3 Easy Ways You Can Garden for Nature
Your choice of plants can help wildlife while cleaning the air and water
Benjamin Vogt
4 February 2016
Houzz Contributor. I'm a big advocate for bringing the tallgrass prairie into our urban lives -- only 1% remains, making it more threatened than the Amazon rainforest yet also as effective at sequestering CO2. I own Monarch Gardens LLC, a prairie garden design firm based in Nebraska and working with clients across the Midwest. I also speak nationally on native plants, sustainable design, and landscape ethics while hosting online classes. I'm the author of A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future. In the coming years we want to restore a 40+ acre prairie and host an artist residency program.
Houzz Contributor. I'm a big advocate for bringing the tallgrass prairie into our... More
No matter your aesthetic preference — from formal to informal, straight lines to wavy borders — you can garden in a way that honors and supports wildlife and the land that intersects with your landscape. From attracting pollinators and birds to sequestering carbon and filtering water, native plants can fit the bill in almost any designed space. Here are a few strategies to help you consider how to best garden for nature.
1. Incorporate host plants for insects. Supporting pollinators such as native bees and butterflies is a hot-button issue right now. Often this discussion focuses on nectar and pollen — just flowers. While these are important parts for gardeners, as flowers are pretty, and for insects, as wildlife is hungry, we also need to focus on host plants where pollinators raise their young.
The following larvae host plants are native to various regions of the United States and are available at native-plant nurseries: milkweed (Asclepias spp., USDA zones 3 to 9, depending on species; find your zone), golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea, zones 3 to 8), baptisia (Baptisia spp., zones 3 to 9), American senna (Senna hebecarpa, zones 4 to 8), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium, zones 2 to 9), Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans, zones 4 to 9) and asters, just to name a few. Check with local nurseries, university extension offices or farmers markets to learn more about host plants native to your region.
How to Find the Right Native Plants for Your Yard
It’s important to remember that most butterfly and moth species can lay eggs only on certain plant species, and there are even native bees, called oligolectic bees, that use the pollen only from a certain plant genus or species to complete their life cycle.
A good plant does at least triple duty: It produces copious amounts of attractive pollen, which is the nutritious part of a bloom; it is a good place on which to lay eggs and good for being eaten by caterpillars; and it helps amend the soil, improving rainwater penetration and contributing to soil life.
The following larvae host plants are native to various regions of the United States and are available at native-plant nurseries: milkweed (Asclepias spp., USDA zones 3 to 9, depending on species; find your zone), golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea, zones 3 to 8), baptisia (Baptisia spp., zones 3 to 9), American senna (Senna hebecarpa, zones 4 to 8), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium, zones 2 to 9), Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans, zones 4 to 9) and asters, just to name a few. Check with local nurseries, university extension offices or farmers markets to learn more about host plants native to your region.
How to Find the Right Native Plants for Your Yard
It’s important to remember that most butterfly and moth species can lay eggs only on certain plant species, and there are even native bees, called oligolectic bees, that use the pollen only from a certain plant genus or species to complete their life cycle.
A good plant does at least triple duty: It produces copious amounts of attractive pollen, which is the nutritious part of a bloom; it is a good place on which to lay eggs and good for being eaten by caterpillars; and it helps amend the soil, improving rainwater penetration and contributing to soil life.
2. Plant a mix of root systems to beat weeds and filter water. More and more we’re thinking about what our gardens are doing at and below the soil line: how plants improve soil, increase drainage and keep runoff out of storm drains. Believe it or not, these concerns align with combating weeds in our landscapes.
When our gardens are thick with plants of varying heights and varying leaf structures, weeds get shaded and crowded out — the leaves and plants aboveground steal the sunlight. Plants can also outcompete many weeds as they hunt for nutrients below ground through their roots. That underground competition works especially well for garden plants if you layer plants below ground too.
Include plants with deep taproots, such as baptisia, milkweed and compass plant (Silphium laciniatum); those with more fibrous root zones, such as little bluestem and sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula); and oru native sedges (Carexx spp.) These various root systems not only outcompete weeds, but they also open up and improve the soil, creating more life and increasing water-holding capacity. An acre of mature prairie or meadow can absorb 9 inches of rain every hour before runoff occurs.
Learn more about how plants can reduce stormwater runoff
When our gardens are thick with plants of varying heights and varying leaf structures, weeds get shaded and crowded out — the leaves and plants aboveground steal the sunlight. Plants can also outcompete many weeds as they hunt for nutrients below ground through their roots. That underground competition works especially well for garden plants if you layer plants below ground too.
Include plants with deep taproots, such as baptisia, milkweed and compass plant (Silphium laciniatum); those with more fibrous root zones, such as little bluestem and sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula); and oru native sedges (Carexx spp.) These various root systems not only outcompete weeds, but they also open up and improve the soil, creating more life and increasing water-holding capacity. An acre of mature prairie or meadow can absorb 9 inches of rain every hour before runoff occurs.
Learn more about how plants can reduce stormwater runoff
3. Clean the air with a diversity of plant types. While your garden hosts insects and filters water, it also absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and stores it underground. Let’s take prairie plants, many of which have ranges that extend far east and west from the Great Plains — some all the way to both oceans.
Mature prairie plants can sequester as much carbon below ground in their roots as mature woodland can aboveground. The difference between the two is that when trees die, they release the stored carbon from the decaying trunks, whereas prairie plants like grasses, with their deep root systems, keep that carbon in the soil. That’s one reason so much farmland is on what used to be prairie—the soils are very rich. Trees play an important part in cleaning our air and cooling urban areas, but so do flowers and grasses. A diverse and thickly planted landscape provides maximum benefit.
This year think about all the ways in which your garden can be beautiful and have a purpose that appeals not only to your aesthetic senses but also to the needs of wildlife and the larger environment. Your garden can provide food and shelter for other species above and below the soil line, all while filtering water and cleaning the air. Your garden can make a difference. Your garden matters.
More
The Surprising Ingredients Every Good Garden Should Have
Browse plants native to other regions of the U.S.
Mature prairie plants can sequester as much carbon below ground in their roots as mature woodland can aboveground. The difference between the two is that when trees die, they release the stored carbon from the decaying trunks, whereas prairie plants like grasses, with their deep root systems, keep that carbon in the soil. That’s one reason so much farmland is on what used to be prairie—the soils are very rich. Trees play an important part in cleaning our air and cooling urban areas, but so do flowers and grasses. A diverse and thickly planted landscape provides maximum benefit.
This year think about all the ways in which your garden can be beautiful and have a purpose that appeals not only to your aesthetic senses but also to the needs of wildlife and the larger environment. Your garden can provide food and shelter for other species above and below the soil line, all while filtering water and cleaning the air. Your garden can make a difference. Your garden matters.
More
The Surprising Ingredients Every Good Garden Should Have
Browse plants native to other regions of the U.S.
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carpboo - sounds like an old world war II bunker. A jack hammer to take out a mail box? If it is just the poured frost footing see if you can get a chain around it and pull out the whole thing.
Dreamdoctor: do the neonics ever grow out of the shrubs and perennials? For example, if they were purchased and planted three years ago.
Robin,
I don't that - if you find it via search please post. I either start my plants from scratch or buy from a "local source" - invariably vegetable plants which I don't think are as likely to have neonicotinoids on them - worst case scenario - they have them but I buy my starter plants small enough they don't have flowers on them which is what lures the insects to their death (they usually put the stuff on ornemental flowering plants) . How insidious! By the time I have them outside the insecticides have washed off and the plants have grown quite a bit.
My mom uses a clay spray for her broccoli/Brussel sprouts etc to keep the cabbage loopers off of them (those little white butterfly looking insects/green caterpillars). Finally a way to grow these veggies without insecticides - I could never bring myself to use them.