Why We Plant – A great post on one of the blogs I love

I know that I probably bandy the word “love” around a bit too much. I have the habit of emailing people like Richard Louv and telling them how much I love them, and I think they might fear I am some sort of obsessed fan. In the future, perhaps I’ll work on finding a more appropriate word to use -- “admire”, perhaps. But for now, with Valentine’s Day on the way, I’m going to just keep dropping the “L” bombs.

With that being said, I just LOVE Thomas Rainer’s blog, Grounded Design. It’s not that he just writes great things about gardening. It is HOW he writes that really has me hooked. There is nothing boring or superficial about this blog. Rainer digs deep into the human aspects of gardening. Here are some excerpts from his recent post “Why We Plant”.

We can survive without gardens, yes, but the question is, can we live without them? What I love about plants, in particular, is their ability to reveal the invisible world. The way a grass moves in the wind, or the way a seedhead glows when backlit by the setting sun. The goal of great planting design is not simply to arrange pretty plants in pretty patterns. When garden design becomes another form of interior decorating, it loses its soul. No, what interests me is creating landscapes that are more alive than we are, but in a completely different way. When we enter into a landscape brimming with life and let that life enter into us, let it move through us, then we get a glimpse of the horizon we were created for.

…..Designers don’t create beauty. To believe otherwise makes us guilty of forgery and blasphemy. But what we can do is create the conditions where people can have an experience of beauty.

…..This is why the goal of planting design is to make people see again, to make them remember. We arrange plants in ways that will enable people to have an experience of the ephemeral. It is not the plants themselves as objects that have power. But it is their patterns—particularly archetypal patterns—and that can become animated as light and life pass through it.

We do not create beauty. But we can create thresholds through which people enter and have an experience of beauty.

It’s a fantastic post from a fantastic blog and I encourage you to read the whole thing. My guess is that you’ll LOVE it as much as I do.

Think Outside the box and Plant This, Not That

Native plants are very popular in eco-friendly landscapes. Some people like them because of their drought tolerance and low-maintenance requirements. Others like them because of their wildlife value or their pure, unadulterated beauty.

I recently ran across a list entitled Plant This, Not That on the Garden Club of Virginia website that was created for their 2011 annual meeting. A paragraph at the top of the list explained how the list was compiled.

Garden club members from around the state were asked for suggestions for native plants that had wildlife value, but not in the traditional sense of providing seeds or berries for wildlife. Instead, they were asked to list plants that attract butterflies, which in turn, produce caterpillars which are used as food for many native bird species.

For our GCV Annual Meeting we are focusing on good garden practices that encourage the growth cycle of our native birds and butterflies. Many of you may know that our native birds are in decline because of loss of native habitat for the specific caterpillars that feed our young birds. Non-native plants do not offer breeding ground for any native butterflies, and 97% of our birds require insects-not seeds-to feed their young. Therefore we are asking each club to bring in a cutting or small plant that is native and attracts butterflies, and a picture of a non-native landscape plant that may be replaced by your specimen in a backyard landscape. The display will be titled "Plant this, not that!"

It’s a great list, because it helps us “think outside the box” when recognizing the wildlife value of native plants. I mentioned many of the plants on the list, including paw paw, sweet bay, milkweed and passion vine, in a post that I did on butterfly gardening. But from now on, I’ll remember to mention their value for attracting birds, as well.

Plant This, Not That – complete list (pdf format)

Here are some Favorite Native Plant Lists from our archives:

• Favorite Native Plants ~ Nature Friendly Gardener Marlene A. Condon
• Favorite Native Plants ~ Kathy Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener Magazine
• Favorite Native Plants ~ Thomas Rainer
• Favorite Native Plants ~  Alex Dencker
• Favorite Native Plants ~ Steve Bates
• Favorite Native Plants ~ Alison Gillespie

And don’t forget to take our native plant poll and check out the other lists of native plants listed under Our Most Popular Pages, both of which can be found in the blog’s sidebar.

Sustainable Landscaping Conference - Starts Tomorrow

If you still haven't decided to attend the Sustainable Landscaping Conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania starting tomorrow, here's another reason to make the trip. Thomas Rainer, DC area landscape architect, gardener and blogger, will be giving a talk entitled "Hot or Not: How Making Sustainable Landscapes Fashionable will Revolutionize the Movement." I'm a big fan of Rainer's blog, Grounded Design, and have mentioned it several times on this blog. Registration is still open for the 2011 Turning a New Leaf sustainable landscaping conference on Friday, December 2 in Lancaster, PA. This conference is organized by the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council and offers a great educational program with · Four tracks: Every Design Counts, Every Drop Counts, Every Plant Counts and Every Message Counts · An EcoMarketplace, featuring local organizations and green businesses · A networking reception Lancaster is also a wonderful destination for an early December weekend away! Registration is $119 and includes all sessions, snacks, lunch and entrance to EcoMarketplace and networking reception. For more information or to register, visit www.chesapeakelandscape.org/2011leaf.htm.

Taming the natives - or at least our views about them

I read another wonderful post on Thomas Rainer's blog, Grounded Design, today. The post, entitled "Native Plants and the Wild Look" is written in Mr. Rainer's consistently eloquent style and makes some great points about the use of native plants in a landscape.

I've long thought that many gardeners give native plants a "bad name" because they think that natives should be allowed to grow unkempt and untamed. I feel that this is going to discourage gardeners with an eye for a more structured landscape from even considering native plants.

Rainer addresses some of these issues in his post, but as usual, presents them in a writing style that is so engaging that I find myself appreciating the words as much as the wisdom.

Here are some excerpts, but I encourage you to visit Rainer's blog to read the whole post: 

Excerpts from Native Plants and the Wild Look, by Thomas Rainer  

I have a conflicted relationship with wildness. 

When I think about the sea of lawns and generic plantings that dominate our built landscapes, when I reflect on how quickly our native woodlands are disappearing, I yearn for more wildness. In many ways, our landscapes are too tidy. Our shrubs are too clipped, our lawns too manicured, our planted spaces too restrained. Despite recent progress with more sustainable gardens, the McLandscape is still the dominant form in our country…. 

While I praise wildness on the one hand, I am concerned that it has become the de rigueur of native gardens these days. It is as if a native garden, by definition, must be wild and sprawling. To create a native garden is not only a statement against exotic plants, but it is a statement against traditional garden forms altogether. Almost all of the sustainable landscape techniques, including rain gardens, bioswales, and green roofs—have adopted a wild aesthetic…. 

My second problem with the wild look is my fear that we’re turning the public away from using native plants. When native plants are associated with a wild, chaotic landscape, we narrow their potential adoption in built landscapes. Yes, I do think the American public needs to adopt an aesthetic that permits a bit of wildness, spontaneity, and heck—even a bit of sloppiness. But the way to do that is not to replace our front lawns with a tall grass prairie. We do that by creating native gardens that fit into traditional or contemporary garden forms.

 It's a great post, on a great blog. Check it out!

Great gardening advice I didn't know

I love Thomas Rainer's writing style as much as I love his gardening advice. You may remember that Rainer was one of the people who contributed to our series of Favorite Native Plants of Local Gardeners.

Anyway, his blog post today, entitled The Best Planting Tip I Ever Received, taught me something that I didn't know.....that I've always WANTED to know, really, so I wanted to pass it along to you.

As gardeners, we have probably all had the experience of buying a potted plant and taking it home and unpotting it only to discover a huge tangled mass of roots. I usually just gently tug a few of the roots out and then drop the whole thing into the planting hole. But that was before I read Rainer's post.

Now, thanks to Thomas, I know better. Sure, I could tell you what he said, but then you would miss out on the fun of reading his blog.

So head on over to Thomas's blog, Grounded Design, and learn what just may be the Best Planting Tip I've ever received, too.

Favorite Native Plants ~ Thomas Rainer

Today's list of Favorite Native Plants comes from Thomas Rainer, a landscape architect by profession and a gardener by obsession. Thomas has worked on projects such as the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden, but is happiest puttering in his small garden in Washington, D.C.

Picking my favorite natives is like picking my favorite foods: I love so many; it’s hard to know where to begin. But I think I’ll focus on a few underappreciated natives that make great garden plants. 

Most gardens have shade and these areas are typically the areas of our garden we neglect the most, or fill with invasive groundcovers. My absolute favorite fern is Dryopteris x australis or Dixie Wood Fern. This plant is a naturally occurring hybrid that is found in moist areas from Louisiana all the way to Virginia. The plant has strikingly upright fronds that grow three to four feet in height. What I love about this plant is how vigorous it is. In places where Ostrich Fern or Cinnamon Fern have limped along, Dixie Wood fern thrives, covering the ground in dense, glossy foliage. Plus, this fern is semi-evergreen, holding much of its form during winter. Combine this fern with other perennials with contrasting foliage such as hostas, Solomon’s Seals, or native sedges. You won’t be disappointed.

My favorite grass at the moment is Sporobolus heterolepsis or Prairie Dropseed (click here for photo). This plant is finally getting the attention it deserves. Low, neat clumps of fine textured grass hug the ground for most of the growing season. During late summer, the grass adds fine inflorescences that smell a bit like coriander (or burnt popcorn). The grass has lovely orange tones in during autumn. I love to use this plant in large masses, particularly against the edge of a lawn where it gives the look of a ‘rough.’ And because this plant is so low and fine-textured, it is an excellent plant to interplant flowering perennials into. A lovely, drought-tolerant, and tough grass. Chanticleer has a large mass of this grass at the edge of a large lawn . . . it’s stunning. 

Finally, last year I fell in love with Monarda punctata or Horsemint. This low perennial sports hot pink whorled leaves just below the flowers that dries into a lovely silver color that glows in the moonlight. Unlike most Monardas, this plant tolerates poor soil and drought. Pollinators love this plant. Since this plant can get a bit gangly by itself, I plant it in pockets on the edge of the border, or better, interplanted into a matrix of low grasses like Sporobolus, Schizachyrium, or Elymus. Last year, I easily grew this plant from seed and it bloomed during the first season. 

You can read more of Thomas' views on gardening and landscapes on his blog, Grounded Design

Myths About Native Plants

Thomas Rainer, a local landscape architect, recently did a series of posts entitled Myths About Native Plants on his blog, grounded design.

Since native plants can be an environmentally sound choice for many reasons, including ease of care and providing food sources for native wildlife, eliminating the myths about these valuable plants is an important step in encouraging more eco-friendly landscapes.

To me, there are two major Myths about Native Plants. The first major myth about native plants is that ANY native plant will just naturally do well in a landscape. This, of course, isn't true. Plants will only do well in a landscape if their requirements for sun, water and soil type meet your site conditions. In other words, native plants that require a lot of water are not going to do well in a high and dry landscape. Rainer covers this myth in his post: Myth #1: Native plants are more drought-tolerant than their exotic counterparts.

His second post in the series, is entitled: Native Plant Myth #2: Native Plants are Not as Tough as Exotic Plants . And in it he says that there is a common belief "that natives are somehow weaker and more delicate than exotics plants." I've never really run into that belief and, in fact, think that many people believe exactly the opposite - that ANY native plant will survive wherever you put it. Again, I refer to the tenant of Right Plant, Right Place - or choosing plants to match the site conditions of your landscape.

The other thing that I think is a common misconception is that all native landscapes are weedy and unkempt looking. I think that part of the reason for this bad reputation is that certain proponents of native plants like a very natural looking landscape, rather than one that is manicured. They let the wildflowers grow in their yards and they don't prune or trim their plants to keep them neat looking and because of the hap-hazard look of their yard, some people assume that native landscapes=wild and weedy. This is a myth that I always try to dispell. Native landscapes can be kept just as neat and trimmed and manicured looking as a non-native landscape. The look of the landscape is more about the person doing the landscaping than about the plants themselves. Rainer's third post about native plants, Native Plant Myth #3: Native Plants are not as showy or ornamental as exotic plants is somewhat along the same lines. In it he states "The problem is not that native plants are intrinsically less ornamental than exotics; the problem is one of design. Native gardens, for the most part, overly imitate natural plant communities. Native gardens end up looking like some poor imitation of a woodland or meadow. As a result, we have no precedent for natives in man-made landscapes."

I think that we are all in the learning stages when it comes to creating environmentally friendly landscapes. And when it comes to native plants, many of us still have a lot to learn. Check out Rainer's blog, grounded design, to get his views on landscaping with natives. And then to learn even more about native plants, visit the native plant information on our Resources page.