For number three in my series of favorite native plants, I asked Alison Gillespie, a local naturalist, writer and avid gardener. Although I have followed Alison's blogs for some time, I was still pleasantly surprised by the eloquence and beauty of her response to my question about natives.
Alison lives and writes about gardening and the environment from her home in Silver Spring, Maryland. She specializes in making small urban lots more livable for both people and wildlife, and sometimes coaches others through the process as well.
Wintering Over: A few native plants Can Feed Your Soul, and the Birds
by Alison Gillespie
I really love winter. People are always surprised to find that out, especially if they know me through gardening circles.
But I actually think that it’s the gardener in me that needs
winter. I need the break, the slow down, the empty browns and grays
that fill those empty lots along Metro’s tracks. Winter, I think, is
the positive image that reflects summer’s intensity.
Maybe it’s the intensity of my gardening passion that makes me love
the break so much; when I read those articles about gardeners who brag
of living in warmer climes where they can garden 12 months a year it
just makes me tired, not jealous. There’s also a refreshing sense of
having one’s palette cleaned each winter, as the flowers fade away.
Garden mistakes and misfortunes fade from memory like vegetable peelings
in the big black bin out back.
But I also believe that my love of native plants contributes to my
contented winter feelings. If I lived in the city without a garden, I’d
probably be miserable. But this morning, for example, I awoke to cold,
clear, sunny skies and found mockingbirds feasting on bright
winterberries outside the kitchen window. The color, the animation of
the birds, and the contrast of reds, blues and gray-browns made my heart
sing and not a single guilty feeling about weeding entered my brain.
With coffee and a warm robe I was thankful for the garden and enjoyed
the view. This, I thought out loud, is what makes living close-in with a
tiny city lot area bearable.
There are lots and lots of native plants that urban gardeners can use
to add color to a winter landscape. Most are so carefree that you can
plant them and almost forget about them. Winterberries (Ilex verticillata),
like many shrubs, are one of those natives. Deciduous cousins to the
better known American hollies, they are nondescript during the warmer
months, although their small leaves and tiny, fragrant, white blossoms
attract loads of bees. In the fall, the leaves give way to stems
spackled with bright red berries which are often imitated by plastic
wreath makers at Christmas time; there are so many berries on each
branch that you can’t even see the woody stem underneath. Then, at the
end of winter, the berries prove irresistible to many species of native
birds, who arrive to gulp them down one by one and strip those branches
bare.
This winter I have also been enjoying the stand of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) which has finally matured in my garden. I scooped up three of the variety known as Heavy Metal
for a very cheap price from a clearance shelf last winter at the local
garden center. It was a risk – they were hastily planted last December
at the back of the garden, shortly before the huge blizzards dumped so
much snow upon us all here in DC.
My risk was rewarded this fall, when I realized how often my eye was
drawn to the gentle swaying of the grass stems. Now the birds have
arrived to feast on the seeds, and I realize I’m not the only one whose
been watching and waiting.
The birds are also drawn to my brown, dried up swamp sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius).
Don’t let the name scare you – you need not have a swamp to get
luscious yellow blossoms from this beautiful native perennial. It will
do just fine in average soil, although I think this plant particularly
likes it near downspouts in urban yards. You also need a lot of
vertical space for them, since their stems can sometimes reach eight
feet or more in height.
In our yard, the swamp sunflowers were allowed to stay all winter,
even though they turned brown and made enormous arcs across the areas
which held our tomatoes last summer, and now the juncos seem to find
their seeds yummy. Many afternoons when the sun weakly surrenders to
the cold and dark, the birds are out there in a flocks, hopping around
like miniature penguins and beep-beep-beeping to each other in gossipy
tones.
Inside, we watch and make plans for long games of chess and cocoa,
and curl up with seed catalogs. Our palettes have been cleansed, our
souls refreshed. We dream of rolling up sleeves and churning compost,
and immerse ourselves in delirious fantasies that this year’s garden
will surely be the best ever. In winter it all still seems very
possible.
Thanks, Alison, for sharing such a wonderful post with our readers.
If you would like to read more of Alison's work, you can visit her blogs: Where You Are Planted and Sligo Naturalist
