Go Native this Spring!

In 2005, you either lost part of your lawn to the drought or you had high water bills to pay for running the sprinklers every day. Either way, it might be time to plant a natural garden.

Whether your yard is sunny or shady, wet or high and dry, there are native plants that will provide a beautiful and drought-tolerant addition to your landscape.

A native garden will do more than save water, it will also add character to your property. By using native plants in your yard, you remind the world that they are in fact in the Midwest. When you surround yourself with plants that grew and adapted to this region over millenia, you make a connection with landscapes where the buffalo once roamed.

You can start with some specimen plants. Attractive species like Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) and Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana) will fit into a more traditionally landscaped yard quite nicely. Remember, native plants return year after year, and usually spread, so they make a good investment in the long-run.

For those looking to make a dramatic landscape statement, try planting “drifts” of native plants, taking care to mix a variety of species that will result in a changing palette of color throughout the year.

In general, asters and goldenrods are late summer/early fall bloomers. Black-eyed Susans put on their show in mid-summer, while coneflowers and Brown-eyed Susans tend to have a long flowering season (June-August). For early color in a shady garden, look to species like Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and Jacobs Ladder (Polemonium reptans). If your yard is sunny, Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) and Canada anemone (Anemone Canadensis) will perk things up.

When planting a native garden, be sure to include grasses. If you have never seen a grass plant in bloom, you have missed an amazing (if subtle) display. Sideoats Grama grass (Bouteloua curtipendula) is covered with tiny red-orange flowers when in bloom. Adding species like Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) will ensure that the area has winter interest as well (the plants are a gorgeous russet gold in the winter).

So, where do you start? We are fortunate in McHenry County to have a local wildflower preservation group, the Wildflower Preservation and Propagation Committee. They offer a Native Plant Sale the first Sunday in May at McHenry County College. The WPPC is a great source for advice and reasonably-priced plant materials. Please contact Nancy Gonsiorek, Committee Chairperson, for information on the May 7 th sale, 815-455-9462.

Other resources include local nurseries that specialize in native plants: Red Buffalo Nursery in Hebron, Walkup Heritage Farm in Crystal Lake and Blazing Star in Woodstock. The owners are knowledgeable about native species and can help you with plant selection for your yard.

For the web-savvy, there are several native plant nurseries to be found through the Internet: Prairie Nursery, Prairie Moon Nursery, Taylor Nursery, and Ion Exchange being a few. You might be able to get some ideas from their sites. Ion Exhange, for example, offers an “ Urban Prairie Garden” plant kit that will fill a 32 square foot area (four feet by eight feet).

Finally, talk to your friends and neighbors to see if they are growing any native plants. If so, chances are they can get you started by splitting some of theirs or helping you transplant some of the “baby plants” that emerge in their yard this spring.

In other words, there is really no reason not to incorporate native plants into your landscape. The birds and butterflies will thank you.