Like having a favorite and least favorite child , having a favorite and least favorite garden is hard to admit  , not that any of this applies to my kids, they all have their charms:)  . The overall garden here is divided into many spaces, all named for easy directions to spouse and children as to where I will be if, say, you can’t find your favorite leggings or you are wondering when and if dinner will be ready. There is The Dog’s Garden, The Pink Garden, Out Back, the Front Garden and the space that incorporates the entire long side yard toward the street is The Rock Garden.

The Rock Garden went in over the course of two years way back in the day when my body didn’t mind lifting what probably amounts to several tons of rock.  The rocks came from anywhere we could find them , construction sites, my cousin dropped a truck full off from his former in-laws yard., I even braved a rock pile in my brother-in- laws woods I knew for certain had snakes living in it to get more . It took lots of time and effort to get what most people curse and  have too much of here in New England.

The area where the garden is was initially lawn and I had planted some really fast growing willows to screen the street view with the intent of coppicing  a percentage f them annually and slowing adding in  evergreens.  And so the problems began.

If we ever have deer, that is where they enter, After loosing a few of the willow’s replacements I planted a super ugly low yew hedge right inside the willows to stop them. Deer LOVE yew, and so they get to the edge of the yard eat to their heart’s content, and forget that their initial mission was to destroy the apple tee 10 feet away by rubbing their antlers on it. Problem is , to be effective ,the yew remains un-pruned by me and in years of high deer pressure looks like scooped out yew bowls and in years without looks like a person with a really bad haircut. Behind it the willow drops branches like nobodies business and requires CONSTANT clean-up, but the deer don’t touch it, and so it remains.

One of the surviving evergreens, a hemlock, has been the victim of the other scourge over there; voles. These disgusting little creatures love to nest in the roots of conifers over the winter.  after several years of this the hemlock looked awful and I had to take it out this spring. The number of plants we have lost over there to voles  make me want to cry. Tricks that work elsewhere in the yard ( mousetraps, bait stations) don’t seem to have any effect in The Rock Garden at all.

To add insult to injury, this garden was planted before my daughter’s illness and anyone who has  a rock garden with dainty little alpines and other BS plants that need coddling can tell you that a two year absence of the head gardener will result in plant loss, and mayhem . Lewisias were the first casualties, ( they needed constant repositioning to remain on top of the rocks so they would not rot) followed by   a few dwarf conifers, and silenes,  and on and on it went. I filled in the spaces with whatever  divisions I could find on property with the plan of  redesigning at a later date, and then the rabbits arrived. The rabbit scourge is relatively new here and there are plants I am willing to go the extra mile for ie :those in my favorites gardens, but those in The Rock Garden ( which btw has no site line from inside the house or anywhere else in the yard being separated by  the pool enclosure and the garage)  are left to fend for themselves.

All these shortfalls  aside, the whole set up of a rock garden in New England is ridiculous. We have deciduous trees, loads of them . It is what we are known for.  You just don’t see 40 ft maples and oaks lined up on the sides of mountains . Alpine plants live in open wind swept areas , and to get that look here I have to clean up leaves…a lot…more than any reasonable person should ever have to ….and I hate it. The leaves catch in every crevice. They blow in after I am done with Fall cleanup and smoother the  succulents and sedums.  Because I spend my time over there muttering and griping, I have every single year due to inattention broken off every single  leave of the iris reticulata I forget is  there. During Spring clean-up I swear  I am going to round-up the whole thing and bring the lawn back, that is how much I hate it.

But like any mother when dealing with unexpected disappointment  in a child, I am trying. I go out there and try to look at it with love in my heart and figure out what to do to make it better.  I stand there and tell it how wonderful The Pink Garden is, and try to encourage it to imitate Pink’s success. Then I feel bad because each garden should follow it’s own path and not be compared to its siblings.  I ask it “what do you need from me to reach your potential? I want to help”  It just sits there and sulks , refusing to give me any insight. I am sure if it had headphones it would put them in and turn the music up drowning me out. I am at wit’s end with it .

I finished clean-up there over the span of 6 solid hours Tuesday then remarkably on Wednesday a package arrived from Klem’s Song Sparrow, one of my favorite mail order nurseries. It was plants I had ordered over the winter just for The Rock Garden  and my heart grew two sizes when I opened it. Two lovely dwarf conifers, picea abies‘Perry’s Gold’ and Pinus strobus ‘Sea Urchin”...ohmygoodness are they sweet!  There was also a helenium called ‘Short n Sassy’ and a new clematis called “My Angel’.  Excited, I went out to scout locations and happily removed an entire area that had been over run with thyme  and ripped out another that had been planted with daylilys of all things when times were really bad out there. While out there I noticed that the geum trifolium was coming into bloom  and  the shoots of the little daffodil ‘Baby Moon’ I added last year were appearing.   Things are looking up. So, for one more season,The Rock Garden gets to stay. It is totally on probation, completely under my critical and supervisory eyes. we shall see if it can redeem itself.

Do you have a garden space you struggle with?

Before we continue let me take a second to tell you why the native versus exotic plant debate interests  me so much. As someone who came into gardening via specific plants ( I love and adore roses, lilacs, clematis and peonies and wanted to grow them)  I was curious how my garden impacted it’s surroundings.  Many people come to gardening this very way, whether they are looking for the best tomato, the biggest pumpkin or want to exhibit dahlias . I  wonder all the time if  my community had been a “Native Planting Only”  (yes, many such places do exist!) if I would have bothered at all ? Would others who garden for their own personal reasons  feel the same? I did not set out to make an ecosystem, I set out to make a garden ,but have always kept in mind that I am part of a much larger picture even though the scope of that picture is much larger than any one gardener can take in or take care of. Am I responsible for the success all the wildlife around me ? Should my concern be for only indigenous species( thus absolving me from worry about the honeybees ) ? Am I responsible for care of our wetlands, forests, birds, etc the list could go on and on. As I discover more about myself and my garden I am coming to realize that I can and  should garden in a way that first does no harm to the environment and second keeps me actively engaged and thus providing whatever resources I am able and willing to give to the other creatures around me.

Does that mean I will let the rabbits and voles take over the garden? Absolutely not, there would be no garden if I did.  Does that mean I should be conscious of whatever I decide to spray, plant , or water? Yes, as long as I am doing so in an informed and educated fashion. No matter what information is presented to me via book, internet , or word of mouth , I question everything. On any garden subject you will likely be presented with more varying and often contradictory opinions than there are days in the year, yet there is a way to discern which of them  you believe.

My first rule of thumb is to avoid absolutes, zealotry or dogma.  It is easy to get so caught up in a belief system or ideology and loose your way, especially when it comes to noble and lofty concerns .

My second rule is to read, read, read. You can access many published scientific research papers online and if you are ever looking for particular ones  , one email to the right source can direct you where to look.

Third rule, read such papers with a critical and questioning mind. For example, one of the first papers I read posed the question; ‘Do insects feed and benefit equally from both native and non-native plants”?  I was so curious to see the results, but upon further investigation saw the plant lists used to draw the conclusions were in my opinion useless: The natives were known  lepidopteran (butterfly,moth and skipper)  host plants and they were  pitted against  a whole bevy of nonnative plants found on  the USDA Invasive Plant /Noxious weed list.  THAT is a biased study that helps  those interested in Invasion Biology, but not the average home gardener who wants to know if the specific maple or  birch they are planting is a good wildlife choice. You can not draw the conclusion that all native plants are better insect food using that data. ( and it ticks me off that someone did ) .

Anyway, that is what started me on this journey of trying to get the most accurate information to help me make the best choices  and have a garden that will suit both me, and the environment.

In rant part two,  we return to this same article  to talk  about  the power of words. In particular we shall discuss with a skeptical mind the very word at the cause of the debate: NATIVE.

What does native mean?  A plant growing here since the first European colonists arrived ?  A plant  that  naturalized itself before we came? A plant that appears in fossil records? One that co-evolved with other wildlife from this area ? If so , how long of a period of co-evolution counts? Well, the accepted loose definition used in discussions  such as these is : A Plant that occurs naturally in a particular region , ecosystem ,  or habitat without  direct or indirect  human intervention.

Hmmmm…..So beyond anecdotal evidence  of the first humans  to live here as well as what we can infer from science ( like age of a tree or length of time a species has been here  configured by dispersal patterns and density )  what evidence is acceptable to give a plant that coveted status of “Native”?  If a plant is no  longer  growing here but appears in the fossil record ( like ginko biloba) is it still a native?  If a plant was brought in say in 1491 via rafting   is it native? What about by mammals, birds or wind? What if we take it waaaaay back to when the continents were connected and we can look at certain genera of plants who live now in similar climates at similar latitudes  and share many of the same characteristics but  find themselves separated by oceans?  Where do we consider them “native” to?

Now let’s look at the word in a different context; how it is so often used in the media describing a very large group of  supposedly worthy and desirable plants. The word native sounds so noble and  has been given  just that connotation by many who advocate planting indigenous plants. BUT  in this grouping are plants that fit into so many categories, descriptions, and  uses it boggles the mind. They can be trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, aquatic plants, or bulbs. They can be shade dwellers or sun lovers, xeric plants or bog dwellers. Some , like our  indigenous spring ephemerals need very specific growing conditions and emerge early, bloom quickly then go dormant for the rest of the growing season. Some  can be aggressive growers like campsis radicans or trumpet vine that can climb to 35 feet  scrambling over anything in it’s path  , shading out any competing plants and will rapidly colonize a large area using suckers that crop up  many feet from the main plant.  Some native plants are very well behaved in their particular ecosystem, but move them down the road a pace or two and they become noxious weeds.  How about poison sumac?  the highly poisonous water hemlock? What about the Franklinia tree which is  prone to a multitude of  diseases , resists transplantation and is generally a  pain in the ass to grow?  would you choose that over the easy to grow Serviceberry ( amalnchier canadensis)? All of these plants are so diverse, so distinct in  cultivation and wildlife value, yet are all lumped as one holy grail of plant  material …THE NATIVE.

As for the words used to describe non-indigenous plants , they are  EXOTIC and ALIEN , powerfully negative words leaving a homeowner or gardener with feelings of guilt and failure when planting what could very well be both garden and wildlife friendly plants. Words are everything , and they can lead us down some very dangerous paths.

Moving on to  value, both to wildlife and the garden, there are many native plants that serve the same function as nonnatives.  Biodiversity ; or the number, variety and genetic variation of organisms found within a specific geopgraphic region , is not limited to native plants. Neither are leaf litter, shade canopy, shelter, or fruit.  Lepidoptera species ( butterflies and moths) utilize both native and nonantive species , and some plants regardless of nativity are never butterfly host plants. Some native species are LESS valuable to wildlife than nonatives, some are more.  Click here to see the U Maine’s wildlife support PDF for apple and crab apple trees, keep in mind they define ‘wild” as untended, NOT native…..pretty amazing the host of creatures they feed,( as an aside if you tried to plant one of the 4  indigenous crab apple species you would quickly loose them to disease ,whereas there are a multitude of disease resistant non native species.)

If we are going to get a homeowner to plant a small tree, the delightful crab apple  with both ornamental AND wildlife benefit is a win-win! The same can be said for lilac , host to 10 lepidoptera species , nectar source for countless pollinators and shelter for birds, and a homeowner favorite as well. They should not be shamed for doing so.

So, the point? Well, really I would like all involved in horticulture on any level to adopt a new way of talking. Just spewing off “plant native!”  does a great disservice to the average home gardener. Be specific,  for butterfly host plants familiarize yourself with  which butterflies rely on which plants for their caterpillars, as well as nectar sources. Same goes for birds, bees, whatever.  Then know the conditions of the site you are dealing with ,the kind of garden desired, the budget and the degree of maintenance the gardener is willing to tolerate, and  THEN suggest plants that you know they can access, plant and grow successfully within those parameters.

Also, keep in mind that many studies point to habitat as a big huge part of the battle in wildlife support, so encourage a planting that has a groundcover, understory and canopy if possible , or inclusion of un-mowed grass or even meadow areas. The worst type garden for wildlife is a few shrubs and loads of bark mulch surrounded by a lawn.

Next up…dealing with our New Ecosystem  (human density, pollution, soil compaction, deer pressure, plant diseases and pests) and what happens when a very worthy and honorable ideal becomes a crusade .

In further posts: The issues of insect biomass, cultivating new hybrids of natives for more widespread garden use, and the ever controversial butterfly bush.

Time for a rant, and a long overdue one at that. I realize that what I am about to rant against may rub some people the wrong way, so I will start by saying what I am NOT ranting against.

A.) I believe in taking out your lawn if you can . Lawns have been universally panned as any type of wildlife refugee, are generally water  and fertilizer hogs, and  mowing etc is a pain.

B.) I love many plants that are described as “native” or indigenous.( I disagree with the  terminology labeling them as such and the fact that they are all grouped together as though they  are one SUPER-plant, but that is not the rant here.)

C.) I think planting for wildlife is a stellar idea, and there are many plants that support our wildlife that are both native and nonnative and embrace any effort that a homeowner gives to provide shelter, food or water to said wildlife.

I must also mention that I love me some science, and I can(un) happily spend hours reading hypotheses, abstracts, graph and data charts, but DO NOT in any way support cherry picking of  results or agenda driven experiments ( more on that when I rant on the other Myths in a later post)

So, back to the rant. This article has come across  my social media feed ad nauseum in the past few days, and although in some circles it may get me  banned or worse, spit at, , I am going to rant against it because it’s my blog and I can.

I will state again, that I love science. I love that some amazing curious mind poses a question, then does enough research to pose a hypothesis, designs an experiment to test said hypothesis , and then draws whatever useful conclusions they can whether they support or undermine the initial theory. Science. Love it.

What I DO NOT love is people masquerading as scientists; posing theories then designing bad studies, then  picking and publishing the data that supports their theory and disregarding the rest. I despise when those results are quoted in articles written for the general public who may not be inclined to question their validity especially when the cause they seem to be supporting seems so noble.  But even though I could rant on the so very many half-truths, misleading information and unsubstantiated claims here, ( and trust me I will at a later date) today I will zero in on only the most egregious  and that is in Myth 4.

Myth 4 states , and I quote…..”Tallamy’s studies show that native plants suffer no greater damage from plant-eating pests than do nonnatives and may in fact be healthier because they foster a more balanced ecosystem. Natives do host many indigenous herbivorous insects such as caterpillars, but these plant eaters in turn attract native predators—such as birds, assassin bugs, preying mantids, ladybird beetles and parasitic wasps—that keep the herbivores under control. In contrast, imported nonnatives, such as azaleas, may host nonnative pests that have few predators. With no natural enemies, “the azalea lace bug is the No. 1 pest in the eastern United States,” says Tallamy.

So lets start with these two statements

1.) that non native azaleas host lace bugs and the unstated but implied statement that native azaleas do not ( although the author of these statements  does actually claim  that in his well known and never to be mentioned here on this blog book)

2.)that azalea lace bugs( stephantis pyriodes) are voracious pests with no know natural predators here in the US.

both a bunch of BS

Most Azaleas, regardless of parentage, are susceptible to the azalea lace bug. The lace bug is an introduced pest from Japan. that has spread throughout parts of the country and damages the plant by using piercing mouth parts to suck sap from the leaves .  The damage shows up as stippling on the tops of the leaves and if you look under the leaves you will see the bugs.Yes, it may have arrived on imported nursery stock,and that is unfortunate, and I hope we are learning from our mistakes, but any  azalea species or cultivar  can be infested. The Azelea lace bug has never and will never enquire about a particular host plant’s nativity before inviting itself to dinner. And if you bought a plant in 2015 that was propagated here in the US  you are not importing anything, it has been here since 1916, it is already widespread,   and as such must be dealt with. The azalea lace bug  will feast on native and non native alike, and actually some of the most resistant plants (meaning azaleas that are avoided by the azalea lace bug) are hybrids of foreign origin  and we should be encouraged to plant them . Four of our native species have been defined as resistant and there is a plan afoot to hydridize them at the University of Georgia which is good news.Every extension site I visited and a few university sites as well  recommend planting azaleas only in shadier locations( in the eastern part of the US) to encourage predatory insects as well as the fact that drought and sun -stressed plants are far more susceptible to attack and extreme damage. ( I read several studies that drew this as their conclusion, although in the Pacific Northwest damage was worse in the shade).

As for an entemologist that would make the statement that the azalea lace bug has no natural predators here, I can not even fathom how to comment. I can site you many extension sites that list a bevy of predators (spiders, assasin bugs, lacewings) ,  like here, or  here , or this article..( there were many many more btw ).so is everybody else wrong?  Or is this claim meant to create hysteria and mayhem all in the name of furthering an agenda?  ( again, shadier locations will be a better location for planting as the predatory insects will prefer this habitat).

Lastly, I can not find one other source that backs up the claim that azalea lace bug is the #1 pest in the eastern US. It is widespread in certain areas , but #1? Not according to anyone except this author.

The minute I read blatantly misleading information and disregard for inconvenient truths I immediately suspect every other word written . Agenda….driven….”science”…is……the….worst!

As to why azaleas were even mentioned in this article, I am still struggling to understand.  Of all the plants that could have been included to make a point germaine to the discussion here….azaleas? Anyway, part one of the rant is over. Part two when I am feeling brave 🙂

Yesterday I went to hear  amazing plantsman and small nursery owner , Ed Bowen ,speak at Tower Hill Botanic Garden. Ed taught my propagation class when I took the Master Gardener program and I was ever so eager to be in a classroom with him again . There seem to be so few nursery people around here that focus on what is good for the garden as opposed to what is good for their bottom line, but Opus Plants ( which sells a small inventory  online and at a select few Plant fairs ) is one of the greats for finding  interesting plants that remind us all why we wanted to garden in the first place.

The title of Ed’s talk was” Practicing the Dark Arts.;Tips and Plants for the Shade Garden”. As you may remember, I have been busy planting a woodland walk out back and adding to another shadier area out front, and I was interested to see what suggestions he had.

T o begin with he made me laugh out loud when telling how he started to prepare his talk by pulling up the presentation he had given before with the title and promptly wondering what kind of rubbish he was trying to sell people and trashed the whole thing to start from scratch. I have done this, many times, in fact almost every time I pull up a presentation , I wonder the same thing and promptly edit, delete and add  until I feel it is up to par. Then he went on to say there would be no “list” of plants, he was just going to sort of ramble on about the garden , and why we plant what we plant a,nd talk about a few favorites  that we may or may not be familiar with.

One of the most important things he touched on, that I have yet to find an easy way to explain to people, is that many of the plants we grow in shade are there because although they are full sun growers they will TOLERATE shade and still perform.  In other words  searching  for a boatload of interesting plants  that are exclusively  “Shade Plants” is sort of a pipe dream. Also , for most plants that do want shadier conditions , the key is m0rning sun and afternoon shade, not vice-versa.

Ed hybridizes many different species , always looking for that combination of traits that will make a standout plant , whether it be larger or more colorful foliage, hardiness, or better flowering.  He also loves to coerce his friends into buying expensive and or rare plants that are described as being out of our growing zone and then have them report back as to survival. He pointed out to us that many hydrangeas, including the lovely  aspera species are often listed as zone 7 or higher, but actually survive here in Zone 5 jusrt fine.  Hydrangea aspera subsp. sargentiana has interesting peeling bark and velvety ovate leaves, and certainly piqued my interest.

Some of the plants he mentioned I already grow. I love our native Mayapple  Podophyllum peltatum, but the fact that it,like so many of our early spring bloomers , goes dormant during the summer made me refuse to plant it. Holes in the garden = sadness for me. So instead I planted Podophyllum delavayi and P. pleianthun ( Chinese mayapple) . Both retain their foliage , which is strikingly beautiful, all season long. Ed showed us slides of two other asian Mayapple cultvars, ‘Spotty Dotty’ and ‘Galaxy’ that have fascinating foliage that immediatly got added to my list. that is ‘Galaxy’ below, photo from Plant Delights Nursery where they expect to have it in stock in April

I addition to looking for shade tolerant plants, I have to make sure I am looking for rabbit resistant traits as well, like hairy or scented foliage, red leaves,or poisonous to mammals etc.  A few species of plants I grow here never get nibbled and salvia is one of them .Ed showed photos of   two ,salvia glabrescens ‘Momobana’  ans ‘Shi-ho’that will certainly find a home here. They are among the few plants that actually REQUIRE shade and as an added bonus bloom in October!  ( you all know my affinity for late fall bloomers)

Another October bloomer, luecosceptrum stellipilum , which is a Japanese shrubby mint that remains well behaved , unlike it’s brethren who spread to kingdom come. There are many cultivars…’October Moon’ has marvelous variegation and late lavender colored flowers, , but I am fixated on one called ‘Gold Angel’  because I adore chartreuse foliage, especially  when it can enliven a shady spot without looking too busy.

Despite his warning, I did indeed come home with a list, and a very long one at that. Some plants I intend to order promptly, some I will save for a future nursery visit to Opus. That was a fabulous  way to spend another wintry- spring afternoon here in the New Tundra . If you ever get a chance , please visit the Opus Nursery site, clear your calender to hear Ed Bowen speak, and maybe arrange a time for a visit to his working nursery in Little Compton RI…you will not regret a minute of time you spend learning from him.

P>S. all the photos in the post are from Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina, another nursery run by an incredible plantsman, Tony Avent. It is not local to me, but  too many of my garden dwellers to mention have arrived from his online store and I encourage you to spend some time browsing his online catalog and most definitely sign up to  receive all of his newsletters or blog post notifications.

other places you may find interesting plants for the shadier parts of your garden are

Lazy S Farms

Far Reaches Farm