Chesapeake Gardening & Landscaping The Essential Green Guide Barbara W. Ellis Neil Soderstrom, Principal Photographer Published in association with the Adkins Arboretum
Con ten ts Foreword by Eleanor Altman Acknowledgments
Introduction Bay-Friendly Gardens and Landscapes Where Do We Go from Here? Bay-Friendly Basics Dividends, Large and Small How to Use This Book Progress, Not Perfection
Part One Creating Your Chesapeake Bay Landscape One • Gardens and Landscapes That Benefit the Environment Reduce Lawn Build Plant Diversity Grow Native Plants Manage Water Runoff Welcome Wildlife Garden Wisely
Two • Creating an Ecological Landscape Design Plans for Waterfront Evaluating Your Site Creating Useable Landscapes Garden Mapmaking Developing a Plan Layered and Matrix Plantings
Three • Building Your Chesapeake Landscape Reading the Landscape Start with the Soil Planting Gardens and Landscapes Managing Invasive Plants
Part Two Recommended Plants and Gardens Plant Responsibly
Four • Shrubs, Trees, and Vines for Landscaping Shrubs Evergreen Shrubs Shrubs for Foundations and Beds Trees Small Ornamental Trees Large Trees Oaks for the Bay Region Vines
Five • Ground Covers for Chesapeake Landscapes Designing with Ground Covers Ground Covers for Sun Ground Covers for Shade Moss Gardens for Acid Shade
Six • Flowers for Chesapeake Gardens Using Native Perennials Basic Care for Flowering Perennials Color from Spring to Fall Spring: March to May Late Spring to Early Summer: May to June or Early July Summer: June to September Late Summer to Fall: August to October Grasses for Gardens Meadows and Meadow Gardens
Seven • Plants and Gardens for Shade Creating a Shade Garden Understory Trees for Shade Shrubs for Shade Foliage and Flowers for Shade Foliage First Flowers for Shade Ferns for Shade Wildflowers for Spring
Eight • Water, Rain Gardens, and Wet Soil Rain Gardens Rain Gardens Installing a Rain Garden Plants for Rain Gardens Rain Garden Care A Chain of Water Plants on the Roof Gardens in Wet Soil Plants for Wet Soil
Nine • Gardens for Wildlife Food Water Roosting and Nesting Gardens for Hummingbirds Butterfly Gardens Plants for Caterpillars Flowers for Butterflies Suggested Resources Index
Fore word In wildness is the preservation of the world. —Henry David Thoreau
In civilization is the hope of preservation of wildness. —Wendell Berry
In gardens is the preservation of the world. —John Hanson Mitchell
I settle in comfortably beside nature writer John Hanson Mitchell in a belief in gardening as our salvation. We are what we garden. To garden is to nurture, and what we choose to nurture is where we will live and find support for our lives. Will we choose to live under the shade of mature trees, surrounded by diverse plantings of ground covers and shrubs, native meadows, and woodlands where we can observe and enjoy abundant wildlife? Will we choose to grow greens and berries to harvest in the morning for supper in the evening? Will we have a prospect to view, a spot of refuge to retreat to, and a clean stream where we fish and swim? In Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping: The Essential Green Guide, Adkins Arboretum on Maryland’s Eastern Shore partners with the venerable University of North Carolina Press and seasoned gardener and garden book author Barbara Ellis. The result is an indispensable resource for all gardeners—whether novice or experienced—who wish to hone their craft and take part in making our world a healthier and more beautiful habitat for all creatures. Not all gardening is green. Enough ill-gotten gardening advice is promulgated through garden centers and all forms of media to confuse even the most sophisticated gardener. Often what falls under the guise of good gardening practices is merely a marketing ploy to sell chemicals and petroleum-fueled equipment. Despite conveying a sense of well-being by lessening your physical effort, riding mowers, backpack leaf blowers, and motorized pesticide sprayers cause environmental harm. This comprehensive guide will build your confidence so that you can make good decisions about how you garden to truly make the world greener.
Gardeners come to gardening with many motivations—to solve a drainage problem, to attract birds to their yard, to decorate their patio, for curb appeal, and for physical exercise and solace for the soul. Whether your priority is improving environmental health, pursuing healthy activities, or beautifying your yard, Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping: The Essential Green Guide offers first steps and next steps that are successful and ecologically beneficial to help you achieve your dreams for your property. This is not a guide for gardening with native plants, and yet it is a guide for gardening with native plants. Do not let this confuse you. Throughout the book, you will be introduced to native plants not only for their aesthetic characteristics but for their ecological function, such as providing food and shelter for wildlife and nectar for pollinators. You will also learn about non-native plants that are neither invasive nor detrimental to the environment, and that prove beneficial as ground covers to prevent erosion on steep, dry, or shady slopes. You will find that Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping: The Essential Green Guide recommends planting predominantly native plants, but not to the degree that non-invasive non-natives are ignored when they can solve a homeowner’s challenge—the need for an evergreen screen, midsummer color, or to tolerate a range of soil conditions. Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping: The Essential Green Guide is a clarion call that urges all landowners to become green gardeners. Our ability to survive on this planet depends upon it. Sustainable gardening practices can minimize the use of resources, water, pesticides, and fuels, thus increasing our ability to harness resources, store carbon, minimize soil erosion and pollution, and provide habitat for pollinators and other wildlife. By implementing these practices, we will ultimately create, one yard at a time, a green world that is critical to supporting our health and the health of our children. Eleanor Altman Executive Director Adkins Arboretum Maryland’s Eastern Shore
Three • Building Your Chesapeake Landscape
Nearly every yard has a variety of sites that will accommodate different plants and activities. Terraces in this backyard create level planting beds, sitting areas, and a small lawn, plus plenty of space for shrubs, trees, and wildflowers. Photo © Roger Foley; design by Tom Mannion Landscape Design.
It is easy to overlook the fundamentals that underlie a successful garden. Beautiful flowers, lush color combinations, interesting textures, and handsome foliage all catch the eye and start us dreaming. But filling a wagon with the prettiest plants at the local garden center or picking selections from a magazine photo does not necessarily lead to success. Both approaches overlook the fact that selecting plants on looks alone is not the best way to find the plants that will thrive in your garden and make it beautiful. To create plantings that benefit from good gardening fundamentals, learn about the conditions (overleaf) Studying the exposure and learning about the soil type and other conditions that characterize a site is the secret to creating a successful garden. To plan a garden that thrives while requiring minimal maintenance, select plants that thrive in those conditions. Photo by Neil Soderstrom; design by Oehme, van Sweden Landscape Architecture.
Creating Your Chesapeake Bay Landscape
a particular site offers the plants that grow there. Consider the amount of sun or shade a spot receives, along with soil type, average moisture level, exposure, and any other aspects that make that site unique. Use these characteristics to help determine what you plant there. Using site characteristics as a primary factor in plant selection makes it easier to have lush plantings filled with striking perennials and handsome shrubs, because the plants you select will naturally be adapted to conditions that exist on the site. Matching plant to site is the simplest route to a thriving garden. In addition, it is an effective way to minimize maintenance and create a sustainable garden, since you will no longer have to fight the natural conditions of the site to keep plants healthy and growing well. Even gifted gardeners who seem able to grow anything—and who seem able to pop plants in at random with great results—pay attention to site
conditions, even if they do not express it quite that way. Their planting process is rarely as random as it seems because they know their garden and planting sites well—how much sun or shade each site receives and the type of soil that exists on their property. Site assessment gradually becomes second nature as gardeners gain experience, as does an almost instinctive understanding of growing conditions and what to look for when matching a plant to a site. Fortunately, every gardener can learn to pay attention to site conditions and discover what will grow well in his or her garden.
Reading the Landscape Deciding what to grow and where to plant it is one of the great challenges of gardening. Learning to look closely at a site is not difficult, and it will prove helpful in guiding your choices. The plants already growing on a site speak volumes about other plants that will thrive there. Observing the growing conditions in a garden is a continual process: The longer you garden, the more you learn. With experience, more subtle gradations of sun and shade or moist and dry become apparent, and this knowledge will help you identify suitable spots for plants. Also watch garden performance. Some plants will grow nearly anywhere they are planted, while others need that perfect site. Experimenting to determine what grows best in your own garden is part of the fun and fascination of gardening.
Evaluate Existing Plants Plants already growing on your property provide clues to what else might thrive. This is true of weeds, native plants, and non-native plants. For example, if
This planting consists of tough species that thrive in a wide range of soil types—eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum), with white flowers. Suitable companions should be equally tough. Photo by Neil Soderstrom; Adkins Arboretum.
junipers (Juniperus spp.) and barberries (Berberis thunbergii) thrive in your foundation plantings but bigleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) wilt and struggle, you probably have dry, well-drained soil. A bed where azaleas (Rhododendron spp.) are constantly plagued by lacebugs probably provides hot, dry conditions in summertime, since lacebugs are worst on plants exposed to heat and drought. Plants that tolerate a wide range of conditions, like Norway maples (Acer platanoides) or forsythia (Forsythia × intermedia), do not disclose . . . Building Your Chesapeake Landscape
•
Adaptable Plants
One option for creating a new garden is to start with
plants that tolerate a wide range of conditions. The
following natives are easy to grow and adaptable.
Shrubs
Bayberry, southern or swamp (Morella
caroliniensis, formerly Myrica caroliniensis)
All do fine in sun or shade, although they bloom best
Dogwood, gray (Cornus racemosa)
although they will survive in shade. All can manage
Itea, Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica)
in sun. Full sun to part shade is best for the grasses, in soil that ranges from moist and well drained to
dry. Plants marked with an asterisk (*) need even soil moisture in order to tolerate full sun. Perennials
Inkberry (Ilex glabra)
Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia)
Viburnums (Viburnum spp.). Mapleleaf viburnum
(V. acerifolium); southern arrowwood (V. denta-
tum); blackhaw viburnum (V. prunifolium)
Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum)
Foamflower, heart-leaved or Allegheny (Tiarella cordifolia)*
Goldenrod, wreath (Solidago caesia) Onion, nodding (Allium cernuum)
Shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia) Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)
Spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana)* Stonecrop, Allegheny (Hylotelephium
telephioides, formerly Sedum telephioides)
Grasses and Grasslike Plants
Bluestem, little (Schizachyrium scoparium) Dropseed, prairie (Sporobolus heterolepis) Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans)
Muhly, pink (Muhlenbergia capillaris)
Panic grass or switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) Purpletop tridens (Tridens flavus)
Sedges (Carex spp.). Appalachian sedge
(C. appalachica); Pennsylvania sedge (C. pensylvanica)
Spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana). Photo by Neil Soderstrom; Emily Dickinson Museum.
Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum). Photo by Neil Soderstrom; Green Spring Gardens.
Plants thrive in average moist to wet soil but tolerate some drought once established. They are quite large for the average perennial garden and are more suited to meadows, pond edges, and other wild areas. Hardiness: Zones 3 to 9. Canada lily (Lilium canadense). Photo by Neil Soderstrom.
Lilies (Lilium spp.). While hybrid lilies are available nearly everywhere plants are sold, native species are harder to find. Canada lily (L. canadense) bears branched clusters of downward-pointing, widely trumpet-shaped yellow flowers with maroon spots. Hardiness: Zones 3 to 8. Turk’s cap lily (L. superbum) produces racemes of 3-inch-w ide orange flowers spotted with maroon. Hardiness: Zones 5 to 8. Both species require rich, consistently moist but well- drained soil. Full sun is best, but afternoon shade may help plants cope with heat. Both species are 3 to 5 feet tall. They have rhizomatous bulbs and will spread in the right site.
Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis). Photo by Neil Soderstrom; Owen Brown Interfaith Center.
Lobelia (Lobelia spp.). These are relatives of popular edging lobelia (L. erinus), a perennial grown as an annual. Cardinal flower (L. cardinalis) is an eye- catching, 2- to 4-foot perennial with showy racemes of densely packed, brilliant red, two-lipped flowers from summer into early fall. Where happy, plants spread by short rhizomes to 2 feet. Great blue lobelia (L. siphilitica) bears racemes of brilliant blue flowers on 2- to 3-foot plants that spread to 1 1⁄2 feet. Pale-spike lobelia (L. spicata) bears pale lavender to white flowers on 2-foot plants. This last species grows in moist and wet soil but also tolerates drier conditions than the other two. All are short lived but do self-sow in ideal conditions. The flowers attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Plants of all three species tolerate moist shade, and they also are suitable for planting in bogs and wetlands. In much of the Chesapeake Bay region, a site with high dappled shade or afternoon shade may help plants cope with heat. Hardiness: Zones 3 to 8 for all species listed. Milkweed, swamp (Asclepias incarnata). Another essential plant for butterfly lovers, swamp milkweed supports monarch butterfly larvae and attracts a wide variety of butterflies to its showy, rounded clusters of pink, mauve, or white flowers. The plants, which are taprooted and are best not moved once planted in the garden, are 4 to 5 feet tall and spread from . . . Flowers for Chesapeake Gardens
Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping The Essential Green Guide BARBARA W. ELLIS
Neil Soderstrom, Principal Photographer Published in association with the Adkins Arboretum
Creating welcoming gardens and landscapes that are Earth- and Bay-friendly What if, one step at a time, we could make our gardens and landscapes more eco-friendly? Barbara W. Ellis’s colorful, comprehensive guide shows homeowners, gardeners, garden designers, and landscapers how to do just that for the large and beautiful Chesapeake Bay watershed region. This area includes Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and part of West Virginia (translating to portions of USDA Zones 6, 7, and 8). Here, mid-Atlantic gardeners, from beginners to advanced, will find the essential tools for taking steps to make their gardens part of the solution through long-term planning and planting. The guide is built from the ground up around six simple but powerful principles that anyone can use: • Reduce lawn • Build plant diversity • Grow native plants • Manage water runoff • Welcome wildlife • Garden wisely Included are detailed instructions for assessing and designing your particular garden or landscape site; choosing and caring for trees, shrubs, vines, ground covers, and flowers; and succeeding with such conditions as shade or poor soil. From rain gardens to woodland gardens, meadow gardens to wildlife gardens, and much more, this indispensable guide features more than 300 color photographs. Published in association with the Adkins Arboretum in Ridgely, Maryland.
Former managing editor of gardening books at Rodale Press and publications director at the American Horticultural Society, barbara w. ellis is the author of Covering Ground: Unexpected Ideas for Landscaping with Colorful, Low-Maintenance Ground Covers, among other books.
“An important, valuable, and timely resource for Chesapeake gardeners, and the only book of its kind for the region. The volume’s structure and practical how-to nature will make it useful both to readers just starting their gardening endeavors and to experienced gardeners inspired to bring their landscapes into more conformity with their natural contexts.” —Mollie Ridout, Director of Horticulture, Historic Annapolis Foundation
March 2015 978-1-4696-2097-8 $40.00t Cloth 978-1-4696-2098-5 $39.99 BOOK Approx. 384 pp., 7.625 x 8.75, 317 color plates, 20 figs., 49 sidebars, bibl., index
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