Okay, so it's my pleasure to introduce Deborah Knapke who is an author, a lecturer, an instructor she teaches lots of different plant material courses.
She does a lot of presentations to groups, she's a garden designer, as Julie mentioned she's, she's very involved in the community, she helps there at Chadwick she also works with the governor's mansion that has a really wonderful native plants of landscape,
they're very involved with community issues and ecological and sustainable gardening known also as the garden sage. So, Deb thanks so much for coming this morning, you can go ahead and start your slides I really appreciate your being with us and teaching
us about how we can incorporate some of these great native plants that we've learned about into our own landscapes.
Good morning everyone, and thank you very much Denise for the introduction, and also the burning question that seems to get asked every time, Denise and I are together is are we sisters, not biologically but I would say, spiritually and ecologically,
we are so there you go.
You know, it's funny that comes up a lot, there's another person in the horticulture industry who we look very similar and we've been asked the same question so yes, you have many sisters in this world.
So my job today is to talk about native plants, some design information. how do you make choices and decisions.
And just a you know I'm thinking how do I encapsulate design into 15 minutes. When I teach several quarters or semesters now on that.
So, here it is this is a scattershot of so many ideas.
And just come along for the ride and let's see where we end up.
So, This is part of my backyard.
And there are many native plants, and I'll get back to what's actually back here now but this was a picture I took back in about 2012.
And unfortunately, another thing that I do have in this backyard are invasive plants which is not something I'll talk a lot about today but I just want you to know that I know many of you are battling and basic plants, and I have battled it for 37 years
that I've lived on this property. So when people ask me what is an invasive plant I say it's tenacious and almost impossible to get rid of.
So there you are.
So, our gardens, our home places. And if coven has taught us anything we really want our home places to reflect who we are.
For us, it's, it's a place, it's a space, it is our space. We have ideas and we have themes we want our garden to reflect and, and there are many ideas and a lot of times we have to be careful how much we want because then we'll get nothing done a garden
is where something happens, growth and change, you can depend on it.
And for those that put in a landscape and say, Okay, I'm done now. That's not the way nature works.
And our gardens are an ecology created by us.
That is full of life, its foundation is the soil, and it is an environment that by creating, we are responsible for maintaining and supporting.
So why do we design places. So this is a border that I created it no longer looks anything like this. Well maybe a couple things. There are four native plants in here, and the rest are non natives.
As a horticulturist.
I like to grow, everything, so many choices, and the only time I can fit something in. As you can see in this border is when something dies. So, as, as things pass on in my garden, different areas change, but the for native plants.
If you've spotted them the bacteria and the far right, the oak leaf hydrangea and the lower left and in the middle.
They will be revealed later in late summer, early fall are two. At that time, send us a few there but we now call them at tail, or the good Golly.
Isn't it funny. I can remember the botanical names much more than I can the common names, and it'll come to me later but things. There we go.
So, one of the reasons we garden is to create beauty to beautify a space to make it beautiful for us and sometimes it's a bit of a challenge with the Joneses next door.
We also garden to support, and to save.
Would you believe for those of you who are not butterfly aficionados these two caterpillars are actually the same species, a caterpillar has four in stars.
A butterfly Caterpillar for changes it goes through, and what you're looking at the the beautiful, sort of, I don't know what you call see green Caterpillar in the upper left is the fourth in star of the spice bush swallowtail.
And if you look at the bird poop one.
In fact, the first in Star looks like a little droplet of bird poop. And then it gets closer and closer and I believe this is the third in star of the spice bush swallowtail, and it, it makes me question.
Why does nature take something that's nicely camouflaged looks like bird poop and turn it into a beacon say, Here I am, eat me, because that's really an obvious Caterpillar when you, when you see it in its fourth in star.
We also prepare soil.
If you're in a new build and a new build can go back as far as 25 5075 years with the soil is disturbed, and especially more recently when we brought in the big machines and we build big houses.
And we really rip up the soil, a big job of a gardener, is to give back to the soil to get that nutrient cycling recycling going back and to get the biological community back to where it was before this.
It's also to teach. We use our community gardens to make connections to bring people together to not only heal the earth, but to heal the connections we have between people.
And honestly, I can't think of anything that brings people more together than to grow food and flowers and herbs, and then to use those. And, and the children here at Highland Avenue, the Highland youth community garden.
It's just amazing how excited they are.
You can't help but smile when you're there.
We also garden to amaze those special, special plants those special events we have in our gardens and if you look, this is at the Atlanta botanic garden I was there in 2017, which was the year after marijuana came out.
And I came around the corner and saw this and she's huge, and I was with a group of people and we'll just snapping our cameras on our phones like crazy.
And regarding to calm and to inspire to get back our mental health to relieve our stresses and again if it's anything that Cove it taught me is that my garden, other than my family is the most important thing in my life.
We also garden to grow.
And this is a design, I want you to take a look at this because I this is a balcony next to where my son and daughter in law used to live in Cincinnati and look at the care in the placement of the tomatoes and the staking of the tomatoes and the blue
and yellow chairs that match the watering camp.
That is design of the first order. And it's simple, but it's designed and it's loving design, And it's healthy designed to growing your own food.
So excuse me Just a moment.
So how do we design places.
Well, we love the pretty. It always comes down to making an attractive place, and this is out of public garden, and it's a form of design with repeated plants and hard scape that is repeated and those beautiful box with stones up on the.
That's what the big round things are called when you do that with box would box with stones up on the wall, and then repeat it over on the other side.
We also can use historical constructs This is the cloisters in New York City. And it actually was built in 1933 to look like a cloisters that you would have seen in high medieval Europe, 1100s 1200s, and the garden is supposed to look like that to have,
though I seriously doubt that there would have been grass underneath poetry, it would have been more of a flower we need.
So, but as you're looking at this, you can see herbs, and you can see just a lot of plants what we call the cottage garden style. And again, based on kind of a historical construct.
And here we create a place for repose for contemplation.
We look at, we look at it will shave to me always is a calming calming place and this isn't still caught crop gardens in New York City.
An amazing garden if you're ever in Westchester County. Please stop. By the way, I noticed that we have people from all over the country, in Canada and I saw South Africa, so welcome.
I'm sure that wherever you are, you see examples of this in public and private gardens.
And sometimes we don't create the garden. The garden is a prairie. This is a protected place if you will the Bigelow.
Bigelow cemetery prairie, Bigelow family you can see some of the, the, the monuments in the background. And we not so much plant this as care for it and edit it, and make sure that invasive plants don't get in there and all the plants that you see here
for the most part, our native plants, and this
this quote from Oliver Sacks is very telling.
Nature calls to something very deep in US biophilia, the love of nature and living things is an essential part of the human condition or to failure, that this desire to interact with manage and tend to nature is also deeply instilled in us.
And it is.
So a lot of our gardens.
You know when we think of a design. It's something like this yeah this is a design but Gertrude Chico's she designed in the 1800s late 1800s early 1900s in England, and there are some of her gardens, or at least designs for her gardens here in the United
States.
Oh, she planted. Oh my goodness. We're one planet should go she put for.
She also have these beautiful gardens that needed a lot of tending. This is high maintenance. And when you look at this, it looks like everything's in bloom at once and it's not exactly that way but a lot of these words in blue.
At the same time, lots of color, lots of maintenance and well, we like this. Honestly, I prefer to see this in a public garden and then in a in a in my private garden because I don't have that much time.
Traditionally, in, in when we teach garden design, we teach our students how to draw it out. We teach them to go on to a site and see what's there, analyze what's working, what's not, what needs to change.
What does the client want what what what can we give them to for their dreams to come true.
We create a plan looks something like this. There are many kinds of plans and this is from one of the books that I used when I taught at Columbus State.
And, you know, we go to a lot of effort to put it down onto paper we use art line form texture and color and the principles of design. On the right side to create these places of use and beauty for our clients.
And I just want to give you a hint. It hardly ever goes in exactly as strong. So this is a dream that eventually gets expressed in some way on the ground.
But what I like to focus on is the ecology of the place. What was there what is there now. What can we bring back what was there. What we won't be able to bring back.
And there are times when one has to consider that native plants, and my yard is filled with native plants but there are times when non natives and cultivars of natives are a better choice.
And as we go into climate change and I'm not going to dwell on this just to mention it, what's going to work in our gardens, is what is adaptable.
What can deal with the changes that are here, and the more to come.
So keep that in the back of your mind to as you choose the plants that go into your gardens. But back to this, these are the level three equal regions in the contiguous United States and if you want this map, you can go to the EPA site put in level three
ego regions and EPA and this comes out.
You can also get into the state level. Now, I have not mentioned my definition of native plant.
And I don't use time because time is is a slippery slope, you know, a player that was here before European settlement will choose when that time is Go for it.
And in which part of the country because the Spanish were in California, and in Florida in the 1500s. So do we go back that far.
Do we go back into the fossil record and find it in the western United States, the dawn Redwood was here. Well that was 11,000 years ago, that might be too far.
So let's get rid of time and instead let's think about a native plant is that its first home place was here.
Its indigenous to endemic to the place where it evolved with its soils, its environment, and with the animals that evolved with it.
That is a native plant.
Is it kind of vague. Yeah.
But when you come from that place, it is easier to think about what belongs in your garden. And what does not.
So for Ohio and again as I said you can find maps like this for your own state your own region, but when I think of Ohio. You know I think of these five fuzzy graphic regions, and this is what the garden is based on at The Ohio Governor's residents would
call it the heritage garden, because it is the heritage of Ohio.
And so we have gardens that represent many different places in Ohio and you'll see a few of those in a moment.
But you can see the gross. You know the big map of the states the gross level three regions and now getting into level four and possibly even level five with this map, and our environments are based on the geology of rock which majors soil that topography,
land form. By the way, I came from Lake County up by the lake. I grew up on the Portage escarpment really cool land forms and when it came down to Ohio State for college.
Obviously I've not really been down to Columbus that much before but it was so surprising to see the changes as we traveled.
It is also determined by the flora and fauna that are there, and the evolutionary history of layers of Earth, and of the plants and animals and the environment, as it changed.
And so natural vegetation happens because of all of that.
And if you look at.
If you look at Ohio, we were approximately 90% forested before.
Well that's kind of hard to say before what, but usually we say in the 1600s even though our lands, have been met a managed by Native peoples before then.
But you can see that a good part of Ohio is forests. The green, pink, orange, purple, and brown and blue are all forests.
And then those interesting gold fingers. Those are our prairies, and those little blocks of black, those are box and fans, very interesting places.
So, our landscapes are natural. Our continuance so natural landscapes are continuing to have different processes and, and characteristics. So in this case we have drylands.
We have uplands like you see on the upper left and Hocking hills and southern part of Ohio these rocky legends that are very dry.
And we have low lens on the right.
Those are the very sandy soils, of the openings areas by
up by Toledo again by Lake Erie, and then just to throw in someplace, very different than as uplands and lowlands. This is the land around the Mount St.
Helens Caldera, and a fascinating place to look at how dryness witness to dryness how it occurs in landscape as land form changes.
We have water and wetlands and the upper left that is a Bernal pool in the summer, it is dry and rock hard and it's by the little Darby in the upper right, we have a fan, even though it called the cedar bog.
It is a fan, and there is water present throughout the season, because of the water that is fed from underneath.
And then we have natural lakes and streams.
We also have forests and prairies, to me, that seems like on a continuum.
And if you hear scratching and meowing in the background, it's because my cat wants in, when I'm sitting at the computer he thinks that my lap is his territory, so please ignore that if you hear it.
It's the human element of zooming.
So, or the animal element of zooming, so back to full force and prairies I see them as sort of opposites, but actually a long continuum.
And we're definitely in the forest in Highlands nature. Nature sanctuary in the upper left. And we're in an opening in the camomile prairie and the lower left.
And then we have a wide open prairie Patel Darby creaks Metropark in the lower right. But in the upper right, we have that kind of edge. We have a forested area and then into the sand of the oak openings again.
And these edges are incredibly important in our landscapes because we have this, this mixing of two different regimes coming together and the biological richness on those edges are amazing.
So, when we create gardens.
I'd like you to think like nature mimic nature, knowing that we are not exactly replacing but that we are at least trying to replace return repair observed places in their plants.
My husband and I like to drive when we go on vacations and we've driven.
As far as, Arizona. We have flown into places like Oregon and California. And then we rent a car and we try, because the only way to understand the place you're in, is to to be there.
Of course it is kind of interesting to look from a plane and look down and get this, this bird's eye view although that's even probably higher than a bird but an air planes.
I view of land.
So when, when I started designing in the early 90s, I thought of garden types and we make shade garden the sun garden, a mixed border, an herb garden etc but I changed.
By the late 90s I was firmly in the habitat group, looking at, well, this really reminds me of a woodland.
I'm making a shady woodland garden, I'm making a sunny prairie garden. There's a lot of wet areas here, which plants belong here in this instead of thinking of well I need to put a French drain in and dry this place out so I can put the garden my dreams.
I started thinking about what's here, not how I could change it.
Even though by our very garden making, we are changing replaces.
Pardon me. So I want you to think like a plant.
And I've chosen. One of my favorite spring of emeralds blood route.
It only offers pollen.
No nectar it blooms in April.
It gives pollinators. Three days to visit before it says forget this and pollinate itself. And then it drops its petals. Now if a pollinator gets to it the first day, it drops its petals then so this is a very short lived flower, you better know when
it's coming up in your garden to get a picture like this.
In this area, it's very dry in my garden, although you can see the leaves on the ground, the leaves, stay. Leave the leaves. Let that nutrition go back into the soil.
Because look this blood group had no problem coming up in there.
So the seed pod begins to form, and the leaves unfurl into this beautifully promptly compound leaf.
And in this area of my garden. Those the plant leaves last till about end of May beginning of June because it's dry, and they go dormant in another part of my garden where the land is wetter, they have gone into late July with the leaves before they go
down, back into the earth.
So, soil moisture has a lot to do with how these plant performs in the garden.
How does it survive by not being eating all the darn things poisonous.
No, very few animals. Want to eat this plant. At least it causes gastric upset.
And it's called blood group because when you snap up where you go down to the root, you get the root turn sort of a reddish color, looking like blood.
It creates these defenses from the nutrition that it gets from the soil and the carbohydrates that it makes during photosynthesis.
And notice how it's leaning a little bit because it is reaching for the sun, because it's on the edge where there is a little bit more shade even though the leaves aren't fully on the trees yet.
Now,
I do not use conventional inputs, but I've often wondered when this is on the edge of an area where there's a lawn.
And we put in our salt based fertilizers and our Petro chemical based herbicides, pesticides, etc. And since we've, I have a silty clay. How much of that is moving into the garden, and how much of those herbicides daikon specific which this plant is are
moving into that area and have you ever wondered why maybe some of your gardens aren't doing as well there on the edge of an area that you're treating.
And that's the last say about that, because I'm trying not to be on too many soap boxes today.
I showed this last year when I talked and I show it in almost every talk when I talk about plants, because a lot of times we are so involved with what goes on top that we don't think about the bottom, we don't think that sometimes two thirds of the biomass
of a plant is underground. And these prairie plants these native plants. Look at how they go deep down to get what they need. And if they're on the edge with trees next to them they have to do that, because the trees, most roots stay in the top 245 feet
of the soil and look at how these plants are going below that so they can get nutrition from the soil, soil, even some go down to bedrock.
So you have your grasses and you have your Forbes Forbes being the flowering plants and look at 15 feet for the compass plant and 15 feet plus for the blazing star is just phenomenal.
And once you start thinking of your soul You can't help but honor it.
Please stop treating your soil like dirt.
So this is something that's often used in permaculture you know looking at the different layers of the forest garden or the forest or the prairie or whatever.
And I drew my own because I was frustrated, didn't show enough roots show the roots of the trees some times, but I wanted to show the interaction of roots of all kinds of plants, and that we often forget that the roots of trees go far beyond the drip
line of the canopy, and that roots intermingle, and that are prairie plants you know are are sitting their roots down and we have bulbs corms tubers and rhizomes and crown covers, and we have all these plans, and this is the smallest subset of that.
And many of these are native, there are a couple that are not.
So going back to that picture and just stepping back a little bit more of this back area of my yard. These are the native plants that are there now and I think I have forgotten a few but I was just sitting here and trying to remember, and if it had been
spring summer, fall, it could have gone out and look, but I had to use my memory now this is a picture from 2012. So any has changed significantly.
Because my goal now is that when something dies in its place goes a native plant or a native our cultivation of a native plant, and one that offers ecosystem services, that in itself is a whole nother talk.
But in my garden you can see in the woody plants, the spire American Arbor vitae yes that is not your typical not what you're going to find if you go to senior bog.
It is a cult of our but the birds do use it as a place to live in. So it is offering some of those ecosystem services, and I could go through all these plants and say what they offer to this ecosystem I've created in my backyard.
But instead, you know, it's just to show you that it is easy to put native plants in your yard.
And you'll possibly notice that in the background, there is the Amer honeysuckle I battle that every year.
I have taken out a lot. But I also have a bank on a stream. So, what I'm doing slowly is replacing with native plants, and then just every year they get chopped back to nothing, so that they're stressed and can't flower and fruit.
And I'm just trying to get the native plants to go so that I have roots holding that bank, and that eventually I can take those honey cycles out.
I also have root proved gone down with the saw my roots are and just sad. The, the, some of the, the base from the roots. Is it gets complicated. In other words, I'm trying not to use round up, because I don't want poison the soil.
Now stepping further back in my yard. And you can see that I have a lot of plants that are not native because I am a food grower, and an herb lover in fact food and herbs are the ways that my gateway plants into horticulture.
So compromises everywhere, and I do have grass. This is a picture from 2011 and half of that grass is gone, that you see there.
So, it looks a lot different. And I guess I need to take another picture.
So how to recreate designs.
What is it that we do to make a design. So if you look here. I chose Pete Rudolph who is a formidable designer. Amazing Designs and you'll see a couple of his designs in a moment.
If you look at.
On the right, this is a sketch, this is, this is the data dump. This is the form of a garden and what do you put in it. And on the left is the finished design for a portion of the new garden at the Delaware botanic garden I can't wait to travel to state
of Delaware, I haven't been too long word or not Cuba for a while. And while I'm there. I need to go here too.
But he has his own way of designing.
And, again, not everything goes in exactly the way it's designed, and I love what you said in an interview. Wait one year, then we see what we have done wrong.
So keep that philosophy in mind.
And I'm working with Denise and partners in pollination group. And we're putting together simple gardens that are going to be tested across the state of Ohio this coming year, there's a bumblebee garden for plants, Bumblebee pollinators plants and specialist.
This is just a simple six by 10 plan and and in this case they're eight or nine plants, whatever. And it's not meant to be beautiful, it's meant to show you the relative position of the planets in the garden, each one of those squares is a square foot,
and that helps you place the plants. It is not anywhere near as complicated as what Pete Rudolph does.
And here's the specialist design.
And we also have.
We also have alternatives in case some of them don't work.
But we're looking at how we can, how we can get the most in a six by 10 space. Now, you could take these very same plants and put them in a space that is more curve linear, that has the same square feet, 60, square feet.
So then I started thinking how can I make this simpler. So I start thinking of. Okay. Five plants. What, which five plants could I use to get season from spring summer fall for a bumblebee and especially speed, and this is what I came up with.
And we are going to be publishing these so these will be coming out somehow and we're still working on that. But, but these are options for. If you don't have a plan in your mind this is a great place to start.
And if these aren't the plants you want then look at this planet think well you know I'm not really independent man digitalis but what other spring blooming plant.
Does, does a bumblebee or a specialist be like, and then you just sort of.
It's like a puzzle. It's like a puzzle.
So let's look at some of the plants that, let's look at some design some, some places that have been designed with native plants in mind, this is the old prairie garden at the heritage Barton, the governor's residence.
And we have since moved it to a different area and this space has been redone, and it is a beautiful mix of natives and non natives.
And this went to a different area that made more sense within the scope of the gardens at the at the residence. So as you look here you can see the compass plant over on the left.
Tall majestic, and then closer in the center of the screen and over to the right, you can see the prairie Doc, someone calls those Dumbo ears. Oh please, I hope that combination doesn't make it out there, prairie dog or a selfie I'm terrible with an ACM
is is a much better term.
There's also great come flower that.
And there's the beautiful frothy Euphorbia
in the white that you can see dotted out through the plan and of course purple flower and a little spot of the Royal catch fly in the back.
And you can see some By the way, this is a point that I need to make you know those garden plans I showed you. Well, about three years they're going to look a lot different because these plants like to move out they self seed, they move around.
And as I peed Rudolph sad. In one year, we look.
And we figure out what we have done wrong.
So I have to show you this is one of my all time favorite summer plants. It is a hummingbird magnet. You can see by the long, deep.
Oh gosh, where the nectarines are, I'm just blinking talking about so many different things. But what's interesting is there's very few robbing incidences where a Bumble will chew into the base of the tube the rectory tube to get the nectar, because it's
sticky royal catch fly to catch. And it's very I don't know if a bumblebee will be caught but I know that if you look at this during the season, you'll see wrong that's another little insects, stuck to the Sticky, sticky naturally to.
I don't know whether or not there are butterflies and mods that interact with this plant but this plant needs to be in more gardens it's spectacular.
This is one of people would often designed the lorry designs the lorry garden in Chicago and Millennium Park.
And there's just the backdrop, there are two trees, there's the European beach and sweeping Magnolia, and then you're looking at culverts route, and you're looking at to cultivars of our perennial flocks, and in the front, you're looking at the.
Blue lo be Leah.
I have not quite figured out what the small plant is at first I thought it was master but not sure, but these plants you know this this was an August beginning of August, and it's a simple design.
And I will tell you we I was there with a group from from garden calm and the curator of the garden told us that they manage this garden, and that the plants have moved over time.
And that Pete Rudolph does come to the garden and say no, we need to take this back we need to move this, and oh I see this plant hasn't lasted.
There has been a lot of tweaking of the plan from when it was originally put in.
If you want just 10 feet to the left, as you're looking at the border, it becomes a to plant border, it's Joe pie we, and straight garden flocks, although I think I see a couple of Laura in there are Laura, and it's a stunning design, and it's two plants.
And I wasn't here to get pollinator shots in this instance, but I did get some fantastic pollinator shots in other parts of the garden. It also was not the best time of day to take pictures because we are there two o'clock in the afternoon.
So, it was not easy to get pictures. So that's the, the sun let's go into the shade This is in my garden in the back, and two plants here are not native, the little lily of the valley in the back, and the Trillium lithium is actually native to South Eastern
Eastern United States. Not here but I love it so it's in my garden.
But here it is keeping, you know, the big beautiful Maple Leaf looking plant that you see is are endangered golden seal. And it's just loving it back there and it did love it back there until I let the leaves, stay.
And now it is entirely happy when I planted this they were each in their own little spaces, but they have now created a community that is this rich tapestry that you see here, and the lily of the valley does not run roughshod over other plants.
I think there was a discussion between golden seal and Lily of the Valley as to who was going to be where.
This is another shape place. This is was a garden of a friend of mine who's no longer with us. But he decided what one of his favorite plants was Virginia bluebells, so he planted his whole hillside with it.
At one point he had hostas in there also but the deer found they love those. And those disappeared. And he started putting more native plants and what's rather ironic is that a lot of our native plants are also loved by deer and our deer food.
So I guess the trick is putting enough in or putting the poisonous ones in like blood roots so that you have some plants left, or that you have enough that you get to see them in the deer get to eat them to.
This is another place. This was another place and that's garden, beautiful tapestry of the white trout Lily, and the celadon Poppy, and the large forward bill Ward, and dabbled in there also.
The spring beauties. Just beautiful combinations of spring of emeralds although a lot of times the celadon poppy will continue to be continue to be in place.
And I've even had a couple straight blooms in mid summer. It surprises me when that happens that's when we have a moist. We have a lot of rain, that's when I'll get back by Julia another place in my yard, trying to get spy Julia to take hold.
I've seen large stands of it. And I also found out that is one of my resident dears favorite foods.
So I have different ways of trying to keep them away I've planted ferns. This was when I initially planted them the first year.
And now I put in more ferns around them, because dear do not like ferns and I've looked at other poisonous plants that I could put in here.
That, that maybe will protect my spy Julia, I don't know, We'll see. I'll let you know, whoops sorry too far. This is a beautiful design by Nadia, Nadia malarkey malarkey and yellow springs.
And this is from one of her clients and common plants but look how beautifully they come together and they do some editing over time.
But mostly the garden has created this tapestry itself with oak leaf hydrangea in the background. So there's something to see in the winter, that's something to think about.
Which of these have winter show like Agnieszka does.
And then the little blue stem and the rattlesnake master and the Buddha lower the side oh it's Grandma, beautiful plants that ebb and flow in this garden.
And that's something that you have to learn to is that after you plant a garden. After you design it, you change from designer to editor.
Another. This is a place in the heritage garden. It is a dune from the oak openings you saw that red sand earlier in the talk. Well, we got some red sand we built up the dune.
We had to hold the sand in with the logs that you see there. And this is in 2015. The reason I'm pointing it out is that not all native plants are the best place to put in your garden.
Yes to Asclepius to burrow South a butterfly weed, but think twice before you put in the plant that is at the feet of this butterfly weed and that is one of the accuracy items.
Probably accuracy them our events field course town.
Once you put it in. It never goes away, and it can have an effect on other plants, stopping them from being able to grow as well. So, I be judicious in which native plants you choose to put in, and leave Aquascutum in its natural places where it has competitors
that keep it more or less than its place. This is another part this is the cedar Glade at the heritage garden. And here you can see the butterfly weed again, and other plants, and it is in this garden that I had one of my most incredible experiences.
There were a group of us, and it's not a video, because one the video didn't turn out as well as I'd like. So it's going to be moving from slide to slide, but in fall.
The bottle Jensen's wearing blue.
And we were watching several bumble bees pollinate the bottle Jensen so ready. Here we go.
There she is. I'm assuming it she because it's the far.
Opening the flower, working her way in.
Here we get to see just her fuzzy but.
There she is, pollinating.
And now she's back out and on to the next flower.
I don't know but that made me happy for the whole day. And I kept looking at that series of pictures thinking. That is one strong Bumblebee, and especially also thinking, what kind of strength what I have to have in my arms to do a similar task.
And I think this is the way that we learn the most
by watching the interactions between the plants and the animals in our gardens.
When the plants are planted in the right places.
Which brings me to this one. Beautiful Beautiful Lakeside Daisy endemic to just Kelly's island in the Marblehead Peninsula in Ohio.
And when a population is that small. If we don't conservative, it will go away. So we have a special place for the album or in the heritage garden, and we brought stones from Kelly's Island into this garden and transplanted got seed started seed transplanted
small plants into this garden.
So we have representative.
Representative colony of Lakeside Daisy in Columbus, Ohio, and when it's in blue. This is another thing that makes me smile all day.
pollinated by a bunch of many bees, and one of these days I'm just going to sit there with my phone and document pollination time but just haven't had time to do that because usually when I'm in the garden.
I'm working.
And just a small announcement right now I'm the interim garden manager of the heritage garden so for the next six months.
This garden is mine. Before I turn it over to a permanent garden manager, and we are looking for that person so I'm putting a plugin and hadn't initially thought of doing that but it just sort of occurred to me.
So this is something that excites you, and you're in the Columbus area that we know
a great resource we have here in Ohio is the website Ohio native plant month.org on the site, there is a resource list of where you can find native plants.
And also, I A.
Excel spreadsheet that hooked act and I will put together on different native plants, and where they come from. And that tells you whether or not you'll be able to grow it, whether it's the right plan for the conditions you have on your home ground.
so please take a look.
And while it won't work for you in Colorado and Utah. The folks there who are, who have joined us, and South Africa. I am sure that you have your own resources to go to to find out where you can get those plants, and which plants are native to your home
place.
I also want to mention that sometimes we construct a wetland we. This may not have been there a long time ago, but this was an area that was waterlogged and if you're interested in hearing a little bit more of the story, you can go on to my website where
I have a five minute video that talks about what we did in this this place.
That was a mess that had a building on it. The building was taken down there it is a wetland regime in this area, and they couldn't get the right thing to grow.
So we constructed a wetland, and this the top picture is two weeks after our birthday planting.
And then three months after. Look at how it has filled in three months after and these were all plugs, 3700 and some odd plugs.
And it is still, it is still growing and beautiful and it has changed his composition as the plants have moved around.
One of my favorite quotes and it's actually on my phone it's, I look at it on my wall I look at it every day, every time I use my phone. Our greatest problem result from the difference between how people think and how nature works.
Why do we do this to trees.
There are better ways to do this but this tree, obviously is surviving. And look at that.
Look at the, the circuit with the, the diameter of this tree it obviously is figured out how to live underneath those bricks. But in the meantime, it has girdling roots and it's not long for this world, but there it is.
Don't do this in your yard.
And finally, another one of my favorite quotes because I couldn't leave you with that picture to end my talk.
And I'll let you read it yourself but this is what we do. We have dreams, visions of paradise.
And no matter what we create, whether it is just a small garden on a balcony, or it is a backyard, full of native plants or front yard or even just one container.
I mean, it is.
It's based on expectation of a beautiful spot.
So this hope for the future is at the heart of our gardening.
Thank you for listening.
Great, thank you job so wonderful and such great images and descriptions that really love the very lyrical way that you present. There were a number of people who want to come to the heritage garden and maybe you can talk about, is it open How do people
schedule that we used to have tours every, every Tuesday, but with coveted.
The residents as being careful I just spoke to the residents manager about when tours could start, we can have small tours. Five to 10 people, 10 people max on Wednesday mornings.
At this point, we would really like to bring back the Tuesday tours. And we're watching the numbers go down in Ohio just like everyone else is watching numbers of covert infections.
And I for one would love to welcome people back in the garden, we've, we've not had you in the garden for two seasons, and that's just awful. And so I hope for this third season we will be able to get people in.
So thank you very much.
Would love to see you in the garden.
Great, thanks seven folks it's or at the top of the hour I see some folks are putting oh thank you into dev I know she appreciates that if you have to hop off but we're going to continue with some questions.
And so, Deb there, the question that came to the top was your thoughts on pruning shrubs in particular but shrubs and trees in the landscape, innovative for the, for the most part.
The reason, and I have a whole pruning lecture.
But, and why we proved, but I do first of all I do my best to choose plants that won't outgrow their space. I have made mistakes if you visit my garden I will show you everyone.
So, I do, I will prove always will prove death and disease to limbs off.
I also prune to bring boxwood in during the winter.
but for the most part, I try not to prune.
I will correct structural problems because once again we bring these trees and shrubs into our landscape. So, we are responsible for them.
And I have prune some of my larger trees to limb them up a bit, because my gardens became so dark that I wasn't able to grow underneath some trees. So yes, I do prune and, but do it judiciously, although I have one Ginko in my garden, it was supposed
to be a dwarf, and has switched back to growing 12 to 14 inches a year.
And it got a severe prune last fall and we'll see how it does. And it may get the severest prune of all
over the ground level,
ground level, very severe.
There was a question about, are there plant families that give us the best bang for our buck and I realized we have folks from all over the country but maybe your thoughts on that.
So if you mean bang for buck in growing or with animals, and times I'm sorry, in terms of making a healthy ecological garden. Ah, well, first of all, I mean, the first step is to go see what was there, you know what your gardens can support.
Look at the native plants for your home place.
And then you'll probably notice that there's a lot of mint family. There's a lot of the Astor family there's a lot of the celery parsley family and I'm using the common names, I can use botanical names if you would like a lot of the p amp being family.
These are our big major families, but there are so many others too.
You know, I, I remember being on a mountaintop. My husband usually drives when we're when we're traveling and there we are in the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range.
And I'm reading some of the guides, because I'm trying to look at these plants and figure out what we're going to see, and in there. The, the author talked about, and I'm going to swear here.
He sees another damn composite.
And we saw we saw so many daisies. You know they're they're all over the place so you will be putting in a lot of the daisies the Astor AC.
And you know for me it's not so much the family's.
Although, when I think of herbs, I do think of different families because the mid family is my all time favorite family.
But I don't only think eek a lot well ecologically is the whole package and which one of these will be good for the bees which one will be good for the butterflies the hummingbirds.
The, the turtles that everyone's won't come in my yard the toads the frogs, and also for me for supper. Yeah. So, I wish I could say that there's. Well, I'll just stop there because I'm rambling.
And there were lots of questions about the Royal cash fly. And that was your Hummingbird choice right yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah Hummingbird, and I wondered, I've tried to sit there and watch to see if there are any law butterflies, you know, long for buskers,
but it seems to be the hummingbird for the most part and very small things that I don't know what they are going in and out.
That also get caught on the, the victory too.
So several questions, folks are interested in your opinion on Native ours.
Some of your images quite a few showed different cultivars and just kind of how you feel on straight species versus use of cultivars. That's a huge question, and I'll put it as simply as possible.
natives are the ones that evolved with the other things in the environment animal soil etc. So that's your first place, but there are times when
it's not always easy to find the natives.
And you find native bars instead.
If I use a native bar, it's one that gives the same or as darn close the same ecological services that the species does, and I always pick on port recognition.
Straight species second nature has that beautiful calm.
The powder puff emanations, the ones that the comb was bred to turn into pedal Lloyd structures offers little to no ecological services in the garden.
And not only that, the deer eat him right away, because there's no protection.
So for me, I will always gravitate to a native bar that has the same features the same nectar pollen sources as far as I can tell, or the same leaves that the caterpillars can eat.
That's what I will choose first if I go to a native bar and also I'm a horticulturist I test things out. I bring native hours into my, my yard so I can see, are they visited the same way that my species are and if you want an answer to that question about
Cuba.
And I think Cornell. Both are doing great, great work at looking at who visits what.
And I think.
Our next question is, who visits the non natives to, I want that question answered.
There are some non natives in my garden to get nobody. And there are others they get a lot. So, again, it's one of those interesting continuum when you go from species native species native ours that work native ours that don't work, non natives.
And then of course in the very end are in basis and we know we don't want those.
Yeah, and that's a complicated question there's so many different answers and not enough research dollars and people to look at all. I know a lot of groups really spending some time to to try that out.
There were a number of questions about leaves.
When went to leave them when to shred them How do you like to leave them.
This is what I do believe that are on the lawn, a lot of times.
Early on, we'll just mulch them, but later when the when the red silver Maple crosses do their leaf don't I I break them all up and put them in different areas to sit and compost.
And then that's the compost I use the middle of the summer, when it is hot and dry and the ground is opening up the leaves that fall in the beds, they stay I don't do anything to them.
I don't tread them.
In fact, there, sometimes the wind will blow by blow the leaves back and blow them out and I put them back in.
I do get shredded leaves from our township I get a big load of them, they go into some of my pathways that I would learn pathways.
And they also go on the edges of all my gardens, and that keeps the.
And then I let the organisms in the soil take it in.
But I leave the leaves the exceptions are around my Eucharist, I sometimes will just pull a little bit away because they're sensitive.
But, and these are he grew up below sir cultivars of our native who grew up.
But many plants, just come right up through and as you saw the blood route had no problem at all these specific advice for dealing with a lot of oak leaves.
The specific advice for dealing with a lot of oak leaves. Oak Leaves are better shredded, they will break down faster they are probably amongst the slower ones to shred, however, and this is something really important when you shred your leaves you might
also be shredding the eggs, or the larva or the caterpillars or the insects that have taken cover underneath those. So, again, while I do mulch the early ones on the lawn for the most part, I don't tread my leads that are in the gardens because I'm hoping
that that's the nursery for my next year's insect observations.
And finally, to get us kind of thinking about the season that's upon us your thoughts on spring cleanup when do you like to get into the garden, what do you do in the fall versus the spring from an ecological perspective, I do very little in the fall.
In the fall, I take out diseased plants.
Yeah I clean up.
This is not native but the leaves from my peonies which are covered with powdery mildew.
So I clean up broken branches, if, if the plant is down on the ground I will cut those off, or I'll cut them in half because I like to leave stems up because the, they become future nurseries to.
In the spring, I may cut some plants down and I leave most of the litter in the backyard the litter stays in those gardens in the front yard that's my public face.
And as it is I'm the weird person on the block so you know I try not to do too many strange things.
But there is a little bit more clean up in the spring.
Because, you know, plants are growing up, I cut down my, my leaves, and I will chop them from some of my, my grasses and leave them in a pile, and I then see those leaves woven into bird nests.
So I do things that I hope are supportive and try to harm as little as possible keeping a lookout for any, Any Bumbles, especially and I have.
I also have open soil areas that I do not disturb in the spring.
So it's a combination. In fact, I've been doing less and less and less maintenance over time.
And as for mulches. The only time I'll use marches if by some chance someone says hey I have some free molds that goes in the front yard to make it look pretty.
So I become a lazy garden in certain lazy gardener in certain aspects, but there still is a lot of maintenance, I still edge my beds, because that makes them legal looking in the front yard because there's not a lot of grass in the front yard anymore.
And on and on. Again, if you're in Columbus, let me know. You can come and look, you know somebody or shares this idea Deb of the mullet approach to gardening where the business and is in front and the parties in the back so right.
I hope to read some of these later on. All right.
On YouTube and on on YouTube, but I do sometimes post the chat.
Favorite if anybody's interested you can save your chat to your computer.
Finally w your, your books are Lone Pine still publishing are they available today, a lot of them are available as used books. The perennials gardening month by month and best plans for Ohio are all out of print but they are floating around.
You can find them and use bookstores.
And I keep saying I'm going to work on a book I need to update the perennials book I really want to put more natives in etc etc. But unfortunately I keep doing too many other things and it takes a really, you know, focused approach.
So putting off the book gets you to our webinars, I appreciate that I know you're, I know you're very busy and all your design work and teaching but really enjoyed having you here today, we do have a recorded session from death from last year if you go
to the be lab website you can access that are our YouTube channel and Doug thanks for inspiring everyone give us some lots of great images some thoughts some additions for our garden, some hope that we can we can do this.
Thank you very much everyone for listening. Bye. Great. Thanks, bye bye.
Bye everybody. Thank you.