July, When the Garden Is Glorious!
Photo and article by Monika Smith
Photographed July 18 last year, my front yard was knee-deep in native plants: grasses, perennials, flowers and shaded by shrubs. They did well all summer, in spite of drought, water restrictions, and aphid infestation.
All the flowers in the photo are hardy and have a decent blooming time. In addition, they can grow in poor soil, with little tending, and the only mulching is leaf and plant litter in the fall. I do add a bit of ‘montane’ mulch if there’s a bare spot. The fine leaf litter mulch turns into compost and voila, nutrients become available! Just before it gets really warm, I cut back stems, thin out the bunch grass, etc., as insects and critter have emerged. Why thin out native bunch grasses? That’s how they evolved: to be eaten by herbivores. That said, if they are not, they can become a fire hazard. That’s fine for a native prairie, which relies on this to rejuvenate, but not now. All of my plants are established, so no need for watering as there’s always some rain in May. May showers bring June flowers! Plus, all that clay underneath? It’s holding the water and is kept in with native flowers and grasses on top.
They might not be specimen perfect. Instead of a half metre tall, they’re a quarter. If you provide regular water, rich soil and tending you will get a huge plant.
Early in spring, every creeping and crawling thing is hungry, so insects and other critters are nectar (and also sugar) hunting. Bees have done this very successfully, coevolving with flowering plants some 100 million years ago from wasps; bees became vegan and needed nectar. Wasps are still wasps. They also become pollinators going from flower to flower for nectar and picking up pollen to produce seeds.
All the flowers in the photo can be found as seeds or plugs, sometimes even potted at local native-plant growers. Fortunately, as the interest in native plants increases, a few big local nurseries are now also growing native plants. Big box store insta-nurseries bring in ready-to-plant, showy items from BC or other warmer places before our ground is really warm or air temperature consistent. Always check labels and the Latin name—don’t accept just ‘coneflower’ as that can be confusing. Just ‘google’ the Latin names of our native plants and check. Avoid hybrids as sometimes the plant is too many generations away from the original and the plant may be less vigorous. Native plants have genetic diversity, while highly hybridized plants don’t. However, we prefer consistency. That package of seeds says ‘X’ and how to grow it; that’s what we want. Think about how specialized the one and only supermarket banana we buy: one virus or fungus could wipe it out and we would be scrambling to identify what native bananas could replace it.
My front yard isn’t all like this. I do have other flowering plants, rocks, really poor soil in places, shrubs or ground cover. I’ve deliberately added grasses as that is what I see in naturalized or wilderness areas. Although in a wilderness area, plants are spaced wider apart and less ‘lush’ looking. That lush look is very nice.
I expect my front yard to look different from last year. And that makes it amazing and showing me that letting nature colour outside my lines offers that surprise and joy that I need.
For more information about Naturally, Glendale, native plants or biodiversity, contact Monika at [email protected]. You are welcome to contact Monika for questions and comments on gardening!
Image of small part of my front yard. In the centre of the image are blanket flowers (Gaillardia aristate). The blue bell-shaped flower is the harebell (Campanula Alaskana). The tall mauve pink spikes? Fireweed! Chamaenerion angustifolium. A bit harder to see: silver lupin (Lupinus argenteus) a lovely blue spike, smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve) that is just starting to blossom and if you squint, and see a hint of red? That’s a red paintbrush (Castilleja miniate). It’s a bit more difficult to grow as it’s a hemiparastic plant, but well worth the effort. All this using natural rain, no compost, no mulch, poor soil and very occasional pulling of weeds.
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