants I knew would shade out fescue and steal resources like water and soil nutrients as they moved about. For example, I had a bumper crop of upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) the first summer, but since it (like black-eyed Susan) tends to be biennial or a short-lived perennial, I had far fewer coneflower and far less fescue grass this summer. I see this as a win-win, as other slower-to-develop plants like baptisia, purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) and lead plant (Amorpha canescens) established.
Why Aggressive Plants Might Actually Be Your Friends
After scalping and de-thatching over 2,000 square feet of lawn two autumns ago, I chose specific plants I knew would shade out fescue and steal resources like water and soil nutrients as they moved about. For example, I had a bumper crop of upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) the first summer, but since it (like black-eyed Susan) tends to be biennial or a short-lived perennial, I had far fewer coneflower and far less fescue grass this summer. I see this as a win-win, as other slower-to-develop plants like baptisia, purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) and lead plant (Amorpha canescens) established.
Why Aggressive Plants Might Actually Be Your Friends
Tall blazing star (Liatris aspera) in my backyard meadow
Learning to deal with voles is now my biggest garden chore. When folks look at my landscape, they immediately ask what I’ll do about “pests” like snakes, spiders, mice and voles. First, I want spiders and snakes, as both are evidence of a healthy, thriving ecosystem and rid me of real pests. In fact, this August I counted a record 10 banded spiders in my meadow at one time, their zigzag patterns proudly displayed at the center of each web.
However, since my yard is fenced and trees are beginning to mature around the sunny areas, there’s less access for predators like foxes and hawks, and meadow voles are devastating my liatris corms, which they love to eat in autumn and winter. In fact, I expect to have no liatris of any species alive next year — which is a shame, given how attractive they are in stature and how pollinators adore them when they bloom.
From now on I’ll have to be more proactive than I’d like, and plant each corm in a cage of tightly woven chicken wire. Such is the irony of being both a wildlife gardener and someone who prizes aesthetics for humans.
Learning to deal with voles is now my biggest garden chore. When folks look at my landscape, they immediately ask what I’ll do about “pests” like snakes, spiders, mice and voles. First, I want spiders and snakes, as both are evidence of a healthy, thriving ecosystem and rid me of real pests. In fact, this August I counted a record 10 banded spiders in my meadow at one time, their zigzag patterns proudly displayed at the center of each web.
However, since my yard is fenced and trees are beginning to mature around the sunny areas, there’s less access for predators like foxes and hawks, and meadow voles are devastating my liatris corms, which they love to eat in autumn and winter. In fact, I expect to have no liatris of any species alive next year — which is a shame, given how attractive they are in stature and how pollinators adore them when they bloom.
From now on I’ll have to be more proactive than I’d like, and plant each corm in a cage of tightly woven chicken wire. Such is the irony of being both a wildlife gardener and someone who prizes aesthetics for humans.
What I’ve been happy about is that none of my beds (5,000 square feet of them on a 10,000-square-foot lot) require water or fertilizer. My garden work consists of a spring cleanup, summer thinning and plugging any perceived gaps in the design.
I confess, as someone who yearns to live on an acreage and return as much of it to prairie as I can, I’m totally, deeply, madly in love with the winter scene of crimson grasses out my back window, watching the sun track low across the icy-blue sky.
May your garden dreams come true in the new year, and may you cultivate home for yourself and wildlife wherever you are.
More
Get a Head Start on Planning Your Garden, Even if It’s Snowing
What to Know About Starting Your First Native Plant Garden
How to Find Your Garden’s Voice
I confess, as someone who yearns to live on an acreage and return as much of it to prairie as I can, I’m totally, deeply, madly in love with the winter scene of crimson grasses out my back window, watching the sun track low across the icy-blue sky.
May your garden dreams come true in the new year, and may you cultivate home for yourself and wildlife wherever you are.
More
Get a Head Start on Planning Your Garden, Even if It’s Snowing
What to Know About Starting Your First Native Plant Garden
How to Find Your Garden’s Voice
Next year I will have more smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve), aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) and showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) for late-summer and fall pollinators. I’ll plant more blue sage (Salvia azurea), tall thoroughwort (Eupatorium altissimum) and sunflowers too.
20 Favorite Flowers for the Fall Landscape