I repeat! Lowe's is selling ohio spiderwort for 2 for 8$ right now!!
by Big_Radish464
I repeat! Lowe's is selling ohio spiderwort for 2 for 8$ right now!!
by Big_Radish464
8 Comments
I love that the growing popularity of native gardening is pushing them to change their offerings.
That said, if I can support a local nursery and pay a slightly higher price, that’s definitely worthwhile to me.
That’s a hybrid so the ecological value is likely diminished, albeit not necessarily zero. It’s still of some lineage of native species (they’re called “Anderson Group”).
I have some ohioensis and I don’t think it’s all that attractive to begin with; I never cease to be perplexed by plants the big box stores choose to stock. Whatever I guess!
I love *Tradescantia* in all its forms!! T. ohioensis and T. virginiana bloom for a months and months (tho…until about 3pm daily so as a night owl i have to remember to admire them early 😅) Love that it’s easily available in shops, even as cultivars. Most are just slightly different colored flowers so I don’t think they differ in wildlife usage vs the straight species that much.
Big box stores do tend to have native plants if you know what you’re looking for, but they’re almost always cultivars. Leaf color variation is bad (bad=not used by wildlife) and flower shape variation is bad but flower color or plant structural form differences in a cultivar isn’t the worst.
Shame it’s a cultivar as that’s a great price for that size plant.
When buying from box box centers please be careful as a lot of these producers will use neonicotinoids on the commercial scale.
So far this year I’ve found swamp and butterfly milkweed, coneflowers, joe pye weed, button bush, tons of coreopsis, fothergila, pink muhly grass, giant hyssop, bee balm and ironweed at one of the local “traditional” nurseries. They still sell plenty of problematic stuff (why is nandina still a thing?) and a few weren’t straight species but the first time I went to this nursery 4 years ago I couldn’t even find a coneflower, so I truly think there is some movement behind the scenes to get more natives on the shelves in more traditional garden centers. I almost feel obligated to buy them when I see them just to reward them for trying. Yes I have in fact spent like $200 there even though I grew like 400 plants from seed this year. 😬😂
Please forgo buying “natives” from big-box stores (origin unknown; often unlabeled cultivars). Buy them from a native plant nursery that you can visit in person or that is in your state, has a good reputation, and is devoted to growing natives. Support these growers. Your dollar is a vote. Vote for the people actually doing the work.
You don’t even need four of them, by next season you’ll have a ton everywhere!