Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Native Plants

Walk This Way…

A paved walkway to the front door is one of the most common features of suburban residential landscapes. And it’s important! It is a visitor’s first impression of your home and a major element of “curb appeal.” Landscape design professionals recommend planting your walkway to welcome visitors and visually direct them to the correct entrance while giving them something interesting and beautiful to see along the way.

A well-planted entry walk guides visitors to the front door.
The entry path to the Greenburgh Nature Center in spring.

But a paved walkway presents multiple challenges for landscaping. The process of paving, whether with stone, concrete, brick, or asphalt, often damages the adjacent soil, leaving it compacted, dry, and rocky with bits of concrete and masonry that can significantly alter soil pH and create poor planting conditions.

New construction of paved areas can leave depleted soil.

Paved surfaces are also warmer in summer and colder in winter than the surrounding soil. Pavement reflects summer heat onto adjacent areas and can hold that heat long after sunset. Frozen pavement, on the other hand, can be even colder than surrounding air and soil temperatures, and snow cleared from walkways often includes salt or ice-melting products damaging to plants. With these extremes, it can be challenging to find plants that will look good and survive year-round.

Understandably, many suburban homeowners opt for planting nothing at all along walkways.

The minimalist approach.

Others plant a row of annuals every summer only to watch them wither and die long before fall (New Guinea impatiens anyone?). Most annuals are tropical plants that evolved in the understory of rainforests. The harsh conditions along a paved entry path are a far cry from the rich, wet soil in the shady jungles of equatorial New Guinea!

So, what can you plant along an entry path that will survive tough conditions through summer and winter, and still come back strong in the spring?

Consider plants that evolved in regions with baking hot summers, freezing winters, poor hard packed soil, and weather that can alternate between drought and flood. America’s great prairies and dry meadows are the original habitats of a vast array of hardy native plants. With variations in annual rainfall, soil depth, tree cover, and elevation, an incredible variety of grasses, flowering plants, and hardy shrubs evolved in those challenging landscapes. These native plants are ideal for the conditions so often found on paths from sidewalks and driveways to front doors throughout suburban neighborhoods.

The bonus is that these plants also feed native bees and butterflies and need very little care. Many of them already have been featured in prior posts of this blog. Take a look at these plants as you consider re-designing your entry path, and follow the links below for more information and photos:

Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) is a
cheerful sight lining a sunny path.
Field Pussy-toes (Antennaria neglecta or A. plantaginifolia) is a grey-green ground cover with
adorable cat-paw flowers.
Prairie Dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepsis) is a small
ornamental grass with a soft look and a lovely scent.
Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) grows about 2 ½ feet tall,
has flowers that last for months, and smells wonderful.

Yet another prairie plant that looks great along a path is Prairie Smoke (Geum trilflorum). Its nodding pink flowers turn into puffs that give it another common name, Old Man’s Whiskers. The foliage stays fresh all summer and turns a lovely burgundy in the fall. It is not bothered by snow cover in the winter or hot dry summers.

Prairie Smoke in stages of spring bloom.

Another reliable low-growing groundcover that can fill in along a path mixed with shrubs and taller perennials is Barren Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragaroides). Blooming with bright yellow buttercup-type flowers for weeks from spring into summer, and semi-evergreen through the winter, it spreads slowly and is exceptionally hardy.

Barren Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragaroides) in March.

The most attractive pathway gardens include a variety of native perennials, grasses, and shrubs to create four seasons of interest.

A mixed border makes a path interesting.

There are a number of tough native shrubs that mix beautifully with perennials to create a real garden on the way to your front door:

Shrubby St. John’s Wort (Hypericum frondosum, or H. prolificum, or the pictured H. kalmianum)
are similar species, but different sizes, and all bloom with bright yellow pom-poms
adored by bumblebees.

Another great shrub for the entry path is Shrubby Cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa). Its flowers may be bright yellow or nearly white, its foliage a soft gray/green, and it blooms all summer long, much to the delight of native pollinators.

An entry path with Potentilla in full bloom.

So, there are many beautiful options for designing a durable planted path to welcome visitors (and nature!) to your front door. Think about pushing your lawn away from the path and giving a bit more space to a native garden that says: “walk this way!”

THIS BLOG IS WRITTEN BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.
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Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Native Plants

Ready, Set, Shop!

Are you thinking about what to plant in your garden this year? Nurseries are already displaying their new stock, and native plant sales are popping up everywhere. It’s time to make your shopping list for spring planting. And we can help!

Over the past few seasons, “Around the Grounds” has recommended some great native perennials that will bring life to your garden. Here are some of our favorite flowering plants — with links to blog posts containing photos and tons of information about each of them:

For Sunny Gardens

Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) – late bloomer, hot colors

Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) – fall bloomer, essential for pollinators

Milkweed (Asclepius spp.) – long bloom time, critical for Monarchs

Golden Alexander (Zizia aurea or aptera) – blooms early and long

Blue False Indigo (Baptisia australis) – long-lived, shrub-like spring bloomer

Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum spp.) – fragrant long bloomer

Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium spp.) – tall butterfly magnet

Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) – long-blooming butterfly favorite

White Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) – late blooming bumblebee favorite

Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis) – red spikes for hummingbirds

Coral Bells (Heuchera villosa ‘Autumn Bride’) – deer-resistant hosta substitute

Bluestar (Amsonia tabernaemontana) – shrub-like, blooms early

For Shady Gardens

Native Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia) – long bloomer, hardy

Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) – large, showy white flowers

Pink Turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) – shrub-like with pink flowers

Wild ginger (Asarum canadensis) – low ground cover, hidden flowers

Golden groundsel (Packera aurea) – shade/sun flowering groundcover

Creeping Sedge (Carex laxiculmus) – clumping grass that stays blue all winter

Violets (Viola sororia) – early flowering groundcover

All of these plants evolved in our region, are well-adapted to our soil and weather, and support native insect and bird populations. Many are deer-resistant and drought-tolerant. You can learn more about their favorite garden conditions in the linked blog posts.

We’ve also recommended ferns, grasses, shrubs, and trees, so browse older posts by clicking on the “Around the Grounds Collection” button below.

Happy spring shopping! And if you live in the Greenburg, NY area, mark your calendar for our spring plant sale on May 13 where many of these plants will be available.

THIS BLOG IS AUTHORED WEEKLY BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.
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Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Native Plants

Soggy Solutions

Do you have a soggy situation in your yard: a low spot where water always puddles for a few days before drying up? If so, lucky you! You’ve got the perfect spot for some beautiful water-loving shrubs!

Rainstorms are becoming more frequent and more intense. Suburban lawns often have mushy patches that don’t really recover, even after the ground dries. Turf grass roots sitting in standing water are deprived of oxygen and soon die. You could spend hours – and dollars — aerating, re-seeding, or laying new sod only to see the same thing happen again in the next downpour.

Lawn grass can’t live in water-logged soil

Or, you could plant a few native shrubs that would be happy to soak up that water! Some of our most desirable native plants evolved near ponds, streams, and in wet meadows. They can live in standing water for days at a time, and take up excess water that otherwise becomes mosquito-breeding habitat. Even better, because they are native to our region, they are winter-hardy and provide food for pollinators and birds.

It’s not hard to remedy a soggy area of lawn. You can plant right into the wet areas, even without removing any surviving lawn first. With the right plants, not much soil amendment is necessary, either. Dig a hole about the same depth and twice the circumference of the root ball of the shrub. Loosen the root ball if it is very tightly bound. Adding a few shovel fulls of compost and mixing it with the soil in the planting hole can help. But don’t plant too deep. Keep the crown of the plant just above the soil line. And give your new plant some company! More plants take up more water, reduce compaction, and improve soil drainage, which improves survival odds for all of the plants.

Visually, a cluster of water-loving shrubs is a big improvement over soggy lawn. Think about planting a group of 3 medium-sized shrubs, either all the same type or 3 different species, or perhaps a small tree and a couple of larger shrubs. A group of plants looks more natural, takes up more water, and provides valuable habitat for birds.

Assuming the spot is mostly sunny, and usually dries out a few days after a rainstorm, any of these great shrubs will work beautifully:

Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)
Buttonbush produces really interesting flowers from early to mid-summer that last for weeks. The flowers look like 1½-inch white spheres and attract hummingbirds and butterflies. The leaves are large, glossy green, and make a gorgeous background for the flowers. After the flowers fade, hard spherical nuts resembling buttons develop and often last through the winter until birds harvest them.

Buttonbush flowers
Photo: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Native to swamps and streamsides from Canada to Florida and west to the Mississippi River, Buttonbush is hardy in Zones 4 to 10. In the Northeast, the shrub can reach 6 to 12 feet tall and 4 to 8 feet wide. In colder zones, the shrub may die back to the ground in winter and grow back to 3 to 4 feet in summer. Pruning is not necessary, but if you want to keep it a bit smaller, it won’t mind being pruned in early spring since the flowers form on new growth.

Buttonbush becomes a large rounded shrub in suburban landscapes
Photo: American Beauties Native Plants

Buttonbush loves wet soil, including areas that are often flooded with shallow standing water. It is generally deer-resistant once established, but young plants should be protected in the first few years. The shrub is happy in full sun or part shade.

Possumhaw viburnum (Viburnum nudum)
Also called Smooth Witherod, this shrub is one of our most attractive native plants for suburban landscapes. It will tolerate wet, boggy soil, though it does perfectly well in average soil as well, and is a great foundation plant. Native to woodlands, swamps, and thickets from Newfoundland to Florida, it grows 6 to 12 feet tall and 4 to 15 feet wide. It has shiny green leaves, big lacy white flowers in spring, and berries that turn colors from pink to blue to black. It also has spectacular fall leaf color. Possumhaw doesn’t need pruning and is not particularly attractive to deer. This plant works in almost any yard, but it is an ideal solution for a wet area.

Viburnum nudum as a foundation plant at the Nature Center
Possumhaw berries change colors as
they ripen
Vibrant fall color and berries

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata)
It’s hard to imagine a more useful landscape plant than Winterberry. It can live in standing water, but is also fine in average landscape conditions. It produces brilliant red berries in the fall that feed migrating birds.

This popular shrub is great in wet soil
Robins, mockingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, and cedar
waxwings flock to Winterberries

Winterberry is very easy to grow in full sun or part shade. It needs no fertilizer or special care, and needs no pruning. The shrub has a loose shape and can grow 10 to 15 feet tall, but a cultivar called ‘Winter Sprite’ tops out at 3 to 4 feet. In fall, the leaves drop to show the brilliant red berries clustered along the stems. You will need both a male and female plant to produce berries, so ask your nursery for both. For more information on Winterberry, see an earlier post here.

Pussy Willow (Salix discolor).
Willows are wetland plants, and our native Pussy Willow is the most beloved of the bunch. As a multi-trunked shrub or small tree, 6 to 15 feet tall, Pussy Willow makes a great focal point where water collects. Plant it, then add two or three of the shrubs described above, and a formerly soggy mess will become your favorite part of the yard! For more information on this great little tree, read our earlier blog post here.

Pussy Willow (Salix discolor) is an easy-to-love small tree
Fuzzy catkins show up in early spring and feed emerging pollinators

So, as you start dreaming about spring flowers, don’t forget about spring “showers,” which are more likely to be torrential downpours these days. Plan ahead for standing water and add some of these water-loving plants to your spring shopping list!

THIS BLOG IS WRITTEN BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.

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Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Native Plants

Mighty Arborvitae

Arborvitae gets no respect.

Though Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) may be the most-planted tree in suburban America, it has been given a diminished role unworthy of this majestic native tree. Planted by the thousands along property lines by developers, builders, and landscapers, rows of crowded Arborvitae trees, standing shoulder to shoulder, have become the de-facto fences of suburbia.

A typical builder installation of Arborvitae
Arborvitae “fence” on a property line

Without room to spread their branches or reach their natural height, Arborvitae is often topped and heavily pruned to form hedges. They handle this assignment very well, but Arborvitae can do so much more!

If you’ve only seen Arborvitae used as a hedge, it may surprise you to learn that in its natural habitat, it can grow 50 to 60 feet tall and live for hundreds of years! In fact, the largest known specimen is over 100 feet tall and more than 40 feet wide at the crown. The oldest living Arborvitae is thought to have germinated from seed in 952 A.D., and is now 1,071 years old! Based on ring counts on dead trees, there are verified specimens of Arborvitae that lived to be over 1,800 years old.

An ancient stand of Arborvitae on cliffs overlooking
Northern Lake Michigan
Photo: C.J. Earle

Arborvitae is one of the common names for Thuja occidentalis and means “tree of life” in Latin. It was named by the French sea captain, Jacques Cartier, when he was exploring Canada in 1536. After months at sea, Cartier’s crew, including two young members of the Huron native tribe who had been sailing with them, were all suffering from scurvy. On the way up the St. Lawrence River, Cartier dropped the two young men at their home village. When he later returned, he was astonished to find the two Hurons fully recovered from all symptoms of scurvy while his French sailors were still suffering. He asked the Huron elders to teach him the cure, and they showed him how to make a medicine, a tea rich in Vitamin C, from the foliage of Thuja occidentalis. Cartier brought the life-saving plant back to France, making it the first North American tree introduced to Europe.

The native habitat of Thuja occidentalis is swamps, low woods, and forest edges from northern Canada south to New York and Connecticut and west to Michigan and Northern Indiana. It is an
evergreen conifer, extremely cold hardy, and adapted to poor rocky soils all the way to the edge of the Canadian tundra. Sometimes called Northern White Cedar, Eastern White Cedar, or
Swamp Cedar, Arborvitae is not a true cedar in the Cedrus family, none of which are native to North America. But the fragrance of its foliage and bark, and the usefulness of its wood, are similar.

Arborvitae often grows in very thin, poor soil in northern
North America and is adapted to extreme cold. This forest of
Arborvitae is at the brink of the Niagara Escarpment in Northern Wisconsin.
Photo: C.J. Earle

The foliage of Arborvitae is flat and scale-like and has a spicy fragrance when crushed. Native peoples used it not only for medicine but also used the fragrant foliage as insect-repellant
bedding. They stripped the tree’s shredding bark to make rope and twine, and they found many uses for the rot-resistant wood, including canoe frames and roofing shingles.

Thuja occidentalis has significant value to wildlife. It is a favorite food of white-tailed deer, as suburban homeowners often discover to their dismay. Twigs and foliage of Arborvitae constitute as much as 10 to 25% of the winter diet of deer, who will browse it as high as they can reach. In northern forests, the tree also provides highly nutritious food for snowshoe hares, porcupines, red squirrels, and beavers. Many native birds find nesting sites in Arborvitae and insects to feed their young. The seeds are the preferred source of food for Pine Siskins, birds indigenous to the Northeastern US.

It is sadly ironic that one of the most-planted trees in suburbia is disappearing in the wild. Thuja occidentalis is listed as Threatened in Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, and Maryland and Endangered in Indiana, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Development is the primary culprit as forests are cleared to make way for more suburban homes.

It is equally sad that the rows and rows of Arborvitae planted on suburban property lines are not nearly as valuable to wildlife as they should be. The most popular varieties of Arborvitae are cultivars or hybrids that offer little value to wildlife – other than deer. A cultivar called ‘Emerald Green’ Arborvitae was developed in the 1950s in Denmark, just in time for the rapid expansion of the US suburbs after WWII. It quickly became the ubiquitous hedge plant we see all around us. In a tight hedge, and with limited biological diversity due to clonal reproduction by nurseries, its value to insects and birds is limited.

Not Native

Another Arborvitae popular with builders is a hybrid called ‘Green Giant,’ which is a cross between a species indigenous to the Pacific Northwest and a Japanese species. As a hybrid between two non-natives, ‘Green Giant’ has very little value to insects or birds in this part of the country. If you can find the straight species of Thuja occidentalis (without a cultivar name), plant that. If not, ‘Emerald Green’ is a better choice than ‘Green Giant.’

Thuja occidentalis is an amazing tree. It deserves to be more than a fence! Given enough room to take its natural form, Arborvitae merits a starring role in suburban landscapes.

Growing the way nature intended, Arborvitae takes its
rightful place with Oaks, White Pines, and Junipers in
Northeastern landscapes

In our last blog post [Privacy Without “O-fence“], we urged homeowners to diversify their hedges and privacy screens by planting a mix of native trees and shrubs to increase habitat and biodiversity. Too much of any one plant becomes a mono-culture, limiting resources for wildlife. Unfortunately, that is what has happened to this magnificent native tree.

Don’t limit Arborvitae to this poor fate

Think of Arborvitae as an easy-care, long-lived, medium-sized, native, hardy evergreen that will enhance your landscape as part of a diverse planting of trees, shrubs, and perennials. You won’t
be sorry!

Mighty Arborvitae

THIS BLOG IS AUTHORED WEEKLY BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.

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