I must admit, I have a very large lawn on my property. It takes me close to two hours a week to cut it during the growing season. Not exactly environmentally friendly, eh? Before you beat me down, I must tell you I never water it, never fertilize it and have slowly been chipping away at removing it by creating new garden beds. While a lawn provides a great play space for the kids and the green swath looks pretty damn nice in the spring, I am no longer much of a fan. The effort involved to maintain it is not worth it and for a plant lover like me, it really represents more of an opportunity to further bankrupt myself and create more garden beds.
Which leads me to a discussion on native plants. A native plant can be best defined as: a plant that occurs naturally in the place where it evolved (I took that definition from wildflower.org). There are numerous advantages to using native plants in the landscape (and you will notice almost all are exactly the opposite of what it takes to maintain a lawn):
- Drought tolerance
- Minimal need for fertilizer
- No need for pesticides
- With minimal fertilizer/pesticides – no run-off into the water supply
- Disease tolerant
- Attracts wildlife, beneficial bugs and encourages biodiversity
- Low cost to purchase natives
- Because natives are in their natural environment, their size and cooperation with neighboring plants is much more predictable and makes design/planning much easier.
I didn’t intend for today’s post to be about native plants but as I was reviewing my plant photos from this prior year, I noticed how many of the “successes” were native plants. Hence, where I ended up with this post. Here are some of my native plants and please, share some of the natives you’ve had success with in the comments section so I can pretend I knew about them all along:
When the native plant sales begin here in New Jersey around the middle of May, I begin my plan of attack and this upcoming year will be no different. I’ll just need to clear more lawn to fit in more of these low maintenance gems.
Go native or go home!
ONG
I have most of the plants in your post in a postage stamp yard. Granted, I don’t have a lot of each plant but little clusters. I love them for the reason you state, don’t require a lot of care.
Eileen
Lawn be gone!!!
Dear ONG, OMG! Your natives are fa-ah-bulous. Oh to have lobelia growing wild. Ours in Britain are lovely too, and we’ve had good results by rotovating then sowing wild flower mixes. Think my favourite is foxglove (digitalis), or maybe poppy, or marsh orchid, or…Favourite American must be eschsoltzia.
I love growing natives and took an area behind my picket fence and seeded it as a native wildflower meadow….just love it…go native!!!!
Nice post; I like to point out all the natives to surprise how many we have in my region, while to others, I exclaim them as a great plant that happens to be a native. This time of year, evergreens and succulents take first place…Gray Oak, Desert Live Oak, Beargrass, various Prickly Pear Cactus carry out the color green (or blue green).
The amount of land that you are able to allocate to flower beds represents a garden designer’s dream. I envy your unsentimental approach to adapting the garden to the land rather than adapting the land to desired plants. In spite of the challenges of clay and deer, your garden always looks great.
I enjoyed seeing your wildflower blooms. I grow some of those. My mind isn’t remembering the native flowers I grow, as it’s past my bedtime, and I need to drag myself off of the computer.
native plants are easier and should be your first choice, but it goes beyond just doing that. humans created opportunities for exotics to grow rampant. these plants, as much as people scorn them and call them invasive, are mother natures way of rebuilding fertility. the solution isn’t just buy and plant natives as much as get rid of the conditions that the exotics can thrive in, the full sun, dirty water.