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Designing Your Garden With Native Perennials
by Ken Druse
Perennials are welcome in all parts of the garden. They're most often used in herbaceous beds and borders, but they can also be mixed with woody shrubs to create exciting, long-blooming plantings. Perennial gardens can bask in the shade of your forest floor; spring ephemerals bloom before the tree leaves emerge, and foliage plants carry on the show. Perennials grace water gardens and meadow and prairie plantings, and can be used as groundcovers. In all these settings, you can choose showy native plants to grow in addition to plants introduced from other lands. In fact, many world-famous perennials—purple coneflower, aster, phlox—are native to one or more of the floristic provinces that make up North America.
There are other compelling reasons to favor plants native to your area. Many plants have specific, symbiotic relationships with animals. Growing the appropriate larval and nectar plants for your area, for example, can help preserve or even reestablish an indigenous butterfly species whose habitat has been severely reduced by development.
By observing how native plants grow together in the wild, you can also create a plant community. A community is more than a collection of pretty perennials. It is an ecological grouping of plants growing in partnership with each other and their associated wildlife. Plant communities are self-sustaining, or close to it; once established, they need little in the way of water, fertilizer or other inputs. Few homeowners have the amount of land it takes to restore an entire native habitat, but it is possible to re-create plant communities to the best of our ability.
Native or Naturalistic?
When you are designing a planting of perennials featuring natives, the first step is to decide whether you want an informal, naturalistic planting that combines native and non-native plants from all over the country or the world, or whether you want to make a bold statement with a native plant garden using only species from your floristic province. Some natural gardeners restrict their plant palette even further, to species indigenous to their immediate area.
When the botanical world offers so many choices, it's not realistic to think that all gardeners are going to be satisfied by planting only natives. The degree to which you "go wild" is up to you. The only caveat: Never knowingly introduce an invasive plant to the landscape; invasive plants supplant native residents that may have supported a host of animals. And remember that only one plant can grow in one place at one time; because native habitat is shrinking rapidly, do not plant non-natives on wild or nearly wild land.
You might be surprised to find that a garden consisting solely of native plants isn't as limiting as you imagined. Some areas of North America have a breathtaking diversity of plant life. For example, it has been estimated that in the temperate world, the eastern United States is second only to China in botanical diversity. What's more, many areas of this continent are botanically unique. The prairie is a habitat found only in the United States and Canada. Cacti, too, are found only in the Americas. And within any one floristic province there are many different plant communities-wetland, upland, grassland, woodland. There are also hundreds of "niches" to choose from, micro-communities defined by topography and exposure-a rock outcropping, for instance, or a boggy area in your yard where rainwater collects. In any event, the many choices in gardening can be so overwhelming that limitations, like selecting plants that all have white flowers or, in this case, are all indigenous, can be helpful.
If you want to re-create a native plant community, you'll have to do some research. Find out what the area near your homesite was like in the years before settlement by European immigrants. Check at your local library, where there are often good records; purchase a guide to wild plants that is as specific to your area as possible; check the native plantings at local botanic gardens and arboreta. Then zero in on the plant communities that are most appropriate for the conditions on your property. If you live in the eastern deciduous forests province, for example, visit nearby woods in early spring to see the glorious perennials that grow and bloom there—trillium, Jack-in-the-pulpit, bloodroot. In your garden combine these plants within a herbaceous groundcover of perhaps Geranium maculatum or ferns. If you've chosen to create a naturalistic planting, then non-natives such as small-leaved epimediums or large hostas could also grow there.
Some examples of the many ways to use native perennials in a naturalistic design include: a spring woodland; a perennial border; an island bed; a shady border; a textural planting of individuals selected for their foliage shape and color; a groundcover of low-growing herbaceous plants such as the geranium; water's edge plantings; a herbaceous "bio-planting" with individuals chosen for their wildlife value-shelter and food in the form of fruit, pollen, nuts or seeds; and a meadow or prairie planting.
Garden Zones
One commonsense way to decide where to grow native plants in your garden is to visualize your property as three different areas that reflect both your needs and the needs of the plants and animals that can flourish there.
The inner area of your homesite is the high-traffic area with easy access to your house. This is a good place for entertaining, for example, and so it's usually covered in a hard surface like flagstone—unmortared to allow water to percolate downward and to provide habitat for soil dwellers. Raised decking makes a good choice for the hardscape of the inner area, both because it leaves the soil below unstressed and because it gets you up high, where you can look out into the native plantings beyond. The inner area is also an appropriate place for you to put special plant collections, preferably corralled by a fence or stone wall or other feature that sets them apart from the looser native landscape. Here you can cultivate exotic perennials under your watchful eye.
The outer area, often at the edges of your property, should be as wild as possible. This is often a good location for native plantings such as woodlands, shrubby areas that mix woody plants and perennials, or grasslands that consist of grasses and perennial wildflowers. These plantings can screen your property from neighbors or unsightly views and re-create natural habitat for beleaguered wildflowers and wildlife. Include plants that offer food for wildlife-plants with seeds, such as sunflowers; those with nectar, such as Joe-pye weed; those with heavy, rich pollen, such as goldenrod; and others, such as penstemons, with tubular red flowers to attract hummingbirds. It's also a good idea to include plants that provide shelter and nest material—those with dense, protective foliage in winter, such as native grasses, and ones with fluffy seedheads, such as Clematis virginiana.
The in-between area, which in the past might have contained a mix of lawn and ornamental islands or borders of non-native perennials, can be the principal area of interactive habitat—where you and the other garden residents, both plants and animals, will come into closest contact. This area could be the place for your most ambitious perennial creations, ideally reflecting your increased awareness of native varieties. Use this opportunity to reduce the size of your lawn, leaving only as much as you need for recreation. This saves not only on gasoline used for mowing, but also on water and petrochemical products such as fertilizers and pesticides.
Be sure, too, to include a water element in your garden. Aim to devote about 15 percent of your total landscape to some kind of wetland—pond, bog, wet meadow, stream or at the very least a significant garden pool. By the waterside, perennials that like wet feet, such as skunk cabbage and arrowhead, will be at home. Even in the desert, where 15 percent would be too much, wildlife will welcome some consistently available source of water.
You'll find that plantings made with indigenous perennials, or merely in the informal, naturalistic style, will attract a variety of wonderful birds and butterflies. Your creations bringing together many interdependent species—very unlike a conventional monoculture lawn-can be more than beautiful. They can directly benefit the beings who share your outdoor experience. And if you make your garden with an eye toward the health of the land—pesticide- and fungicide-free—it will be safer not only for the creatures but also for you and your family.
Ken Druse is an award-winning photographer and the author of The Natural Garden and The Natural Shade Garden, and co-author of The Natural Habitat Garden. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.