Native plants are experiencing a welcome surge in popularity as more gardeners appreciate their many benefits. They are perfectly suited to the local climate and conditions, making them low-maintenance additions that also provide essential food and shelter for native wildlife.
If you already have native shrubs in your garden, winter provides a fantastic chance to expand your collection. This is the perfect time to propagate many plants for free using hardwood cuttings, giving you identical clones of your treasured native specimens.
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7 plants to propagate in December
Hardwood cuttings are simple to take, but do take longer to root than softwood cuttings taken earlier in the year. However, they are a reliable way to propagate many native plants during the colder months. Cuttings can either be planted directly into the soil outdoors or started in pots and kept in a greenhouse or cold frame.
A long list of plants can be grown from hardwood cuttings. Indeed, I featured seven plants to propagate in December in this article from 12 months ago. However, this time I want to focus specifically on native plants to propagate in December. The following are all suited to attempting hardwood cuttings, if you want to add the task to your winter gardening checklist.
1. American beautyberry
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Callicarpa americana, or the American beautyberry, is a deciduous native shrub to the Southeastern United States suitable for hardiness zones 6-11. It has an arching growth habit and offers beauty throughout the seasons.
It is best known for its spectacular purple winter berries, and is one of the best shrubs with winter berries to have in a yard. Besides looking stunning, these fruits offer valuable food for wildlife and birds, including cardinals, woodpeckers, finches, and more, during late fall and winter.
You can propagate American beautyberry from seed or cuttings, either softwood cuttings in spring or hardwood cuttings in winter. Take cuttings of healthy one-year-old shoots in winter, dip them in rooting hormone, and plant them in a trench or pots in a cold frame or unheated greenhouse.
A cold frame makes a useful spot for protecting hardwood cuttings and other plants over winter. Come spring, a portable wooden cold frame, like at Wayfair, is also useful for starting seeds.
2. Strawberry bush
The American strawberry bush, or Euonymus americanus, is a deciduous shrub native to the eastern United States. It makes a good option for sometimes tricky part-shade spots or woodland gardens.
Don’t get it confused with edible types of strawberry plants, the ones that produce the summer fruit we all know and love. The strawberry bush is in the bittersweet family and reaches over six feet. It makes an attractive addition mainly thanks to its distinctive warty (and strawberry-like) seed capsules, which open up to reveal bright red fruits. These fruits are safe for wildlife, but poisonous to humans.
Use clean, sharp pruning shears to take pencil-thick hardwood cuttings for propagation. The cleanliness of your tools is vital, so check your shears and sharpen them if needed with a tool like this pocket-sized tool sharpener on Amazon.
3. Snowberry
(Image credit: Brian Hird (Natural World) / Alamy Stock Photo)
Snowberry, or Symphoricarpos albus, is a medium-sized shrub native to the US and Canada and one of the best winter plants for wildlife.
It produces clusters of fruits that are essential food for songbirds and small mammals during winter, plus the habit of forming thickets can provide shelter in any wildlife garden. While the fruits are great for wildlife, the shrub is poisonous to humans.
There are many ways to propagate a snowberry bush, including softwood or hardwood cuttings and by digging up and transplanting suckers. If you plan to take new plants of this cold-hardy and drought-tolerant shrub over winter, put cuttings into slits cut into the ground in a sheltered area.
To improve drainage in wetter soils, dig a thin trough and line the bottom with coarse sand or horticultural grit to reduce the risk of your cuttings rotting in cold, waterlogged soil over winter. You can get bags of horticultural grit at Amazon.
4. Honeysuckle
(Image credit: Gary Fultz / Alamy Stock Photo)
Some types of honeysuckles are invasive plants to avoid. But native varieties offer some of the best honeysuckles you can grow; they offer lots of benefits without the issues. Native honeysuckles include trumpet honeysuckle, coral honeysuckle, hairy honeysuckle, and twinberry honeysuckle.
When you grow honeysuckle and want more identical native plants to add beautiful blooms and glorious fragrance to attract pollinators like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, you can take honeysuckle cuttings in the summer or winter.
Put cuttings into pots filled with potting soil and keep them in a greenhouse, cold frame, or on a warm windowsill. Keep the soil moist, but not waterlogged, and wait to pot up or plant out the new honeysuckle until you see the roots showing out the bottom of the pot.
5. Dogwood
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There are around a dozen native dogwood trees, including the Pacific dogwood, the flowering dogwood, and the pagoda dogwood. They are a diverse selection of dogwoods that offer large spring flowers to attract pollinators, vibrant foliage in fall, and winter berries as a food source for birds.
As growing dogwoods can be simple, owing to being low-maintenance as well as beautiful year-round, you can understand why gardeners may want clones of their favorite native varieties.
Take cuttings 8-10 inches long and make a sloping cut at the top, above a bud, and a flat cut at the bottom, below a bud. Dogwood cuttings can go in the ground or a tall container indoors, but it will help to dip them in rooting hormone beforehand, such as this rooting hormone powder for hardwood cuttings at Amazon.
Take several cuttings to be on the safe side, and, if all goes well, they should root within four months. Plants in pots can be transplanted in the spring into a bigger pot, but it is best to leave cuttings in the ground until next fall.
6. American holly
(Image credit: Aubrey Huggins / Alamy Stock Photo)
Ilex opaca, or the American holly, is native to eastern and south-central states and is one of the hundreds of different species of holly.
It is an evergreen tree that reaches up to 50 feet, and both male and female species are required to get the classic red berries that hollies are renowned for. Thanks to American holly’s dark green leaves with spiny margins and fruits, it can make a great addition to Christmas wreaths.
To take cuttings of the evergreen holly in the winter, cut stems into 6-8 inch pieces above a bud at the top and below a bud at the bottom. On holly, the buds showcase as distinctive bumps on the canes, also known as bud unions. Remove all but the top two sets of leaves, and dip the bottom end in rooting hormone.
Place the cuttings in the ground or in pots, and keep them moist over the next 12 months. They can be transplanted next fall or the following spring.
7. Viburnum
Viburnums have been popular among gardeners for years as they are low-maintenance and fast-growing shrubs, offering a wide range of different flowers, colors, and berries.
There are native viburnums you can add to your backyard ideas that will provide appeal throughout the seasons, such as mapleleaf viburnum, the arrowwood viburnum, and the American cranberry bush (which is a viburnum rather than a cranberry).
Native deciduous viburnums are great candidates for hardwood cuttings from late fall into winter. They take longer than softwood cuttings, but offer a chance to get new clones of existing plants at a quieter time of year.
Take cuttings 8-10 inches long, remove the leaves, and dip the bottom end in rooting hormone. Viburnum cuttings are best put into pots and covered with a plastic bag to increase humidity. Place them in indirect light, and keep the soil moist.
To make sure you don’t fall foul of any common problems, check out this guide to plant cuttings mistakes to avoid. It features eight errors that gardeners make, which can be the difference between success and failure with plant cuttings.
Propagating essentials
This liquid rooting hormone comes with a convenient dropper to avoid a mess. It can be used on cuttings started in water or soil.
These Fiskars bypass pruning shears have a precision-ground steel blade and are ideal for taking cuttings or doing all manner of pruning.
This organic potting mix is made from natural ingredients and specially formulated for growing seedlings and cuttings.
TOPICS
Seasonal Gardening
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