Okay so I am in Charlotte North Carolina and I have been trying to switch my yard to native plants for the last few years. And there are a lot of great benefits of native plants.
Good for birds
Good for insects
Very pretty plants
Good for the ground
Requires less water and fertilizer
They survive even if you forget they exist for the entire summer
However one thing that I've seen a lot of people expect is that they will be pretty all year round. I see a lot of people say you know I need an evergreen. A lot of native plants are not evergreen and they're not supposed to be. I have just attached three pictures. The first is from this summer, the second and third are from today. The second or third are much more gray. However as I look at those goldenrod stalks that are just falling all over the place I see dozens of winter birds hopping from branch to branch. That iron weed that is just straight up gray I still look out and see birds sitting on top of it using it as a perch. And I know that there are insects burrowing down into the stalks. And in the late winter I will almost definitely cut both of these back to about 12 to 18 in above the ground and next year they will come in again just as green as they are in the first picture. But there's a lot of people who seem to expect their yard to look the same way all year round and not only is it not realistic this is not healthy. Like if you achieve this that means your yard is not healthy.
North Carolina has seasons your yard is supposed to too.
by Safe-Essay4128
7 Comments
FWIW my 2 American holly are absolutely bumpin with pollinators during spring and summer and fall, and are green all winter
You really can get around this easily by just planting things for the seasons. They don’t all have to be summer/spring plants, and wildlife doesn’t get a break for seasons.
Nope. Not doing it.
We have all the pollinator good things. Anise Hyssop, mountain mints and clethra and joe pie weed and sapling host plants/trees for Butterflies and moths and of course various milkweeds.
But I refuse to live like I’m still in New England with a miserable winter. I now live in zone 8 and parts of our winters are often more pleasant than parts of our summers.
There are native evergreens that are just as ‘useless’ as many other native plants. Not everything native is a keystone species. The echinacea covered in goldfinches eating the seeds are not native to my part of the US. Too bad.
And I’m not giving up the gardenia, or iris, or so many other beautiful and fragrant things.
Those don’t have to feed pollinators. They feed my soul.
We are going to share.
Thank you for pointing out that many of the things that were once beautiful flowers are still useful as food for the birds and homes for insects. Don’t forget to leave room for conventionally beautiful things so ‘non native muggles’ can still be inspired to join you.
We only ‘win’ when this is taking place in yards all across the country. Not just a few thousand early adopters.
Blessings
I’ll take real winter aesthetics any day over tacky and artificially green, I’ll never understand landscaping to pretend you live somewhere else.
I plant with some winter interest in mind, and not exclusively evergreens (in fact I have planted very few… my arborvitae got absolutely annihilated by deer. but things like beauty berry (purple berries most of winter), hollies, magnolia, plus red osier dogwood and river birches for interesting/attractive barks livens up the landscape a little, and still offers native benefit, especially the hollies and beauty berries as winter food sources for birds.
Native landscapes definitely “gray/brown out” in winter but a couple of interesting plants/pops of color placed strategically really stand out. Can totally be done.
If you haven’t, check the gardens of Piet Oudolf, the godfather of high-design landscaping with natives. His stunning all-gray winter gardens achieve interest with grasses and massed plants with cool seedheads. Also consider shrubs and small trees with thorns or persistent fruit–hawthorn has both. Evergreens are great, but just one tool in the kit!
lol i’m a landscape designer in charlotte and we’re having to explain to clients that the reason their installed shrubs look bad is that it is in fact winter lol