Native Ground Covers

When it comes to landscaping around the home, many people seem to be more comfortable with a single carpet-like planting – grass, vinca, or pachysandra. This is more comforting, easier to ‘read’ and may be a representation of nature ‘controlled’.  In the natural world the ground cover layer is more likely to be a mix of species. Each species occupies a preferred niche in both time and space. Hayscented fern is one of the few species that I’ve seen that can really appears to dominate a space, but that was in a recently cleared forest. On closer examination other species were present at ground level. With time a more diverse community will develop.

In designing a ground cover planting with native species you should draw on a palette of low-growing plants that can work together and are appropriate to the site conditions. While the following list is not exhaustive, these are some of the natives that I have grown around my home that work well as ground covers.



Black Huckleberry, Gaylassacia baccata, is and evergreen woody subshrub that is found in upland woods and handles a range of soil moistures, wet to dry, and sun exposures light shade to full sun. It grows 1-2’ tall and twice as wide. I was impressed by the glossy green (and a few bright red) leaves in February. The flowers develop slowly through the spring and are just now opening. I’m looking forward to larger plants so that I can see these colorful flowers without bending over so much. Although slow growing, I have been able to grow this plant in a variety of difficult locations. This plant is becoming more available in the retail trade. Other huckleberries, preferring moister conditions, are also available.

3-Toothed Cinquefoil, Sibbaldiopsis tridentata, (formerly of the genus Potentilla) is another tough plant for tough conditions. I’ve seen this growing at the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. I’ve had a good experience growing this plant in a variety of challenging locations, such as on the edge of yew bushes. With a little protection it is evergreen through the winter and it produces clusters of white flowers in summer. While it can form a dense mat, it is not so thick as to exclude other plant from growing with it.


Bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi , grows under what would be considered very harsh conditions, but is must have very well drained soil to survive. While I’ve encountered it growing out of cracks in boulders on a hiking trail, I haven’t had much luck with this plant on my ‘typical’ residential site (too moisture retentive, my guess); therefore no photos, either.

Barren Strawberry, Waldsteinia fraganoidies, formes a fairly dense evergreen mat with good weed suppressive character. It produces yellow flowers in early spring (now in New England), but the fruit is inedible. In the photo it is growing with sensitive fern and Mayapple.  This native can be found at some nurseries, but its cousin, Siberian Barren Strawberry, Waldsteinia ternata, is much more available and is often sold under the same common name.

Hairy Alumroot, Heuchera villosa, has been a very effective ground cover for me in partly sunny locations. The collection shown here was grown from seed which produced a mixture of green and purple leaf forms. The leaves cast enough shade to control weed growth from below. Later in the summer it produces small white flowers on long racemes, but these are not particularly showy compared to many of the Heuchera cultivars.



Some other native plants that I have been trying around my home, which can be used in a ground cover mix, include Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens), Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) and Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) and a variety of ferns. There are many more native species that can be used as ground covers. Just take a walk in the woods to see what’s growing there. What other natives have you used as ground covers?

For more information on native groundcovers, check out this article from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  Also, check out my follow-up post Native Ground Covers - Part 2.

Rebirth-- Spring in New England

I had a wonderful visit to St. John, USVI, with all of its lush vegetation and quiet beaches, but you can’t beat coming back to springtime in New England. After 5+ months of grayness, color has popped out everywhere. All that new foliage is fresh and green and many of the trees and shrubs are blooming. As Laurrie commented in a recent blog post ‘The Thrill is Gone’ . We in zone 5 and below have to wait longer than many – but experiencing the rebirth first hand sure beats looking a pictures.

Here’s a look at some of the native plants that are coming out around my house in the past few days.

The common blue violet, which I used to battle against until I learned that it was a native species, was popping up through my unmown lawn. Eastern columbine is about to bloom. This one is the result of self seeding. I also caught this sweetfern in bloom with the small red female flower below the male catkins.  This little flower is really easy to miss.

In my ‘woodland’ garden there are a number of perennials returning. This garden is under a Norway Maple, so it is hardly a natural environment for these plants, but the ones that grow here are tough competitors.

Best results go to the Wild Bleeding Heart, which is actually expanding its bounds. Lowbush blueberry is blooming well this year. The Twinleaf and Bellwort have been coming back for 3-4 years now, with some indication that they are beginning to spread. Last year I was fortunate to capture the Twinleaf in bloom. The intense white flowers only last a day, but the foliage alone can carry the show.  There are also a variety of native ferns putting up their fiddleheads.

Coming soon are the huckleberry and barren strawberry. I’ll get to those later.

Native Plants...USVI

I’ve been on vacation on St. John, USVI for relaxing and snorkeling as well as appreciating the botanical differences from the chilly Northeast.

All around the island you see what are house plants at home growing in their full glory. Many of these are imported from other tropical areas around the world. Plants like Plumbago, Codiaeum variegatum (Croton) and Bougainvillea appear in many of the landscapes around the villas. You can’t deny that these look fantastic.

While driving around the island, I was surprised and delighted to find a small native plant garden. This little garden shows a variety of landscape suitable plants that may already be growing naturally on a property and encourages owners and developers to preserve them. The sponsors for this garden include local community groups and the Island Resources Foundation. This organization supports environmental preservation in the USVI and Caribbean. Their mission statement is:

To protect and enhance the environments of small islands, especially those in tropical areas, and to assist islanders in the pursuit of development options that preserve the special qualities of island life.

Some examples of the plants in the native plant garden include Yellow Prickle, Mastic, and Philodendron gigantica.

Adlumia fungosa!!!

Adlumia fungosa, if pronounced ad-LOO’mee-uh” fun”-GOE’suh, may sound like an incantation from the Harry Potter series. Instead, it is fast growing biennial vine native to the Northeastern United States. It is also known by many common names, such as Climbing Fumitory, Allegheny Vine and Mountain Fringe Vine. The genus Adlumia is named for John Adlum a 19th century American Horticulturalist and fungosa means spongy in Latin, may refer to the consistency of the faded bloom which persists long after its peak. 

The flowers form clusters of white to pale pink bells from June to September, similar to those of its cousin, bleeding heart (Dicentra). As the flowers age, they take on an antique sepia shade. The seed ripens throughout the season, with September being the best time to harvest the small, shiny black seeds. Jane Loudon recommended this plant for the English flower garden in her ‘Ladies Companion’ (1865). I was fortunate to get both some second year plants from the New England Wildflower Society this last year, as well as seed from Summer Hill Seeds. This should help me to develop a continuous supply of first and second year plants and I am looking forward their continuing presence in my garden.

Its fern-like gray-green foliage is typical of other members of the Fumariaceae, like the Dicentra and Corydalis.  In early spring it is difficult to distinguish this vine from Wild Bleeding Heart and Squirrel Corn (D. eximia and D. canadensis).  The vine forms a rosette, growing to about 8” the first year and in the second year takes off to form an 8-10’ clamoring vine.  Its structure is rather delicate and it requires the support of strings or a trellis, on which the thin leaf stems intertwine, to grow vertically. The plants prefer partial shade in average, well drained soil. Too much sun will damage this vine. The first time I tried this plant in my garden, one poorly supported plant was irreparably twisted and killed by a strong wind.
The reported native habitats are moist coves, rocky woods, ledges, alluvial slopes, and thickets with a range from Virginia, north to Quebec and Manitoba. In Massachusetts it is listed as a threatened species where it is native to the western half of the state (west from Worcester County).

Recently, fellow plant blogger Alice Joyce wrote a article featuring this vine in the March/April 2010 edition of American Gardener (on-line access for AHS members only). Also, more information and some fine photos can be found in a post from Kathy Purdy in Cold Climate Gardening (August 2009).

2010 Boston Flower and Garden Show

After a one year lay-off the flower show has returned to Boston. I attended only one day of this 5 day event (March 24-28) and I was generally pleased with what I saw. For me the new venue, the Seaport World Trade Center was an improvement over the previous site. Most notably for me was the improved lighting which allows the display gardens look more ‘natural’.

Another change for this year was that the vendors and the garden displays were in the same area. This provided a nice, balanced mix of things to see. The competitive horticulture displays were located in a separate area which allowed for more intimate viewing.

Judging by the crowds there on a weekday, the show was successful. I heard from a friend that Saturday’s crowd was huge. So it sounds like the show was a success from an attendance point of view.

While the overall lighting was better than in the former location, I found that the use of tinted lighting over some of the garden displays was a disaster. For example, some display used blue-green tints on the arborvitae and reddish lighting on the rhododendrons. I could not tell what the plants actually looked like when the colors are rigged to ‘enhance’ them.

I was only there one day (Friday) and I found the lectures and demonstrations to be quite good. A few take away gems are:
Edible Landscaping with Paul Split, who talked about incorporating many conventional herbs in the landscape in unconventional ways. He also touched on companion planting and using plants to control pests. Some of his great ideas included using a ring of hostas (dense root mass) to control the spread of mints in a bed; use leeks to slow the spread of underground insects and pennyroyal to block insects crawling on the surface of the ground.

Listening to the landscape: Using Nature’s Cues to Design a Garden that Works by Scott LeFleur of the New England Wildflower Society. The key point I took away was that if you select plants that are right for the conditions on your site (light, water, soil conditions, etc.) then you do not need to add any additional materials, like fertilizers and soil amendments or extra water, to have a successful planting. Another comment was that it is best not to put debris from invasive plants into your compost pile, in this case, landfilling or burning is the better option.

The most energetic presentation of the day came from Kathleen Gagan of Peony’s Envy with her Passion for Peonies. This talk was full of excellent information on peonies, both herbaceous and tree types, and I took two pages of notes. There is a ton of information on the company website and I won’t recount much of it here. The only point I will share here is that some tree peonies are grafted onto the roots of herbaceous plants and that it is critical that these be planted deeply with the graft union about 6” underground. This will keep the rootstock from putting up new growth. Non-grafted tree types should be planted about 2” below ground level.

Most unique vendor I saw was Designer Palms Inc.  They make and sell steel palm trees many with lighted coconuts. At first I was aghast, but then, when I considered them as garden or poolside sculptures, they began to grow on me. In the right setting these could be a really unique accent or focal point in a garden where you want a tropical feel.

Next week it’s back to Native Plants!

What’s Blooming around Home

It’s still too early for a lot of spring flowers in the Boston area, but the great weather (after the recent flooding) this weekend got me out to look at the garden a little more closely. Most of the visual excitement is around the naturalized, non-native bulbs like Chionodoxa, Scilla and crocus. I was pleased to see how many bees were visiting what I believe to be these white Chionodoxa. (I am a little uncertain here because of the blue anthers – anyone have an alternate ID for this plant? It would be much appreciated.)  For next year I think I will try for more native spring flowers like Bloodroot, Dog-tooth violets and the Camas Lily, Camassia quamash.

These white flowers pictured above are actually Scilla mischtschenkoana, White or Early Squill.

While not open yet, the male catkins of my Sweet Fern (Comptonia peregrina) are getting plumper and have become noticeable. Also the hairs on the reddish branches really catch the afternoon light and make them glow.

 

Another sign of spring is when the Yews release tons of yellow pollen. This is the first year that I have really looked closely at the flowers. I noticed a difference between the flowers of two of my (unknown) cultivars. Also now is a good time to do some structural pruning on these to let more light in and stimulate some growth on the interior.

 What I am most pleased about seeing was the return of what I believe to be a Spring Blue-Eyed Mary from some seed that I had sown 2 years ago. I’ll keep a close watch on this seedling and let you know what it grows into.

Another pleasant surprise was a clump of Strawberry Spinach (Chenopodium capitatum) that overwintered. Normally this is considered to be an annual, but this plant did not mature last year, so I expect that it will finish out its lifecycle this year with some bright red berries. Check out the link for a seed source and more information on this native.

One thing I have noticed with some of the native annuals that I have tested is that those that do not flower and seed the first year will over-winter to complete their life cycle the following year.

"The Wild Garden"

A new edition of William Robinson’s 1870’s classic The Wild Garden has been published recently by Timber Press with additional material from Rick Darke. I was reminded of this by an essay by Darke appearing in the Jan/Feb issue of the American Gardener  entiled "What is Wild."  (Check out the link to the essay to see what I'm talking about.)  As I read this article I was immediately impressed at how well it captured my feelings on how I  like to design a residential garden—how to wed wildness and civilization.

 Robinson, a botanist and master gardener of 19th century Great Britain, wrote The Wild Garden in response to the contrived nature of the Victorian style garden. He was looking for a more natural, spontaneous, and lower maintenance way of gardening. The Wild Garden is not a manual on creating a wilderness, but rather a way of bringing nature and natural processes closer to the human environment. The key to this approach is to use plants that can naturalize to the existing site conditions and allowing them to grow and reproduce in a natural way to fill all the gaps or niches in the garden. Filling the ground plane with plants is naturally weed suppressive, conserves soil moisture and provides habitat for all sorts of creatures. To do this, plants need to be able to produce and disperse viable seed. Depending on the species this may require a genetically diverse ‘breeding stock’ and leaving some seed heads to mature and disperse their seeds.

In this style garden maintenance becomes more of an exercise in editing out seedlings rather than weeding and replacement of failed plants. The edited seedlings can become new additions to other areas or gifts to gardening friends.

In Robinson’s England of the mid 19th century, plants from the world over were available, including many from North America. These are reflected in the plant lists which he provided for the many different garden conditions encountered by the British gardener. His criteria for plant selection were that the plant be well adapted to an area to survive (rather than adapting the garden conditions to a few plants) and reproduce without dominating the garden (non-invasive). Early editions were focused on the use of introduced plant species while the 5th edition includes a significant chapter (60 pp) on ‘British Wildflowers and Trees.’ Thanks to ‘Google Books’ some of these early editions are available free of charge over the internet: 2nd edition; 5th edition.

This ‘wild garden’ approach is similar to that used for an entry garden I installed 3 years ago at the church I attend. This is a mixture of about half eastern US natives and half ‘exotics’. (I'm still waiting on a Leucothoe to fill the back corner.)  You can see that the ground plane is full. This garden gets no added fertilizer and very little supplemental water beyond the rain. Maintenance takes only 1-2 hours/year and mainly involves pulling out seedlings of bittersweet and euonymus from under the eaves where the birds sit. The Wild Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia) are spreading by seed and may be due for some ‘editing’ this year.