Bayscape Blog 8/10/11
The Beauty and Benefits of Native Plants
By Judy DeFiglio
I just returned from the vacation of a lifetime, a fantastic trip to Alaska. I expected breath taking scenery, mountains, glaciers and lots of wild life and it did not disappoint. It is a truly majestic place, where you feel the power of nature like nowhere else. What I didn’t expect, was the enormous amount of flowers. Native plants were blooming everywhere, from Fairbanks to Ketchikan. What a spectacular sight.
I had the opportunity to go on a nature hike up the side of Mount Roberts in Juneau, and there, at 1800 feet, I was surrounded by a sub alpine meadow full of blooms. What was even more amazing, I recognized most of them. There were many of the same wildflowers we have in New Jersey or close cousins. Imagine my surprise, to travel to the other side of North America and see the same plants I have been growing in my garden! Of course they were blooming at a different time. Many of our spring bloomers were blooming in late July.
The difference I noted was that in Alaska not only do these native plants spring up all over in the wild, but also, everyone grows them in their gardens as well. Alaskans seem to understand the beauty of native plants and the benefits of including them in their landscape. The growing season is short but the summer days are long with eighteen to twenty hours of sunlight. You do see lots of container gardens filled with traditional annual bedding plants to provide constant color for those few short months, but for their gardens they choose natives because they know that the natives will survive the long, brutal winter and be back next year.
The Alaskan gardener also gardens for the wildlife. They are sure to plant natives that attract birds and lots of plants that produce berries to provide a food source for animals. Blueberry bushes are as popular in Alaska as they are in New Jersey.
Maybe we need to take a lesson from our 49th State- accept the climate we live in and grow the plants that are happy here, instead of importing non natives that will never grow properly or become invasive and threaten our environment. We all need to do our part to save our waterways. Planting native plants in your garden is an easy, beneficial, and beautiful way to help. No fertilizer= no fertilizer runoff.
The natives in my garden are thriving despite the weeks of 100 degree weather, not so the few remaining exotics. I was fortunate to miss the heat wave will I was in Alaska, needing hat and gloves to visit the snow and ice covered glaciers. Since I wasn’t home, my garden was on its own. I’m happy to say that flowering in my garden right now are:
Perennials: Black-eyed-Susans (Rudbeckia), Blanket flower (Gaillardia), Blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica), Gayfeather (Liatris), Joe-Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum), Phlox (Phlox paniculata), Purple coneflower (Echinacea), Rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), Threadleaf tickseed (Coreopsis verticillata)
Shrub: Sweet pepper bush (Clethra alnifolia), Oakleaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) Many other native shrubs are starting their berry display.
