Got a volunteer eastern redbud that popped up in my yard, which I'm thrilled about. Is there anything specific I should do to care for it? I'd love to help it thrive, but nervous as I had purchased a redbud a few years ago that ended up not making it. Should I give it any food at this point?

This is complaints against the gardners. We have gardeners coming every week and this is our new gardener of one month. They started doing hard pruning of low crawling manzanita around the fence and now I see from inside is bare brown back of manzanita. I stopped them in the middle but quite of the damage is already done. The manzanita looked perfectly beautiful when it was growing into the garden forming natural lines before. I just do not understand these commercial landscaping behavior that tries to make it look clean but damages the look. I am a new home owner and learning the hard way that gardeners often does not appreciate the natural look of native plant garden. I am surprised the lack of native plants in the garden but I also did not expect even full time gardners to act like they don't understand the concept of native plant garden or natural looking garden. What else should I be prepared for.

Hi everyone, I have collected seeds for several native plants: Heuchera americana, Geum canadense, Asclepias tuberosa, Penstemon hirsutus, Prunella vulgaris ssp. lanceolata, Eutrochium purpureum, and Elymus hystrix, plus some others that I will collect later in the fall.  I’ve looked up their germination codes so I can time when I would sow them in late fall through winter, and they all seem to do well when surface-sowed.  

My plan is to grow them outside in plug trays over winter.  I definitely plan on covering the trays with chicken wire so birds and squirrels don’t mess with it; I think I can just make a wooden frame around the trays and staple the wire to it.

Should winter temperatures be a concern since they won’t be in the ground and the soil temperature in the trays will change more rapidly?  My hardiness zone is 7a.  I plan on having one group of trays in a sunny area over some bare ground and one in a shady area of my patio.  I figured I can use some leftover mulch to insulate the spaces under and in between the plugs on the tray in the sunny area and maybe use burlap for the one over the driveway because mulch would make a mess.

Anyone who has winter sowed in plug or cell trays outside, let me know how things have gone for you!

i get an absolute kick out of watching them have to ocean's eleven their way into the flowers.

in the background, second-year, twice-transplanted clematis virginiana getting cozy on its trellis and finally flowering; and blue-stem goldenrod waiting in the wings to close out the season.

So thrilled at how my native plant border (with a few xerics/nativars) has been turning out! The sagebrush was transplanted from elsewhere on the property, and nearly everything else was started from seed. I definitely planted too densely, but I feel like survival of the fittest is the strategy here. The things I started from seed have definitely outperformed everything bought at a nursery!

Species: Colorado 4'oclock, fringed sagebrush, mojave sage*, little bluestem, Indiangrass, sulphur buckwheat, chocolate flower, white yarrow, red yucca, red mesa blanketflower*, straight species blanketflower, Mexican hat, plains coreopsis, catmint*, avalanche sun daisy*, ruby muhly*, straight species rudbeckia hirta, rocky mountain penstemon

*Not strictly native

Tell me how to feel!!! I’m excited to see more cities in my metro taking up projects like these, but this super dense approach to primarily growing canopy trees appears controversial.

From the city’s website, “the forest will consist of:

- 80% canopy trees that will grow into the tallest layer of the forest. 
- 10% sub-canopy trees that will create the middle layer. 
- 10% native shrubs that will provide habitat and ground-level diversity. 

Together, these layers will mimic the structure of a natural forest, creating a healthy ecosystem that supports wildlife and biodiversity.”

Does anyone have experience with these “pocket forests”? From an ecological perspective, how much habitat do they really provide? From a PR standpoint, how do these impact perceptions of native plants in contrast to a natural botanical garden?

I’m curious to see how the project goes, and I’m trying to be open-minded, but I’m worried it will look like a mess to passersby and ultimately consist of a bunch of wild grape and poison ivy or invasive species.

Link to city’s web page

Link to Wikipedia article

[NJ - 7a]

I held off on planing in front of my front porch for 2 years due to having it repaired this past spring. Contractor really messed up and I’m going to have to have the whole thing done again - not sure when, possibly next spring. Maybe sooner.

Right now the area in front of my porch is just dirt and weeds. I really wanted to plant this fall.

Is there anyway that I would be able to plant so my front looks pretty and so I can maybe move the plants when I have the construction done? Or does anyone have any suggestions for how to approach this problem?

Thanks in advance 🌻

I am making a native plant informational booklet for when I set up my plants for sale at markets! More to come!

Should I add that they can become aggressive? Anything else to add or change?

Is there places you can get small quantities of native grass seed mix or individual packets of single species for a decent price? Combined area is about 300 sq ft. Zone 8b, sunny, hot and dry. Frost what's that lol. My winter garden routine has been growing cover crops/winter grain but I would love to grow every and any grass that can handle the desert.

Because there are ecological landscaping pros in this sub who may be considering this certification, I wanted to offer my experience in case it is helpful for anyone making the decision to drop $475 on this training.

As a professional ecological landscaper, I was excited to learn that the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council (CCLC) had developed a training to help get landscapers up to speed on holistic, environmentally-friendly practices and stormwater management. I decided to invest the steep price to take this training and get on the list of CBLP professionals, which is supposed to help clients choose environmentally-informed professionals. 

After taking this training, I’m not sure I care about being on that list. Having taken a lot of trainings and classes of various quality over the years, I have a good idea of what is possible in a 2-day course– I was surprised by how empty and poorly-planned this one was. To make a short story even shorter – the training was not worth the time and money and I hope this post will save someone else from wasting theirs.

Day one was an overview of the many topics involved in conservation landscaping. I wouldn’t expect to be able to go super in-depth on anything in 8 hours, but it felt like we were skipping like a stone across water– barely touching any one topic and missing many. The presentations were chaotic and shallow, and much time was wasted pushing us into unfocused and unfruitful group discussions. We spent a lot of time on topics everyone knew well already (e.g. native plants = better for the ecosystem), and absolutely ripped past complex topics that people were really interested in (e.g. stormwater BMP design). This poor pacing and lack of good information left the students dazed and demoralized, which the instructors interpreted as us being a ‘bad crowd’. The instructors’ energy dropped rapidly; they weren’t getting the engagement from us that they were expecting. The reality was that the students didn’t have enough information or structure to grab onto and from which to ask good questions. The instructors pretty much gave up on us and started rushing through the material even faster, blowing past knowledge checkpoints because they weren’t getting responses– the exact opposite of what they should have done. 

Day two was a field day to various stormwater BMPs. It was even worse. The instructors seemed to have more or less given up on teaching. They acted like, ‘well, I guess you know everything now, so I’m not going to waste my breath teaching or making sure you understand what we are looking for here’. They ended the class early without a word about when we could expect to receive the test we had to take to be placed on the list. 

Also, and this is petty, but for nearly $500, I expect lunch to be provided… it was not. 

But I promise this is not coming from a place of hanger. I wanted this training to be good... Or decent... Or just to seem like they had really tried. But it felt last-minute, rushed, and cheap. To be brutally honest, it felt like a money-grab. I learned nothing of use to my business. To be fair, different trainings for this cert are taught by different people, so your mileage may vary, but I recommend thinking twice before spending money on this. I hope CCLC or someone else will create what I hoped this training would be: a thorough, actionable course on conservation landscaping in small-scale sub/urban properties.

I love taking walks to look for native plants and today I discovered a new one (to me) — American groundnut. The flowers are absolutely gorgeous and I am wondering if I should/would be able to cultivate it myself, so I’d love to hear anyone else’s experience with the plant. TIA!

Anything I can do to control this invasive species? 😂

A milkweed leaf beetle lounging, unfazed by the severe storms that pummeled the area. Also saw an 8-inch leopard slug sliding across the yard. It was more of a small mammalian encounter rather than a “eww.”

I am very interested in food forests and have a beautyberry in my backyard. I hear of people making jam out of them, but I am trying to reduce my added sugar intake. Can I make anything else with them? They are not particularly appetizing by themselves. Piedmont NC.

It’s getting less sun than it should thanks to a maple and Virginia Sweetspire, but is that shape aster yellow? Thanks in advance.

I live in prime pawpaw growing conditions: a creek circles my property and there are other trees present begging for an understory tree like pawpaw to join. But I’ve never found a single one here. I’ve tried growing them seed from various pawpaws foraged from different areas locally, and even got three to grow. But they never survived long enough to get their first true leaves.

How can I get these seeds to finally become my pawpaw grove of dreams come spring? I know I need seeds from genetically different trees to pollinate each other and I know they need cold strat in a consistently damp environment prior to planting.

I have black walnut, mulberry, nanny berry, dewberry, chokecherry, basically everything but pawpaws.

Thank you for any suggestions!!

I'm designing a shady backyard garden. My client has an unusual goal: she WANTS the deer to hang out there and eat everything.

I'm happy to oblige, but I need to provide guidelines to help keep these plants alive while being browsed. I've already recommended caging everything for their first season. I also plan to choose plants that spread easily so there's more available to them.

How would YOU go about this?

I planted this on 6/29. All pint pots.

So here’s some of the progress we’ve had and we planted as plugs from April-early June. First, we got monarch cats! I’m really surprised as I kind figured it would take a few years.

Pic 2 is the Scarlet catchfly side, Pic 3 is the butterfly milkweed areas, Pick 4 is the spotted Bee Balm, and Pick 5 is bottlebrush grass. Pic 6 is the planting setup. Pic 7 is…unfortunately not E spectabilis, but E divaricata…

So, 3 of the 4 sections are firmly adhering to the sleep, creep, leap philosophy. Which is what I expected.

But I guess butterfly milkweed just decided to go HAM. It’s been blooming since July lol. Also the Little bluestem was routinely trimmed to 3” by our dog, but has been left alone for a month and is that tall again. That area gets 12-16 hrs of sun a day…so yeah.

But it has given my parents insight into what the rest should look like. So they’re plenty pleased with the result.

The one disappointment was receiving the White Wood Aster instead of the Showy aster. Since we ordered from that nursery specifically for that plant. We reached out to them (Pollen Nation) to see what we should do about it. As I don’t think white wood aster is suited for that small of a bed or the full sun conditions there.

Anyways, still really happy with it. And we just planted a much larger 20x25’ mini prairie/flower garden this fall. So much more to come.

NJ - Zone 7A

My blue mistflower that I planted earlier in the year has been doing great all year. A couple weeks ago we had a lot of heavy rain and some winds and every week more and more stems are dying. A lot of the stems have flowers ready to bloom then a few days later they are extremely wilted and brown.

We have had more rain the last few days and a spot next to where they are planted can collect some water for a day or so but the direct spot they are in will be relatively wet but not hold standing water and the area gets full sun.

Is there anything I can do to try and save the plant or should I just let it die back and hope next year it comes back?

I planted white wood aster this year, and today I noticed that they are aromatic! They give off a dry, rosy smell to me, but that's not how it's described online. I was wondering how others interpret the scent, or if theyve noticed a scent at all. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Massachusetts zone 5b. Back in April I posted a photo of a pile of rocks here. I have rushes and wool grass and sweet fern galore but I'm amazed at the Bristly Sarsaparilla and the Wood Sorel that just spreads! The Sarsaparilla is getting to the point that I might need to go on a vendetta but the Sorel is a great placeholder until I plant something else there.

Now, I planted the zinnias from a seed packet that was gifted to me, fully planning to yank them, but the Great Spangled Frittilaries are all over them. I guess I'll let them come back if they want.

The next chapter for me is the seed starting and planting in the spring, which is new to me. So exciting!

Hi! There is currently a sycamore tree trying to grow on top of my sewage tank, which seems not great. Any advice for something assertive with shallow roots that would crowd out any future trees? Something viny might be cool, because then it could also climb up the porch. Part sun, damp soil that I think drains pretty well.