Pollinator planting guides

This site has guides on Selecting Plants for Pollinators that are tailored to specific ecoregions.  If you enter your zip code, it'll take you to the one for your region.  This is handy because Virginia is divided into multiple ecoregions depending on how far east/west you are.

(HT:  American Beauties Native Plants)

Soil and water conservation districts

Most of Virginia is divided into soil and water conservation districts.  You can find a list of districts here.  My own district is the Colonial Soil and Water Conservation District.  I got in touch with them because of some significant drainage and erosion problems in our yard.  I am building a rain garden, which is a well-drained bed of plants that will catch the runoff and use it rather than letting it flow through our yard.  (You will read a lot more about the rain garden in future entries here, as I plan to use exclusively native plants.)  My district does not help financially with individual homeowners' projects but is happy to provide advice.  Some other districts, such as the Thomas Jefferson district covering Nelson, Albemarle, Fluvanna, and Louisa counties, actually provide financial assistance with building a rain garden, converting turf to a native plant meadow, and other projects.

Last fall, a soil expert came to my house to assess the site and our drainage problems.  This is a nice free service.  Based on soil survey maps of the area, he determined what type of soil we have and then could recommend how deep we have to dig the rain garden to reach soil with better drainage.  He had tips on how to install overflow pipes and where to buy inexpensive mulch.  He was very willing to walk up and down our slope to see all our problem areas and recommended how to deal with each.

Eroded trench in my yard (with tape measure in inches for scale).

One caveat is that the soil expert didn't seem interested in promoting native plants and avoiding invasive ones, so I have supplemented with my own research.  Still, it was a helpful visit.  I would recommend checking out your local district if you have erosion problems and want advice.

Link roundup

I mentioned Dicentra (bleeding heart) in my last post.  Beautiful Wildlife Garden has a nice post about native bleeding hearts, which apparently are a good food source for hummingbirds.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a ruby throated hummingbird checking out my nonnative bleeding heart last week, so I guess that's not a total fail even though it isn't native.

Going further back, there was also a recent post on Beautiful Wildlife Garden about black gum as a shade tree.  There is actually a black gum cultivar ("Wildfire") with particularly attractive fall color.  For people who don't want to plant yet another maple, this could be a nice alternative.

Finally, it's the time of year for flowering of robin's plantain, a small, spring flowering aster.  I only recently learned of this plant, but my father has successfully propagated it from collected seeds and says that it does well in moist, partly sunny locations.

Aftermath of winter

Now that spring has come, I'm resurrecting the plant blog.  Here's how my front bed, which is supposed to be a mix of natives and nonnatives, looked about a week ago.  I'd say it's a strong argument in favor of native plants.

Front bed after the winter.  The gardenias were hard hit by the cold temperatures.

The dead bushes are special varieties of gardenias that were supposed to be hardy in this zone, but they were badly damaged by the winter.  (Well, first they were gnawed on by deer.)  I'll give them a growing season to recover, but I expect they'll need to be replaced.  At this point I'm leaning toward natives that are toxic and/or thorny to deter deer.  My little tea olive tree (Osmanthus sp., not shown) also looks dead.  This felt like the coldest winter in Virginia in at least 20 years, so probably I shouldn't be surprised to lose plants that are just barely hardy in this zone.  Native plants, on the other hand, have survived here for hundreds or thousands of years, so they can handle the cold.

Nonnative bleedingheart starting to flower, and native lyreleaf sage spreading like crazy.

The Dicentra, I regret to admit, was a nonnative impulse buy from Lowe's.  In retrospect, I wish I'd waited for one of the eastern native species, D. canadensis (squirrel corn), D. cucullaria (Dutchman's breeches), or D. eximia (fringed bleedinghearts), which probably would have done fine in this location.

The low, green rosettes are lyreleaf sage, a native Salvia.  They have spread like crazy via seeds.  I had just two plants a year ago, believe it or not, and this picture is after I've already dug up some of the babies!  They're too aggressive and weedy for this location, so I will soon transplant them all to a location that needs some help with erosion control.  What shall I replace them with?

I'm pleased that my Heucheras (the purple varieties and the native green ones) are sending up new growth.  They were also eaten by deer, but you can hardly tell now.

Bluebells and heucheras.

I'm thrilled with the bluebells (Mertensia virginica).  They're so pretty, and even the one I accidentally dug up has returned this year.  Also, they must have gone to seed last spring, since in the past couple days I'm finding tiny bluebell sprouts.

Bluebells:  Delicate, ephemeral, and absolutely perfect.

I'll leave you with some pictures of other plants that are sending up leaves, a promise of good things to come.

Lobelias (L. cardinalis and L. siphilitica).  These keep their leaves and photosynthesize throughout winter, so it's important not to let them get buried by fallen leaves.  Now they have new spring growth and will soon send up flowering stalks.  [Edited to add:  The topmost and rightmost plants turn out not to be L. siphilitica, even though they were sold to me as such at a plant sale.  When they started sending out runners and then flowered, I IDed them as bugleweed (Ajuga reptans), which the VA Dept. of Conservation and Recreation lists as "occasionally invasive."  I have since removed them and replaced them with actual lobelias from yet another plant sale.]

Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinium)--the little shoots, not the nonnative bulb plant.  This seems to have spread slightly via roots since last year, or else it dropped its seeds in a very localized patch.

I think that two of these are native Aruncus dioicus (goat's beard) and two are nonnative astilbe.  However, I don't recall which is which.

Spiderworts (Tradescantia sp.)

Soon to come:  I will build a border around this bed so I know how much space I have to work with.  I think that will help a lot with finalizing the design.  Maybe I'll actually finish mulching it, too.

Fall fruits and berries

The blog "Using Georgia Native Plants" has a recent post on plants with fall fruits and berries.  Most of these are also native to Virginia.  I have a post coming up with more information about beautyberry, just as soon as I download the photos from my camera.

A native shade garden

Adams Garden native plant blog has a new entry on replacing English ivy with natives in a shady corner.  They've included a couple goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) for early summer flowers, but this corner will be most interesting in the fall.  As a ground cover they planted jumpseed (Polygonum virginianum), an annual that flowers in late summer and fall.  The focal point is a strawberry bush (Euonymus americanus), which has showy fruits in the fall.  I don't own a picture of this, so if you've never seen it, click through and take a look.  There's nothing else like it.

Filling in the gaps

I noticed last month that nothing was flowering in my front flower bed, so that had to change.  The eventual goal for this bed is to create a cottage style garden with year round interest using a mix of native and non-invasive introduced species.  You'll see in the before and after pictures that there's not a huge difference, but it's a step in the right direction.  Please excuse my unmown grass.  Anyway, the purple heucheras have been joined by native green heucheras (supposedly Heuchera americana and Heuchera villosa, though I'm not sure if they were labeled correctly at the plant sale).  One of them is currently flowering, which is nice.  I look forward to seeing whether the foliage turns color this fall or whether they stay green through the winter.

Front flower bed before adding new plants.

Front flower bed after adding new plants.

I also added a couple native goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) in the back, but you can't see them.  They will be joined by some non-native astilbe with a similar growth pattern and flowering season.  The tallest of the new plants is an ironweed, which is done flowering for now but next year will be good for late summer flowers.

The low green rosettes are lobelias, both cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) and great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica).  My previous lone cardinal flower did very well this year, attracting hummingbirds and making a long stalk of seedpods, so I planted some more of them.

Now with more lobelias.

The most striking of the new plants is blue mistflower or wild ageratum (Conoclinium coelestinum).  Although this picture was taken a couple weeks ago, it's still flowering in mid-October.

Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum)

Blue mistflower is a native perennial that has a showy blue-purple flower in the fall.  I've seen a lot of them by the roadsides, contrasting nicely with the yellows of the goldenrods and asters.  It's supposed to spread quickly, so I hope I'm justified in planting only one for now.