I was first introduced to Aldo Leopold’s, A Sand County Almanac, in an environmental ethics class. Leopold is considered the father of the conservation movement and is responsible for many of the policies that govern conservation now. Leopold considered protection of the natural world to be a matter of ethics and lays out his argument for a land ethic gracefully in his book. “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.” The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold put his ethic into practice by buying a horribly degraded piece of land in sand county Wisconsin and gradually restoring it by planting pines until his beloved sandhill cranes returned. Even after his early death, his family and students continue to restore this little piece of land and it is open to the public to visit now. I have been twice to visit and see the sandhill cranes. Visiting Leopold’s shack is almost like a pilgrimage for conservationists. “Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel.” Pines Above the Snow, A Sand County Almanac. As native plant gardeners we can incorporate the land ethic into our everyday lives. We each have a small piece of land to protect and heal. Bring back the wildlife that depends on that patch of land by creating and protecting the habitat they need. Each bird or butterfly that visits our garden is a living creature that we have helped to find a place in this degraded world. “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Foreword, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold’s land ethic is a way of seeing the world differently. We are part of this big living community that we must protect and nurture. Healing the earth one garden at a time as the Wild Ones motto says. We need the land as much as the land needs us, we can save each other. I recommend getting a copy of A Sand County Almanac. Pick a nice spot outside to read it. Imagine you are with Leopold as he watches the sky dance of the woodcock, counting each tree ring through time, and watching the green fire in the wolf’s eye. It is a beautifully written book. Learn more at https://www.aldoleopold.org/

February plant of the month, Ozark witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) On sunny winter days watch for witch hazel in bloom. The flowers are tiny but are easy to track down by following your nose. Any awake insect, small flies and bees, is also following the sweet aroma to the only flower blooming this time of year. Ozark witch hazel blooms January through April on any sunny day with the same shrub blooming multiple times for months. The long thin yellow petals curl back in on cold days but then reopen when the sun comes out. The seed capsules created from pollinated flowers ripen in fall and explode open, shooting their seeds up to 30 feet. Yellow is also the trees fall color. Ozark witch hazels like average to well drained soil and can tolerate heavy clay. Moist, acidic, organically rich soils are of preference. It grows in full to partial sun but blooms best with more sun. Watch hazel shrubs can grow to about 10 feet tall and wide. The base tends to send up suckers which can be pruned in spring after flowering to give the shrub a more tree like appearance. This shrub makes a nice living hedge or privacy screen. Including witch hazel in the home landscape is a great way to provide an important energy source to overwintering insects. Witch hazel has been used for it’s medicinal properties by early native Americans and still is today. Today an extract is used in shaving lotions and ointments for treating bruises sprains and inflammations. To make witch hazel tonics and tinctures at home dry harvested leaves and twigs. The dried bark and leaves are ground up and mixed with water and alcohol to make witch hazel tonic. The tonic can be used externally for bruising, sores and swellings. Check with your doctor before using witch hazel or any medicinal plant because we are all different. The witch hazel pictured might actually be a non native sold mistakenly as the native. This happens often in the native plant trade and we need to stay open to questioning if our garden plants were correctly identified.

Many of us are getting requests from the organizations we associate with to create a wildflower or butterfly garden or to fix a neglected one. It would be wonderful if every church, school yard, and corner park had a native plant garden. However, gardens take work, not only for the installation but even more so for upkeep. Who is going to maintain that garden for the rest of time? When I am asked to build someone a garden, my first question is, “who is going to take care of it?”. I don't have time to commit to maintain every garden I put my hands on, and if I'm weeding, I wont have time left to build more gardens. Many people have no idea how much care a wildflower garden needs. We can't install it and walk away. Weeds have to be managed, and managed intensively the first few years during establishment. There is no point in spending your time and their money on a garden that is going to look like a weed patch and be ripped out next year. We are not doing the native gardening community any favors by planting future weed patches in public spaces. If an organization wants a garden it should be willing to commit a volunteer or staff to the gardens upkeep for the rest of the life of that garden. We should offer to train the person who will be managing the garden by having them assist in planting the garden and then work side by side with them until we are confident they clearly understand their maintenance duties. When designing a garden to be managed by native plant novices it is best to limit the number of species used in the garden and plant like species in groups. It is easier to weed when you can pull everything except for the one plant you know. Also avoid using native plants that look similar to the local weeds. Mulch is another positive addition to the garden as it preserves soil moisture which reduces watering, and smothers weed seeds which reduces weeding. Creating a map of the garden with photos of the plants in it also makes a great tool for volunteers. The volunteer you train will gain knowledge of native plants and can add more diversity every year as their confidence grows. They may even start designing their own native gardens to be carefully tended by other volunteers just beginning their own life long education in native plants. I dream of the day when every vacant space is filled with native flowers and hordes of butterflies, tended by loving and experienced gardeners.

This spring I will be heading back to Millstream Gardens Conservation Area in Madison County to see the spring flowers. Millstream Gardens is a 697-acre tract of land best known for hosting the whitewater kayak championships on the St Francis river. There is also a roughly 10 mile out and back trail starting at the millstream picnic pavilion and turning around at the silver mines dam. The trail wanders through riverside forest and up to rocky glades and has many lovely views of the river. The spring flowers grow in drifts along the path and sprout from crevices in the rocks. Along the trail is Allium, Phlox, Dodecatheon, Tradescantia, Silene, Trillium, etc. bloom in late April. While we hiked we enjoyed watching kayakers down below playing in the shut-ins along the river. At the silver mines dam we stop to have lunch and a lazy nap out on the sun warmed rocks. We saw several snakes and skinks out sunning themselves also. Spring is not the only time that I enjoy Millstream Gardens, in the summer, the river is a nice retreat from the heat. On fall hikes the asters, goldenrods, and Cunila are blooming. There is a lot of red from the sumac, Ludwigia, and wahoo in early October. Icicles and other ice formations are beautiful along the river for those brave enough to visit in those conditions. If my timing is perfect I even see frost flowers on the Verbesina, but it is rare that I’m up early enough before they melt. To enjoy all the sights at a leisurely pace there is nearby camping at Silver Mines Recreation Area. Millstream Gardens Conservation Area is a must see place for the wildflower enthusiast.

Winter is a needed break from trying to keep up with the crazy speed of the summer garden. It is a good time to stop and reflect. It might be helpful to keep a garden journal and record successes and failures, take notes on books read and webinars attended, and maul over ambitious ideas for the future. Check plants during winter drought periods and spot water as necessary. Check for erosion and fix problems as they appear. November 15 to March 15 is the best time to prune most trees and shrubs. Most bare-rooted trees and shrubs should be planted in February or early March. Burn where appropriate. Mulch where needed to reduce weeding and maintain moisture. Scout out evergreen invasives like euonymus for removal. Start plants indoors or in cold frames Make improvements and repairs to hardscapes When the weather is pleasant and it is too nice to stay inside there are plenty of garden chores to do outside. Winter is good time to repair paths, add more wood chips to a muddy spot, dig trenches to divert water, make the stepping stones level. When the ground is bare is an opportunity to rethink the garden layout, add or move paths, create intimate places to sit, and expand beds. As my trees get bigger I’m constantly moving paths away from intruding branches or picking a branch to trim back. In the fall my sculptures and attractive rocks tend to get buried so winter is a time to find them and give them a spot to be better seen. Interesting logs make a nice garden focal point but they gradually decay and must be replaced, a good wintertime project. On the days that are not so nice I like to critically access the views out my windows. With the bare bones of the garden showing I can judge if a branch is blocking the view or maybe a tall plant should be moved to the back. Maybe a screen can be added to hide an old fence or electric box. Keeping the window views attractive makes being indoors much more bearable. I like to watch the birds perch out on the tree branches waiting their turn at the feeder or bathing in the bubbler. All winter long is a time to work on seeds. First they must be cleaned. Pick out which sees are needed for the spring garden and get them stratified. All other seeds can be packaged up and given away to friends or at swaps. Order the plants needed early before nurseries sell out. Another winter project is to maintain all the bird houses. Invasive birds should be evicted. Entrances may need to be repaired if a squirrel or woodpecker damaged them. Build more bird houses, bat house, raptor boxes. This is also a good time to thoroughly clean all bird feeders and replace the damaged ones. When it is above freezing I look for maintenance of the rain barrels and watering systems. The squirrels like to chew on my rain barrels so there are always holes to patch up. All the filters and screens and overflows need to be cleaned out. Time to clean the gutters too. Hopefully, all the hoses were put away before winter but if not do it now. Gardening tools can be cleaned, oiled, and sharpened now. Throw out all the irreparable broken tools and give away the ones that haven't been used in awhile. Repair the tools you can or send them off to be repaired at the hardware store or their manufacturer. Look through all the old pots in storage and get rid of the ugly ones. Order potting soil, mulch, woodchips, straw, or whatever other materials needed. Notice that I have not mentioned anything about cutting down dead plant stems or raking leaves. Save these tasks for the spring. In the winter the cover is needed by the birds and insects to survive the winter. Removing winter yard waste kills many insects like butterflies and deprives birds of places to hide from the cold and forage for seeds. The best cure for cabin fever is to get out and start working on the spring garden. By the time all the winter maintenance chores are done spring will already be here. While out there keep an eye out for the winter blooming witchhazel and it’s tiny pollinators. Some butterflies like the morning cloak overwinter as adults and can be seen flying on sunny days.

Ecotype is defined as “a subspecies or race that is especially adapted to a particular set of environmental conditions.” Native plants that grow in a particular glade or other habitat and have adapted to that place are considered to be an ecotype. A different individual coneflower transplanted to that glade may not preform as well as the other coneflowers because it is not evolved to that space, it is not the local ecotype. Reputable native plant nurseries will always sell only local ecotype plants. How a nursery defines local ecotype can vary generally to reflect the distance that customers are spread from the store. If a plant is local ecotype to Cole County Missouri because the nursery is located there and the homeowner picks those plants to grow in a St Louis county garden they may not as well as a plant from a nursery that has plants that are local ecotype of St Louis County. Nurseries that sell at farmers markets across the state will have plants that are also from across the state using a broad definition of local ecotype. The narrower your definition is of ecotype the more truly local your landscape will be. However, most gardeners in St Louis aim for plants that are local ecotype to the bistate area. "Wild Ones Natural Landscapers advocates the selection of plants and seeds derived, insofar as is possible, from local or regional sources at sites having the same or similar environmental conditions as the site of planting. Such plant materials are often termed the local ecotype." A homeowner that strives to make their garden as nature friendly as possible tries to mimic the plant community that would be there naturally. Finding local ecotype plants for the garden can be almost impossible, especially if near by wild areas are not available for seed collecting. Sourcing plants for the native garden is an exercise in contacting the local nurseries and figuring out which plants are closest to the local ecotype. Usually choices are limited by what is available and may vary from year to year. A very difficult landscape project that I worked on recently had requirements that all plants used in the landscape must be local ecotype within 10 miles of the site. Since there were no native plant nurseries within that radius I had to collect seeds at surrounding natural areas and grow them in a greenhouse for the project. This really limited my species options for the garden. The plants available determined how I designed the landscape. Plants from a local ecotype will preform better. They are adapted to the site through many years of evolution. Flowers of the same species will bloom at slightly different times throughout their range with more southern flowers blooming first. If a flower from the southern range is transplanted to a garden in the north of the range it will bloom too early. A flower that blooms too early may miss blooming in sync with it’s pollinators and therefore can not produce seeds. Plants have many other slight variations throughout their range and moving species around can mess with many different dependencies in a natural balance.

What is the role of nativars (cultivars of native plants) in pollinator habitat creation? Like most plants, Missouri native plants have been subjected to selection for specific features that make them more desirable to humans such as bigger flowers, longer bloom time, compact growth, showy colors, pest resistance, etc. It is obvious to see how plants that are pest resistant would be undesirable to insects but other changes to the true native can also be undesirable and it is hard to tell exactly what type of manipulation is acceptable since the insects don’t talk, they just slowly disappear. Since most of us are making these gardens to save the pollinators it is counter productive to plant a cultivar that does not provide optimum nutrition for the insect. Buying plants at a garden center it is often difficult to avoid the nativars and many gardeners unknowingly buy them. Look for clear labeling that does not have any extra words after the genus and species. While we are talking about garden centers, I can not stress enough, the importance of avoiding plants treated with neonicotinoids. Neonics are a poison incorporated into the plant tissue that can kill large amounts of insects visiting the flower. Always check that your plant is neonicotinoids free and ask your garden center to stop selling treated plants. The usefulness of a nativar depends on which structure of plant is manipulated. In general changes to plant structure are easier on pollinators then changes to flower structure. There is a cultivar of echinacea where the bloom has been manipulated to be only petals with no nectar production, obviously not great from the pollinators point of view. Hydrangea is another flower that has been changed to have more showy flowers with less nectar and pollen. There are also changes that we can not see that insects may be missing like loss of UV markings as nectar guides and changes in scent. When bloom time is changed it may no longer be in sync with pollinators. Some insects are very dependent on their host plant and an interruption in any stage of their life cycle means collapse of the species. Many nativars suffer from inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity as they have been selected for a specific trait. Nativars cross pollinating with true natives could lead to the diluting and contaminating of the true native gene pool. Gardens that feature nativars and natives can produce seeds that are not true natives and should not be released back into the wild. When collecting seeds in a backyard garden the chance of genetic contamination is high so these seeds should not be used for reestablishing natural populations. So much is still unknown about what exactly insects need from plants to be successful. More research needs to be done on nativars and their ability to provide for pollinators. Several institutions are working on this question now as insect populations collapse around the globe. I once had a tour of Mt Cuba center to see their trails of performance of natives and nativars. For more information on Mt. Cuba’s trials check out https://mtcubacenter.org/research/trial-garden/ There is good news, we can help with the research. Scientists are asking for native plant gardeners to submit observation of pollinators on natives and nativars as part of project budburst. So far project budburst data for the Midwest plants indicate that mean pollinator visits per minute are higher for true native plants than for their cultivars, however, they also see considerable variation among cultivars. Join in this citizen science project at https://budburst.org/projects/nativars#where

Celtis occidentalis Hackberry is a common street tree because it tolerates wet soil, drought, clay soil, road salt, and air pollution. It commonly grows to a height and width of 30-60 feet but sometimes taller if the conditions are right. Hackberry prefers full sun to part shade and soil that is medium to wet moisture but are very tolerant of a variety of conditions. This tree can be grown in a rain garden and helps prevent erosion. It is in the family Cannabaceae along with Hops and Cannabis for which the family gets it's name. I would have never guessed hackberry to have such notorious relatives just by looking at it. Many scientist misclassified Hackberry in the family with Elm until recently when it was moved the correct family. The hackberry forms an inconspicuous small green bloom in April and May that is wind pollinated. The red/purple fruit is a delight to the birds which will spread the seeds and their purple poop along their flight path as they visit the tree. The fleshy parts of the fruit are edible to humans and somewhat sweet giving this tree an alternate name, sugarberry. The hackberry is the host plant to several butterflies. The Mourning Cloak, Question Mark, Hackberry Emperor, Comma, Snout, and Tawny Emperor butterflies all look for this tree. Some of these butterflies over winter as adults in the leaf litter and can be seen flying on warm winter days. Treat the fallen leaves of hackberry gently to be rewarded with more butterflies. My favorite feature of the hackberry is the bark, that is easy to notice in the winter months. The bark forms wart like bumps on the trunk sometimes protruding enough to look like a relief map of canyon lands. The feel of the ridges and warts of the corky bark is memorable and should be enjoyed at every opportunity.

Polystichum acrostichoides The Christmas Fern is semi evergreen and can be relied open for green fronds for Christmas holiday decorations. Fern fronds are 1-2 feet in length and lay down prostrate to the ground. Flip a frond over to see the golden brown spores. This fern is easy to grow in the right conditions. In the wild it is often seen on the uphill slope along trails. It requires cool, moist, well-drained soil in shade. It must have good drainage, it does not tolerate clay soils or standing water. Christmas ferns ideal soil are moist, slightly acidic, humus-rich, sandy loam soils. Christmas fern does not spread by runners, it is naturally clump forming and may be slow to fill in as a ground cover. Being a fern, it propagates by spores instead of seeds. Increasing the number of this fern is easiest done by dividing a clump. In early spring watch for the fern fronds to appear in their tight swirl, this is the best time to dig and divide. Dig out the entire clump and pull apart to create multiple small clumps. If it wont pull apart easily the clump and be cleanly cut in half with a sharp shovel. Replant the clumps immediately with the soil level matching the original level of soil and water well.

There are many reasons to add edible plants to the garden and just as many ways to go about it. In my garden I don’t have a dedicated space for the vegetable garden. Everything is all thrown in together with coneflowers sticking out between zucchinis. I don’t set aside bed space for vegetables because there is already not enough space for all the native plants I want to grow. A grocery store variety plant has to be pretty special to earn a spot in my garden. There are many plants that just taste better when they are homegrown. For me, those plants are strawberries and Cherokee purple tomatoes. Strawberries are the symbol of spring and I love to go out each morning and hunt for them. Store bought tomatoes just lack a lot of flavor that can be achieved with home grown, and in my opinion Cherokee purple is the tastiest so I find a space to incorporate a few tomato plants each year. Tomatoes are usually snuck in around the edge of the compost pile where they like the rich soil. Strawberries have become a ground cover around the blue wild indigo. Every year my garden has problem areas. Sometimes an area will get so weedy that it is better to just start over. I take advantage of these retired spaces to grow crops that must be dug. Carrots and sweet potatoes are easy to grow and attractive together. Homegrown carrots are funny looking but taste better then store bought. The easiest plant to grow is garlic. Garlic is planted in fall and harvested in summer leaving space for a fall planting. Growing an edible crop as a cover crop gives me a full year to get the weeds under control and come up with a well though out plan for the new garden bed. Some garden produce in my garden are plants that I always forget to buy at the store and only need a little anyway like cilantro, parsley, basil, arugula, swisschard, and kale. Instead of buying a big bunch at the store that slowly rots in my house homegrown lasts longer when I only take what I need at the moment and leave the rest growing for another day. Many people also grow lettuces for this reason but I have never had luck with lettuce because I’m a neglectful waterer. The herbs are sown in a small empty space between perennials and then left to fend for themselves until they are needed for my kitchen table. Often my cilantro goes to seed and reseeds itself in other areas. Parsley and kale are somewhat winter hardy, I’m still harvesting from mine well into December. When harvesting parsley always check for stripy parsley swallowtail caterpillars which can be transferred to the golden Alexander. Another way to sneak tasty plants into the garden is to grow trailing vines like pumpkin and watermelon. The plants wander around the garden seeking out sunlight between flowers. They can also be directed to grow along the border of the garden which can look decorative. When growing vines this way finding the fruit can be a challenge. It is always a surprise when the garden starts to die back in the fall, and surprise, there is a big beautiful orange pumpkin! I’m a big fan of growing garden snacks, tasty treats to eat while out enjoying the garden. The cherry tomato is my favorite garden snack on a hot summer day so I place a few to ramble between the taller plants. I’m a big fan of the radish. Radish are great plants for helping with soil fertility and composting. The normally eaten part of the radish is not my favorite part, it is the seed pods. I allow the radish to bloom (edible) and then go to seed (also edible). The pea like pods are spicy crunchy treats that are great for adding spice to time spent weeding. Native shrubs can also be tasty and should never be short changed when it comes to snacking. My favorite fruit to eat are viburnum, serviceberry, and plum. The seed to fruit ratio is not ideal so it is nice to eat them right in the garden and spit the seeds on the ground. I also like to snack on hazelnut but that requires a little processing before eating. The sunchoke, Jerusalem artichoke, also makes for great snacking after processing. Sunchoke tends to form large colonies that need to be reigned in. I dig out the roots around the edge of the colony and bake them up like potato chips, delicious.

There is a Mexican plum tree at Shaw Nature Reserve that I particularly admire. It is on the edge of the trail in the area where the persimmons and ostrich fern grow. I collected three seeds from this tree and planted them in my back garden 8 years ago. Each tree seems to have it’s own personality with one growing straight up, one growing branches in all directions, and one leaning off to the east. They also bloom at slightly different times giving me a longer season of flowers in the spring. Each tree is also unique to fruit with the northern tree fruiting the heaviest and the easterly tree hardly fruiting at all. So much variety from one parent. The fruits do not seem to be favored by the backyard wildlife or maybe there is just so much that everyone gets all they can eat. There are always some fruit left for me. To collect fruit I simply wait until they are ripe and fall off the tree and then pick them up off the ground each morning. The Mexican plums are larger then the other native plums but still much smaller then the grocery store variety. The fruit is tart and has a large pit so they are best suited for cooking in my opinion. We have had three good years so far to harvest plums and I experiment with a new recipe each time. The first year we made plum chutney which was a rich dark concoction that tasted great spread on crackers with a mild cheese. We had enough to bottle up several small jars as gifts to family which were well received. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/spiced-plum-chutney-239836 We also made plum jelly. Making jelly is easy with fruits that are difficult to peel and pit since that is not necessary. I made two batches of plum jelly but the second batch came out much more liquid so I called it plum syrup. They where both delicious spread on pancakes. https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_07/plum_jelly.html This years plum experiment was plum wine. My partner received a beer making kit for a gift and was eager to use it. I liked the young wine best since it tasted so sour and had a nice kick. After finishing the ferment the wine mellowed out to tart fruit flavored wine. https://www.preservedgoods.com/post/wild-fermented-country-wine Some years there are not enough plums to harvest. One year the plums had such an infestation of aphids that all the early fruit buds were destroyed before the aphid lions on their slender threads arrived to save the trees. No one had plums that year. Other years there has been a late frost to freeze the buds or a drought that dropped the fruit too early. All conditions must be perfect to get a good crop of plums to harvest. I’m open to suggestions for what to do with our next bumper crop. All of these recipes are worth trying again with small variations. The plums are too tart to work in any fruit recipe but ones with added sugar work well.

This intimidating word is really a simple method of building up garden soil. Hugelkultur is a permaculture gardening technique where dead wood is buried in the soil to add nutrients and regulate moisture. Dead wood such as the downed limbs found around the garden after a storm are gathered in the site where the new garden bed will be. Lay the limbs close together to prevent settling. On top of the limbs pile yard waste and other unfinished compost. The top layer is a blanket of finished compost or garden soil. Be sure to only use dead material when building because it may keep growing otherwise. A friend of mine once put fresh cut honeysuckle limbs as the base of her hugelkultur bed and they sprouted and grew forcing her to completely start over. To kill aggressive lawn plants in the area of the new bed cover the soil with cardboard before starting the first layer. The system works because the buried rotting wood slowly decomposes underground releasing nutrients into the lower layers of soil. The spongy wood also is great at holding excess moisture and keeping the bed at an even moisture level. I have tried a few hugelkultur beds in my garden and find that they can be immediately planted with short lived perennials or annuals. I would warn against putting them too close to trees since I have experienced several trees dyeing in the vicinity of the hugelkultur bed. I’m guessing that this is because of all the decomposition going on underground robbing the soil of some necessary nutrient that is bound up in the decomposition process. I recommend planting shallow rooted plants around the bed until the full decomposition process has run it’s course. Tomatoes are a great first year plant and then move to perennials in year two. The big benefit of the hugelkultur bed is in a productive method of removing yard waste in an attractive and un-smelly system. Fall is a great time to build a hugelkultur bed by gathering all the yard debris, piling it in the correct order, and there will be a fresh bed to plant in spring.