More Love for Native Vines

Vines are popular with gardeners for many reasons; and we have outstanding choices for using NATIVE vines in our landscapes. There is really no need to choose an exotic vine, many of which have invaded our natural areas and caused great harm to them and the animals that would like to live in them. 

Lonicera sempervirens, commonly known as coral
honeysuckle. An easy native vine to grow.
Photo ©BeautifulNativePlants

The same thing gardeners love about vines is also what drives them crazy. Vines climb, creep, crawl, drape and cover; it’s the good news and the bad news. But I’m advocating more love for native vines because they are not only useful in the garden, but ultimately such good providers for wildlife. What’s needed is an understanding of the growth habits of the vines you want to incorporate.

By nature vines are among the more opportunistic of plants. Their roots take hold in the woodland floor and they use tendrils of different kinds to clamber upwards and spread their leaves in the sunshine. This means that a gardener can multiply the flower quotient by utilizing vertical space, or space that might otherwise be devoid of growth. Vines can cover walls, mailboxes, fences, terraces, trellises, arbors, rock piles, and tree stumps. Vines also make excellent groundcovers. Some vines are more opportunistic than others; due diligence is the key to success.

The never-ending story of a native landscape

Plants are alive. They grow, they multiply, and they die. So those perfect-looking landscape plans or meticulously groomed gardens in magazines and online are mere snapshots in time. The reality is that *things* are always changing and that’s a good thing. To see how much my front landscape has changed over the years, read  From lawn to woods: a retrospective. So this is the next phase in the never-ending story…

Time to remove some lawn: those yuccas have grown and
had leaned over the lawn edge.
The fall leaves will make a great mulch.

The trip along the lawn edge

The edging trip around the edge of the lawn is a good opportunity to remove more lawn and to edit the plants that have become too rambunctious, i.e. weeds.

When I started this go-round in late October, it had been very dry for us–1/2″ instead of our average 3.86″– October is the last of our 5 wet months. The dryness made it easy to remove the grass and other plants.

From lawn to woods: a retrospective

Spring 2014: a pinxter azalea in the front meadow.

Then and now…

I posted the above photo of my pinxter azalea (Rhododendron canescens) a while back with the comment that with the exception of the trees next to the pond (behind the top sprout on the right), this area used to be lawn. People were really surprised and asked for more details and more information about how it was transformed, so I thought I’d share the history here. (Update: I also used this photo on the cover of my book, The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape.)

When native plants die…

As readers and writers of this blog, we know that we should plant as many natives as possible for many reasons. Some important reasons are: to reduce the need for extra irrigation, to better support native wildlife, and to create landscapes that are authentic for our regions. But this is not the end of the story…

Native plant nurseries do their best to present beautiful natives to attract buyers. Thanks to Renee Stambaugh for her attractive garden fest display.

Within one year, many of these lovely native plants will be dead!

Plan ahead!

Plants don’t a have a choice–they
must do the best they can where they are.

Sometimes Mother Nature doesn’t leave enough growing space for her trees and shrubs. Once the plants start growing out in the wild they have to do the best they can with the space they have.
The trio of trees in this top photo, a cherry (Prunus serotina) and two longleaf pines (Pinus palustris) have a problem. The cherry’s major surface roots have a stranglehold around both of the pines and eventually the pines will become weakened at their bases as they try to expand and the cherry tree’s roots expand as well. Right now the cherry tree trunk is about a foot in diameter, but it and the pines will continue to grow. The pines will become a hazard in this suburban yard and are likely to blow over in a tropical storm. It’s possible that all three of them will come down together during a wind event. (Update: several years later, the cherry died.)

NYC’s High Line Park: a community restoration

NYC’s High Line Park is maintained by a non-profit,
Friends of the High Line,” which hires the gardeners
and organizes the many activities. 

After a long wait…

I’d been wanting to visit the High Line Park in Manhattan (a public park built on an abandoned elevated train platform) since I first heard about it back in 2009 when the first section opened. I finally made it on a recent Monday morning when my daughter and I walked the whole length—1.45 miles. What a wonderful community project!

I’m writing about this project here because I think it shows that when you build habitat areas, even in densely crowded urban areas, that it’s good for the birds, the humans in the neighborhood, and for the economic health of the area. In other words, if you build it, the birds will come and so will the humans. See below for my conversations with 2 of the staff gardeners for the care that is required to keep up the planted areas.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Can you spot the rayless sunflowers in this bed? There are about 20 flower heads blooming.

As I discussed in Adventures in Creating a Native Garden back in June 2013, I’d planted some rayless sunflowers (Helianthus radula) as part of the native garden.  Now that they are blooming, I have to say that I’m a bit underwhelmed.  Their beauty is too subtle to enjoy from afar and they do not stand out in this bed.

6 easy steps to support wildlife

If you’d like bluebirds in your yard,
stop poisoning the bugs.

Tis the season to make resolutions for the upcoming year.  Some are easy to keep, especially when you have firm and attainable goals in mind where the results are so rewarding.

1) Turn your yard into a working ecosystem

If you want your landscape to support more birds, then you’ll need to invite the bugs, reduce the lawn, and plant more natives.  Okay, so maybe this isn’t the easiest item on this list, but it’s important and you can accomplish it in small steps over several years.

a) The first step will save you money: Stop using ALL landscape-wide pesticides. For a detailed explanation of the poison cycle, see my post: A poison is a poison is a poison.

A Healthy Garden is a Buggy Garden

Collage with several species of lady beetles

© 2006 Beatriz Moisset

We are all familiar with bad insects, the ones that cause damage in our gardens. However, most insects are beneficial or harmless. We are so concerned with the bad ones that tend to ignore the beneficial ones. Worse yet, sometimes we paint all insects with the same brush and want to kill them all. I had the opportunity to learn about good bugs when reading an old book published in 1941. It is rather surprising that somebody already knew so much about beneficial insects that long ago.

Frank E. Lutz, an entomologist and gardener, wrote “A Lot of Insects” in which he tells us about all the six-legged fauna of his large suburban yard. He noticed that native plants were good at attracting what he called guests and residents of this realm. His property was located near the center of a small town not far from New York City. In the course of a few years, Dr. Lutz collected and identified every kind of insect that he found in his property, a grand total of 1,402 different species. Before you shrink in horror at that staggering number of buggy creatures, let me tell you that Dr. Lutz was a fine gardener and, while he was sorting out and studying the little creatures in his garden, he was winning numerous gardening awards. And he had the insects to thank for such a healthy garden.

The fact is that many, probably most, insects are invaluable components of the ecosystem. It is wise to learn to recognize and appreciate these gardener friends. A good dose of curiosity may allow you to enjoy their intriguing, sometimes perplexing, comings and goings if you manage to overcome your bias against insects.

Teeming with zebras

The zebra longwing butterfly (Heliconius charithonia) 
drinks at the snow squarestem.

Zebra longwing butterflies that is...

This year we’ve had a huge jump in population, so our property is aflutter with all their striped glory. They don’t have deep wing beats like a lot of floppy butterflies–their wings hardly move as they fly. They are skittish compared to some other butterflies, but they are mesmerizing.

Managing a natural pond

Water spangles (Salvinia minima), an invasive floating fern.

Trouble in paradise

Previously, I wrote about how much we have enjoyed our front pond in The joys of a Florida pond, but in 2011 the whole surface of the pond had become totally covered by a noxious invasive with a cute name—water spangles (Salvinia minima). It had probably come in as a hitchhiker on one of our beloved birds or traveling turtles, and from there, it went wild.

My husband and I scooped out cartloads of it by dragging a 8′ piece of plastic mesh between us as we walked across the pond and we scooped up more with hard plastic leaf rakes. I used it in the compost pile and as a mulch, but each time we cleared out a batch, new, bright-green plants filled in the spaces in a matter of days no matter how large a gap we created.

The joys of a Florida pond

Our pond in the summer of 2010. This photo is looking toward the little dock on
our neighbor’s end of the pond.

We share a natural pond with our next-door neighbors and have added a border of native plants at its edge to replace the turfgrass that used to dip right into the pond. I’ve planted ferns, black-eyed Susans, scarlet hibiscus and more. Plus other natives have also moved in.

Native Hibiscus? You Bet!

A showy native hibiscus with great wildlife benefit

Hibiscus moscheutos, swamp mallow,

People who say ‘natives aren’t showy’ have never seen our native hibiscus! Hibiscus moscheutos has a wide distribution in the continental U.S.; from New York down to Florida, and west as far as Utah. Like any plant that grows in so many places, it comes with a slew of common names: swamp mallow, rose mallow, rose-eyed and crimson-eyed swamp or rose mallow, hibiscus mallow, and even marshmallow hibiscus. More about that last one later! But by any name, this plant’s a winner!