All-American landscape filled with natives

What could be more patriotic than a native landscape that supports Mother Nature??

Belfast castle garden is an example of a non-native and
unsustainable landscape. This is NOT authentic to America.

For far too long, the standard landscaping in our country has ignored the plants that belong here. Maybe it's a throwback to the European upper class castles where impossibly maintained formal gardens and the most exotic plants showed how much wealth they had. This landscape style is not only difficult to maintain, it's also not authentic to America.

It's time for a more patriotic approach...

The All-American Landscape
filled with regionally authentic plants 

Why is this patriotic?
The simple answer is that we need many different plants to provide habitat for butterflies, birds, and other wildlife. More to the point, diversity is important for the health of the region's overall ecology. Far too many of our wild areas have been destroyed to make room for that most damaging crop springing up with increasing frequency: McMansions and their vast lawns. 

This is a huge issue, so what difference can gardeners make? Little by little, one-by-one, we have the power to effect dramatic results. We can enhance the diversity in our own neighborhoods by:

- selecting a wide variety of native plants for our landscaping needs, and demand native species when we deal with nurseries.

- choosing plants suitable for the various microclimates on our properties so we use fewer resources, especially water, to maintain them.

- creating wild or near wild spaces on our properties and keep your cats and dogs out of this space. (Pets are subsidized predators that significantly alter the balance in the ecosystem.)

- encouraging your neighbors to do the same.

So let's get started!

Some posts for further reference:

Getting started with native plants in Florida
Florida Natives for your landscape
What?? Native plants not pretty enough...

Some patriotic natives from our yard...

Florida scrub scullcap (Scutellaria arenicola)

Loblolly Bay (Gordonia lasianthus) blossoms
 rival magnolias for showiness

Pink! can be a patriotic color when it's the Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) blossoms.

Native milkweeds support monarch butterflies and many other pollinators.
This one is the pinewoods milkweed (Alsclepias humistrat

Rain lily (Zephyrantes atamosca)

Indian blanket (Gaillardia puchella)

Tropical sage (Salvia coccinea) supports not only insect pollinators, but also hummingbirds.

Spanish bayonet (Yucca aloifolia)

Creating a better world is NOT for nothing; it's for our grandchildren.

Green is the new red, white & blue.

So celebrate the 4th of July, but after the long weekend, continue your patriotism with more natives in your landscape and soon your landscape will be a patriotic, All-American landscape that supports the All-American wildlife native to your area.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Just say no to seasonal plantings

Nothing says fall like pumpkins, gourds, and mums
~ ~ ~
 

Don't plant the mums.

Don't you just love these fall displays? Can't you almost taste the hot apple cider?

These gorgeous mums have been raised so they are at their peak right now. But if you buy them, don't bother putting them in your garden. They'll look good for only a few weeks, if you're lucky. Treat them like bouquets and drop their pots into some nice containers or hanging baskets so you can enjoy them. Compost them when they go by.

The problem with seasonal plantings

The tradition varies by region, but it usually goes something like this: mums in the fall. pansies in the winter, begonias or coleus in the spring and thirsty impatiens in the summer.

This means that several times a year you will be disturbing the soil which prepares the soil for weeds, either from the soil's seed bank or from newly dropped seeds. This disturbed soil is more subject to droughts. The soil microbes have to readjust after being disturbed.


You see the seasonal plantings everywhere. And then this landscaping behavior is promoted on garden shows, in magazines, on websites as the expected solution. And of course garden shops promote the seasonal plantings because if you buy a new set of plants three or four times a year, they make more money. Sometimes it's hard to tell one state from another, because adaptable non-native plants are used much more frequently than natives.

Let's plant the Real Florida in our yards for authentic landscapes, instead of  these adaptable aliens that are everywhere. 

Native plants become part of the local ecosystem.

Doug Tallamy!

I wrote a piece on Doug Tallamy
about how he has changed the way we think about our landscapes. He has provided better arguments for using more natives in our landscapes, which are backed with good science.

Non native plants have not developed a relationship with local ecosystems and do not have a role to play there, where natives are vital for the survival of many insects and birds.

So instead of that mum, why not buy a nice native aster, which will last for years and serve as part of your local ecosystem? Actually, there are many excellent choices for native fall bloomers. There are many native plant sales in Florida, as listed here on the Florida Native Plant Society's calendar. The calendar also lists chapter meetings and field trips, so you have plenty of opportunity to learn about plants of "The Real Florida." If you're not an FNPS member, you may still participate in many of the activities, but why not join and become part of the solution? www.FNPS.org

Now is the time to start the transition. 

Native asters will bloom year after year. There are many species to choose from, but this one is  Eliot's aster (Symphyotrichum elliottii).

Native salvias (Salvia coccinea) bloom almost year round in north Florida.

We are tempted year round with plants, mostly annuals,
 in full bloom. These plants have completed their life cycles,
so when you plant them into your garden, they will
die quickly, or not so quickly.
They are grown to look pretty on the shelf.
 .

Seasonal plantings:

- cost a lot more money than more permanent plantings.
- do not usually live long and prosper. Many only look good for a few weeks.
- do not usually play a vital role in your yard's ecosystem.
- disturb the soil several times a year so that there are more weeds and that the soil dries out faster, even with mulch.
- cause more work for the gardener.
- are not authentic to your location.

So make the switch to natives for less work and more butterflies.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Soap destroys plants' defenses

How to fight aphids on milkweed?

We plant milkweeds to encourage the monarch butterflies, not only for the nectar, but also because milkweed is the ONLY larval food for the monarch caterpillars. But milkweed also attracts aphids...

Non-native scarlet milkweed (Asclepias curassavica)*. Notice all the yellow aphids on the stems.

I was focused on the monarch when I took the above photo, but it's obvious that my milkweeds had become infested with aphids. I just allowed the aphids to stay. Eventually some ladybugs came in, but the plant is better off without any "treatment" from the gardener.

Often the "expert" advice is to spray homemade concoctions with soap or detergent to get rid of the aphids. Don't do it! 

Water beads up on plant surfaces because of their waxy, hydrophobic cuticles.
The beading water also washes dust from the plant surfaces, 

Soap dissolves the waxy cuticle, which is the plant's defense against desiccation, pathogen infestation, UV radiation, and pest attacks.

Cuticle formation is an adaptation that plants had to make to survive on land--out of the water environment. Its formation takes quite a bit of energy as the outer cells exude this complex mixture of waxes and cutins. New studies have shown that the cuticle is much more than just a barrier to water loss. The cuticle is a barrier to fungal and bacterial pathogens; it protects the plant from UV radiation; and it deters some herbivore activity.

The casual and oft repeated suggestion to use insecticidal soap and other soapy mixture is short-sighted, because the plant's cuticle will be dissolved. The plant, which may already have been stressed by the aphids, may not have the spare energy to form a new cuticle. Without its cuticle, the plant will wilt more often and without its normal turgidity, even more types of pests will be able to attack it. Without its cuticle, the plant may be sunburned and the burned tissue is an opening for fungi and bacteria to enter. In the end, the soap-treated plant is MUCH worse off than before its treatment.

FYI, dawn, the most widely recommended soap
for homemade insecticides is not benign.

Soaps and detergents disturb the balance in working ecosystems

Soaps and detergents serve as poisons in your landscape's ecosystem. Yes, they may wipe out the aphids, but in addition to leaving your plants vulnerable, they will also wipe out or chase away their predators. The lady bugs (both the larval and adult stages), assassin bugs, praying mantises, predatory wasps will not have their food. And the predators for those bugs such as dragonflies, lizards, bats, and insect-eating birds will not have their food either. Your yard's ecosystem is a tangled web and your intervention against one member will have an impact on that whole web of relationships.

If you must intervene...

If the infestation is really intense, use only water to rinse away the aphids and other bugs. This way the plant retains its cuticle and you can reduce the aphids on the plants without killing them or their predators.

Your goal, as a sustainable gardener, is to help your 

yard become a working ecosystem. 

* This photo was taken several years ago when I was still growing this non-native species of milkweed, because it was readily available at the local Home Depot. I don't grow this milkweed any more because it doesn't die back soon enough in the winter and the monarchs get off cycle, stay too long into the winter, and pick up a deadly bacterial disease. If you do have the scarlet milkweed, you can keep the monarchs safe by cutting it back to the ground at the beginning of December and keeping it cut back until February.

For further information:

A poison is a poison is a poison!

The formation and function of plant cuticles

Dish soap can damage your plants on Garden Myths website by Robert Pavlis


Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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