· Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale · Purslane, Portulaca oleracea · Lamb's quarters, Chenopodium album · Chickweed, Stellaria media · Plantain, Plantago spp. · Purple deadnettle, Lamium purpureum · Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule · Mint, Mentha spp. My daughter and I were talking about the grocery store shortages, and she commented that she wished she could be a rabbit and just eat the grass. Well, we can all be rabbits with the bounty of edible greens in our spring gardens. Looking around my garden I found several edible weeds including henbit, dead nettle, onion grass, violets, and dandelions. In my herb garden I found parsley, garlic chives, kale, and mint. For some fun color I included the edible flowers of dandelion, violet, and red bud. With all the nutrients from these hardy spring greens I should be able to avoid a trip to the grocery store for another day. There is value to the weedy lawn. Many lawn weeds bloom in early spring and delaying the first mowing can allow early spring pollinators to take advantage. The buffet can also be enjoyed by humans, so I suggest tasting a few of your weeds to decide which ones you like. Encourage those species to keep growing and establish in unused areas. Note, however, that eating weeds is not recommended if there is a chance that chemicals have been applied to the area during regular lawn maintenance or to kill weeds. Additionally, whenever adding new foods to your diet, start small and check with your doctor. Although these plants are not native many of them have been naturalizing in the area since they arrived with early European settlers. I don’t recommend purposefully planting them in your yard, just wait for them to arrive. Where there is garden space for edibles to be planted give first dibs to native edible plants. The first weed I was fed as a child was dandelion, when my teacher made us dandelion pancakes with fresh maple syrup. Yum! I like to pick the yellow fluff out of the center of the flower and remove the bitter outer green part. In a salad, a few yellow dandelion petals look great. They are also used as a garnish and can be baked into dishes like pancakes. Dandelion leaves are a healthy green, but look for fresh new leaves because older ones can be very bitter. Eat your greens fresh in salad, steamed, or sautéed. Weeds can be an overlooked source of fresh nutritious greens. Check your garden for weeds next time you want a snack.

There is a mourning dove living outside my front door. She has built something resembling a nest on the shelf where I store some old pots. As I come and go, she is always sitting there staring me down. I don’t know if she keeps an eye on me out of distrust, or maybe she disdains that I could be so busy to need to open this door yet another time. The nesting spot must be adequate because she comes back year after year to claim my porch as her own. After an eternity of waiting, a baby dove hatches, followed soon by a sibling. The pair grows bigger quickly and soon crowds the nest. Their poop messes up my shelf, and they adopt their mother’s habit of staring. One day the nest is empty, and I go on a hunt to find the little family. They have moved to the rail of my back porch where the birdbath is. The mother dove still does not trust me even after all our close proximity, though the kids know no better and are content to be observed. The family continues to show up in other places throughout the garden, wandering out from under a shrub while I weed, watching me from the roof when I park my car, or visiting the bird feeder. My garden seems to be ideal mourning dove habitat. The new pair of porch babies each year is just part of a growing exponential population. My little plum tree can hide at least 30 doves that all burst forth as I pass underneath to take out the compost. I enjoy the noise their wings make as they fly off and the cooing from the treetops that is sometimes mistaken for the hoot of an owl.

The fresh snow tells the tale of what has been going on in my yard before dawn. Three racoons have come from the neighbor’s garage, walked diagonally across mine, and headed off towards another neighbor’s vegetable garden. A cat has come by to check on my front door, the bird feeder, my back door, and a warm sunny bench. Two opossums headed in opposite directions while meandering through. Small tracks, too many to count, show signs of birds busily hopping everywhere. However, the central area of interest in the yard that all paths connect to is the pond. Our little pond runs all winter with an electric heater to keep it from freezing solid. Every critter in the area knows our pond will have water and they stop by regularly to get a drink. Woodchucks, racoons, squirrels, owls, hawks, mice, skunks, turtles, frogs, opossum, and stray pets all stop in at our pond. Wildlife needs access to water. Backyard ponds, bubblers, fountains, creeks, and bird baths are essential when providing habitat. Keep a reliable water source available year-round through the heat advisories of summer and freezing days of winter. Water features need to be kept clean when used heavily to prevent the spread of disease. The wild things of the neighborhood will come to depend on your garden as a clean place to bathe and get a fresh drink. When planning garden layout place a water source for wildlife in a place that is easy to see from the house. This will help to remind you to keep it maintained but is also a good vantage point to watch all the action. A water feature provides every gardener with a source of endless entertainment and provides wildlife with the water they need to survive.

How to deal with weed ordinance violations and how to prepare to never get one: Most communities have rules about how a yard should be maintained. These rules are our protection when the neighbor decides to park cars in the yard or allows the lawn to become a monoculture of thistles. But sometimes they can also be used against a native garden when neighbors don’t understand what we are doing. My local weed ordinance has this sweeping statement: “Grass, weeds and all other noxious vegetation which have attained a height of eight (8) inches or more … is hereby declared to be a public nuisance.” Many native plants are weeds in someone’s eyes and any plant can become a weed if it is growing in the wrong place. So, the key is to make sure that the plants in the garden are not seen as weeds. This sounds deceivingly simple. Dealing with a weed ordinance citation starts with preparation early on. The benefit of being well prepared is that you can garden with confidence and hopefully never have to deal with this unfortunate bureaucracy. Start with education: educate the community and yourself about native landscaping. Set appropriate expectations, like any garden, that there will not be 100% flowers all the time. Be a good neighbor and respect your neighbor’s property the way that you want them to respect your garden. How to avoid getting a citation: · Become familiar with any regulations impacting the garden. · Invite any neighbors to tour the garden. · Drop off native landscaping information with all neighbors. · Have yard signs displayed at the street. · Know every plant in your garden by name. · Keep receipts of all native plant purchases. · Keep brush and compost piles out of sight of any neighbors. · Keep the plants from crossing onto others property. · Don’t block the street, sidewalk, power lines, or lines of sight. · Have a tall privacy fence. If the weed ordinance notice arrives: If the weed ordinance violation letter still arrives in the mail one day, don’t panic. Contact the weed police and find out exactly what feature in the landscape is a problem. Invite the inspector to the garden to discuss the problem. If you manage to get an inspector in your yard this is an excellent opportunity to educate, have lots of pamphlets ready to send back to the office. Brush up your file on your garden with a complete plant list and receipts and get it to the inspector. Usually, a little education will cause the violation to be dropped. If the cause of the violation can be easily remedied such as removing a brush pile or trimming plants back from the sidewalk, dealing with the issue is a quick way to restore neighborhood peace. One nice thing about native plants is that herbaceous plants can all be trimmed back to six inches without much ill effect to their long-term health. When necessary, it is advisable to trim all plants except trees and shrubs down to the required height. It will be unsightly and may affect blooming but will satisfy the weed ordinance requirements before the deadline. Do not let the deadline arrive, as the municipality may come in and mow the whole landscape. This can damage woody plants, cause ruts, and may even introduce weed seeds. Fighting a weed ordinance violation in court is sometimes necessary to protect a garden and to change public policy to protect all native plant gardens. The Wild Ones organization offers personal advice to any landowner up against a weed ordinance. Banding together public support of native gardens by connecting with neighbors and local organizations helps to keep gardens safe from poorly applied regulations. Hopefully soon these worries will be a thing of the past.

I have not yet mastered time management in the garden. It always seems like I spend more time working on it than I do enjoying it. Although, I must remember all the times I’m out there weeding and stop to watch an insect do something amazing. Below, I have put together a short list of ways to prevent spending hours in the garden weeding. Plant groundcovers: Cover all bare soil with groundcovers so weeds can’t grow. Kill any existing weeds first and then mulch or plant a living groundcover to fill in the vacant space. If there is an idle part of the garden, cover it with a groundcover until planting time comes. Simplify path maintenance: Cobblestone paths either need to be hand weeded or poisoned. I don’t use poison in my garden so I don’t have cobblestone paths. I have decided that mulch paths, wide enough for the lawn mower to mow down in summer, are the best solution for my garden. Before putting in a path, think about maintenance and remember that paths are necessary to do maintenance on the rest of the garden. Avoid difficult to care for borders: It is popular to use the chain link fence as a border, but this area can become a weeding nightmare as they tangle in the fence and only one side can be reached. When the garden boarders a lawn, use border material such as brick that is easy to mow against. Design the garden to avoid unmowable lawn spaces that will just get out of hand and invade the flowers. Expand the garden slowly: New garden beds should only be as big as you can weed. It is always best to underestimate this area because weeding in midsummer is unpleasant. Keeping a garden well weeded the first few years will cause it to be less maintenance in the long run. Prepare new beds with care: No matter which way you prepare a new bed make sure all the weeds are good and dead before planting. Some lawn grasses can be very difficult to kill and may need to be killed more than once. Roots like clematis, star of Bethlehem, and dandelion need to be dug out. It may take more than six months to be sure all weeds are dead. Be wary of free plants: Do not take in a free plant you can’t identify. Plants given away from another garden are most likely aggressive quick spreaders and should be selected carefully. If the free plant is going to be a good fit for your garden, you should still clean all soil off of free plants to prevent hitchhikers. Limit weed seeds entering the garden: Don’t let weeds seed. Monitor the garden frequently to remove all weeds before they can spread their seeds. Rainwater can also bring weed seeds from uphill properties. Hitchhiking seeds come in on clothes and pets. A less preventable way that weed seeds appear is from birds pooping them into the garden. Some weed seeds will enter the garden and germinate. Monitor frequently to pull them out while they are small.

There are a few key elements to attracting birds and wildlife to the garden. Incorporate all of them into the garden for the best results. The more each element is used, the more wildlife will show up to call your garden home. Garden with native plants. Adding native plants to a garden is a great way to attract birds and other wildlife. Native plants and native animals have evolved together. Our local wildlife is specially adapted to feed off of our native plants that are easy for them to digest and provide the nutrients they need. Use plants that produce seeds and berries. Berries and seeds keep wildlife going through the winter. Winter residents and migrants appreciate a variety of food to eat all winter long. Seeds of native plants left in the garden can be even healthier and more attractive to birds then a bird feeder. While birds are busy exploring the garden for seeds they may also come across a tasty insect to supplement their meal. Keep dead plants standing through winter so birds can continue to clean seeds off the stalks. Supplemental with bird seed and suet in winter. Birdfeeders will gather birds in an easy-to-view spot in the yard. Hummingbird feeders near the porch will allow you to catch a glimpse of this speedy visitor. It is easier to see how successful a garden is with the wildlife when they show up right outside your window. Racoons and opossums will also raid bird feeders at night. A red shouldered hawk likes to sit on a tree overlooking my bird feeder. When the birds suddenly scatter, I know to look for a hawk. Invite insects to thrive. Allow insects to eat plants and become bird food. Leave plant stems and leaves around garden through winter and into spring to shelter insects. Native plants eaten by native insects will attract native birds. Seeing insect damage on plant leaves is a good sign that there will be plenty of food for birds. Young birds are fed insects almost exclusively by their parents. Provide safety. Wildlife needs your garden to be a sanctuary. Birds want to feel safe from passing cars, stray cats, humans, hawks, etc. Birds need shrubs and brushy cover to hide in and nest. Hollow trees are preferred by some birds as a place to nest. Provide as many natural shelters as possible and supplement with some bird houses. Supply clean water. Water attracts wildlife. Birdbaths, water features, and ponds will become gathering places for birds and other wildlife. Birds need a source of water for drinking and bathing. Try to keep birdbaths, etc. filled and clean throughout summer when water is needed most. In winter, a small heater can keep a water feature running without freezing. I am always amazed to see the birds eagerly bathing even when I think it is too cold to go out.

I’m listening to the spring peepers calling outside my window. The peepers say that it is spring and time to get busy. Battling for vocal supremacy, these tiny frogs try to attract a mate. Spring peeping can go on for weeks on any warm day down by the pond. Soon the water will have masses of eggs and after that, millions of tadpoles. Later in the year the American toads take over the symphony. It is amazing that something so small can make so much noise. Their calls echo off the brick walls of my house calling in their sweethearts. The cardinals are also in the mood this spring. The males and females flirt, flying from tree to tree. Love is on the mind of all the birds. The little wren is checking out each knothole in the silver maple looking for a safe place to raise some babies. The mockingbird perches on my chimney and sings out his best calls hoping someone will be impressed. And somewhere I hear a woodpecker drumming up a territory fit for a woodpecker family. Even the plants are feeling sexy. The silver maple is releasing pollen into the wind, hoping it lands in the right spot and forms a seed pod. Many plants release hormones to trick insects into exploring their flowers in hopes of some pollen being transferred to a neighboring plant. Plants are using insect sexual behaviors to have sex themselves, kinky. The insects are also doing it on the flowers. I see two beetles locked together gathering nectar from a flower not wanting to take a break from gathering resources even for the perfect mate. All this fecundity would not be happening in my garden if these animals did not feel that the resources were available to raise a family. A garden must have a plentiful source of food to raise young, this means lots of insects, pollen, and seeds. The parents also want to feel safe with shrubs to hide in, knot holes to nest in, and a reliable source of water. Safe habitat comes naturally with native plant gardening and so does the sex. This garden is all about the birds and the bees.

Many gardeners do not know that honeybees are not native bees. They were brought over from Europe during colonization as a resource. Colonizers were not worried about invasive species as their focus was surviving in a new land. However, today we do know the price of introduced species on native communities and the honeybee is one of those species. Honeybees disrupt ecosystems with their large numbers foraging on specific flowers in certain areas. Their foraging behaviors can encourage invasive plants by favoring pollination of only certain flower types. Monoculture crops may rely on imported honeybees for pollination, leaving few resources for other plant or insect species the rest of the year. Honeybees will displace native bees by monopolizing floral resources with their numbers and pollinating efficiency. They are often brought into an area to intensely pollinate a crop and then taken away again, leaving a disrupted ecosystem behind. Domestic honeybees can also bring diseases to bee populations. Bee colonies are regularly shipped long distances and can quickly spread diseases across the globe. Native bees can pollinate a much wider array of flower shapes. Some bees have very long tongues to reach down to the base of a long tubular flower like the trumpet creeper. Other bees are very big and strong to pry open the petals of a flower like monkeyflower. On milkweed a bee must be a strong flyer to be able to carry the heavy pollen between plants. All of these unique bees need our protection. I am often irritated when I see a save the bees poster featuring a picture of a honeybee. The honeybees have problems right now, but it is nowhere near as dire of a collapse as the one that native bees are experiencing. Messaging like this can confuse the public into thinking honeybees are a native wild species instead of an agricultural concern. I will be sad if I have to give up honey but I’m not sure the earth will survive if we lose our bees. We need to focus our research, education, and messaging on the protection of native bees.

Plants can be used to clean up pollution in the environment. Certain plants are able to take in and store chemicals out of the air, soil, or water by concentrating them in their leaves or other tissues. Some plants can even break down hazardous chemicals or isolate heavy metals. Plants also partner with fungi and microorganisms that help the plants absorb nutrients. These relationships can also be used to clean up hazards in the soil by allowing the plant to process a greater number of chemicals then it could on it’s own. Using plants to remove pollutants from the environment is called phytoremediation. If contaminants are moving through an ecosystem, plants can be used to collect the contaminant and lock it into stable plant tissue. When ground water is polluted the plant roots can absorb the contaminant along with the water holding the waste in the plant tissues while releasing the cleaned water back into the atmosphere. Plants also absorb chemicals out of the air that accumulate with dust on their leaves. These particulates can be safely processed by the plant and locked up in the plants tissues. When hazardous chemicals are collected in the leaves or woody tissue of the plant these need to be collected and disposed of properly. Allowing contaminated plant material to return to the site will just reintroduce the hazard to the soil through decomposition. While phytoremediation is of interest to businesses on a large scale it can also be used by the homeowner. Places in our home garden are vulnerable to pollution. Garden beds along the street can be used to clean up water runoff polluted with gas leaks. Lead and other heavy metals might gather on the leaves of plants near the street and need to be sponged out of the air. Raingardens may also collect contaminated street runoff as well as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides applied to neighboring properties. Anywhere stormwater gathers on a property is an excellent place to collect potential hazards out of the soil. Backyard soil could also be contaminated with a wide variety of pollutants from previous occupants and land uses. Knowing the history of a site could guide the choice of certain plants to collect likely contaminants. There are several common native garden plants that also have special powers to clean up pollution. If a site is contaminated with pesticides or the neighbors use pesticides, plant a grass buffer of big blue stem, switchgrass, Indian grass, and eastern gamagrass. Trees like black willow, river birch, cottonwood, and red mulberry can also lock up pesticides. Along the street use plants that absorb gasoline leaks like big bluestem, little bluestem, switchgrass, Indian grass, blue grama, sideoats grama, bottlebrush grass, Canada wild rye, soft rush, tussock sedge, arrowhead, annual sunflower, and wild senna. Lead is also a common pollutant from cars that can be concentrated in switchgrass, sideoats grama, and fox sedge. If the garden is in the city, air pollution may be a concern. Trees like pine, holly, tulip poplar, tupelo, black cherry, ninebark, rusty blackhaw, and black locust can collect pollutants out of the air with their leaves. Although not a direct benefit to the gardener, plants can be used for carbon sequestration. Carbon is absorbed out of the atmosphere by all plants but locking it up in the tissues of long lived trees like bald cypress, white ash, tupelo, tulip poplar, pine, and oak is especially useful. Trees are not the only way to store carbon out of the atmosphere, the soil in wetlands and grasslands is an incredible carbon sink. Allowing these ecosystems to be undisturbed with long term protection keeps carbon unavailable and reduces greenhouse gasses. Phytoremediation is just one more way that native plant gardeners are going to save the earth. For further info look into Phytoremediation with Native Plants by Eric Fuselier.

A lot of times when I look at my garden I just see more work that needs to be done. There are always more weeds, plants to be pruned, seeds to be collected. It is an endless project of tinkering. Unlike most pieces of art that have a period for creation and then it is complete, the landscape is an artwork that is never finished. While I’m adding a little red over here with a fire pink, the white of mountain mint is taking over the background. Sometimes a tree falls and I have a new stump to decorate but also a patch of sun causing the shade plants to scorch. Button bushes grow sideways so the path needs to move. Then everything looks great until the cone flowers get a virus. Whenever I think I have a vision of my final artwork I soon realize that I’m wrong because these are living ecosystems. Ecosystems change constantly and this should be celebrated as a sign of success. Perhaps it is an artwork of three artists, the gardener, nature, and time, a collaborative project. Don’t be ashamed of this unfinished masterpiece or wait until it looks better to show it off. Let the peace of this sanctuary fill us with joy and excitement. Let us all ignore the never ending chores for a moment. There is no better time then this moment because the garden will never look like this again. It’s interesting looking into the eyes of visitors who are new to my garden as they round the corner of my house. I see emotions of feeling overwhelmed, in awe, afraid, amazed, envious, and inspired. My garden is a lot to take in at once. It is my space to play and experiment so I have a variety of bed types with a multitude of species mixed together. Trees and shrubs dot the yard as well as logs, rocks, benches, etc. There is a lot going on with many layers of detail to focus on. It is not a zen garden or even a particularly well designed landscape. It is everything all together in the small space I have available. This may not be a traditional style of gardening but it is exciting. I hope that my visitors can survive the initial shock and relax enough to enjoy the experience.

I regret neglecting my blog for so long but I hope I will be forgiven. I have been devoting my writing time to writing a book that is finally ready to go out into the world. I will be picking it up from the printer tomorrow. I wrote it as a monthly planner with a list of garden tasks that the native plant gardener may need to be reminded to do. I have also included several essays based on many previous blog posts. Thanks for all of your continued feedback on gardening questions and topics to write about. You can find more info about the book in the book tab of my website. https://besaschweitzer.wixsite.com/growswild/book I hope to resume blogging again soon. Or maybe I will write another book, who knows.

There is no need to hurry to remove every dead tree. If the tree is not in danger of falling on someone or something it can be a benefit to leave standing. If the tree is a hazard, consider hiring an arborist to only remove the dangerous branches. Trees dying from disease may need to be removed entirely to prevent the disease from infecting nearby trees. A standing dead tree provides habitat for many birds, insects, fungi, and mammals that specialize on decaying wood. A dead tree has many nutrients locked inside its tissues that can be returned to enrich the garden soil if it is allowed to remain and naturally decay. Try to find the stoic beauty in the tree as it once again returns to the earth. If a tree needs to be removed, winter is a good time to do it. When the ground is frozen and the plants are dormant there will be less damage to the garden. There is value in leaving dead trees standing: attracts woodpeckers wood nesting bees habitat for beetles perch for birds of prey mushrooms easy views of wildlife slowly returning nutrients to soil home for cavity nesting birds absorb and slowly release rain water beauty