Summersweet Clethra

 

The Sweet Smell of Summer

 

Oh, how the gardens are alive with butterflies this time of year!  Finally, in the past two weeks, we are seeing so many fluttering around the nursery searching for nectar.  And lucky for us, it’s a living lab.  We get to watch and see which plant the butterflies love the most.  Butterfly plants are the most commonly requested at the nursery.  And I hear so many people say the same thing…I get hoards of butterflies on my Butterfly Bush.  Butterfly Bush is not native, although many people think it is because it has escaped cultivation and become naturalized.  It is not on the invasive list in PA, but it might be soon.

 

Summersweet Clethra 'Ruby Spice'



There is a great native shrub that is the perfect substitute to Butterfly Bush.  It goes by the name Summersweet Clethra, or Clethra alnifolia.  It has a similarly shaped flower, but more cylindrical than pyramidical.  The straight species is white, but one of our favorite cultivars is ‘Ruby Spice’.  The best part is the scent…they don’t call it Summersweet for nothing!  You can smell a large Summersweet shrub before you see it.  And ‘Ruby Spice’ blossoms have such a gorgeous color gradient, rose to light pink to white.  It grows best in moist conditions but it will tolerate drier conditions once established.  It prefers full sun to part shade and in comparison to Butterfly Bush, it is much more rounded and full all the way to the ground and topping out at 5-8’.  It is attractive in fall with its yellow fall foliage.  Once you get a whiff of it in bloom, you’ll wish you were a butterfly so you could drink its sweet nectar!   

Native Bees

Native Bees 

 

 

As I drive to the nursery, I look at all the homes nestled into farmland, each property like a unique piece of fabric in the landscape quilt.   The day progresses and I find myself talking to a gardener about planting flowers amongst their tomato plants to increase fruit yield or explaining why clover in the lawn is actually a good thing.  I drive to my consultation and I am helping a homeowner decide whether or not to clear out those “wild” areas along the fencerows near the farmers’ field and what to do with the vast amount of acreage that is lawn.   

 

 

Thanks to the media focus on Colony Collapse Disorder, most of us know the role that honeybees play in sustaining our food source.  But fewer people are aware of the fact that native bees are also important pollinators for crops. The honeybee, which is a non-native European bee, is essential for commercial growers.  The bees can be kept in hives and moved around from place to place, pollinating large monocrops upon demand.  Most of our wild bees on the other hand are solitary and require natural habitat because they are ground bees or wood bees.  They obtain nectar from a variety of sources instead of having a limited diet of the beekeeper’s choosing.  Supporting native bees seems to be the best insurance plan for our food crops. 

We have over 300 species of native bees in PA and they are the ones pollinating the majority of our summer crops.  As a gardener, you can do some simple things to support native bees.  If you have a large lawn, create forest or meadow habitat along the edges.  Allow clover to grow and flower in your lawn.  Plant borage with your tomatoes.   Let some of your basil bolt for the bees.  Leave snags and stumps in place.  Don’t use pesticides.  Plant Linden trees which provide a large amount of flowers early, when food sources are scarce.  Plant masses of diverse flower shapes and colors (Helenium and Mountain Mint shown above) that flower from spring through fall.  By providing food for our native bees, we ensure food for ourselves. 

More information on native pollinators in our area

 

 

 

Meadow Sightings

It's a beautiful thing to see a managed meadow in full bloom! I've seen two recently, and wanted to share some pictures.

First up: Angelica Park in the city of Reading. This is a real "wow", especially if you haven't been there recently. As most locals know, the dam that held the small lake there broke in 2001, resulting in the loss of the lake and a messy build-up of sediment that covered the once-beautiful area. Fast forward 8 years, and Angelica Park is now an Environmental Education Center for the city of Reading. An environmental education building is planned to occupy the footprint of the old boat house (right: a view from the boat house). But for now, what's there is Angelica Creek, a small fishing pond, and an expansive "floodplain meadow", with meandering trails throughout. A trail from Angelica Park to the Ken-Grill Recreation Center has recently been completed, as well. Apparently, it goes right by the house where I grew up in Kenhorst (the bronze marker hasn't gone up yet). Read more info. on a proposed Angelica Greenway all the way to Nolde Forest here.

At the beginning of July, here's what that meadow looked like up close - and believe me, the pictures aren't doing this justice:



Above: Yellow Heliopsis and Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) - the Vervain is the purplish wash that you can see in the pictures. The lower picture is what the individual plants look like up close.

Below: Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) is in the foreground, along with more yellow Heliopsis to the right.


Wouldn't this be a great place to take the family on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

Next up - a meadow in someone's front yard. Now, this is not just any old 'someone' - it's the front yard of Mike and Jan Slater, area botanical experts and enthusiasts and part of the founding group of the Berks Native Seed Bank Project. Jan also works at Sugarbush, and going to her house and seeing her garden confirmed my initial suspicion that she is just working at the nursery for entertainment purposes. But, no matter - we benefit from her expertise, even if she is light years ahead. Again - the pictures aren't doing this justice....


Above: the main front yard planting is, as of mid-July, between 2-15 ft. tall. It is mowed down completely every March. Too many species are planted here to name, but it includes lots of Helianthus, Joe-Pye (Eupatorium species), Cup Plant (Silphium species), goldenrod (Solidago species) and grasses.



Above: a rain garden captures water running off from the driveway with a mixture of species adapted to moist conditions: Common and Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca and incarnata), Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), Pink Tickseed (Coreopsis rosea), Joe-Pye (Eupatorium species), and more. Below right: a gorgeous planting of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) - the strain they raise has distinctly reddish tones. Asclepias is the family that hosts Monarch butterflies.

This may not be what every homeowner dreams of doing to their front yard, but there's no question about the ecological benefits of this type of planting. Mike was walking around with a pair of binoculars around his neck, which came in helpful throughout our walk as he stopped to identify the different kinds of birds that called his front yard "home". He also sighted numerous species of butterflies, and talk about mowing the wild violets centered around whether or not the chrysalis' had been abandoned yet. Clearly, nature was thriving here - as is also apparent in the managed meadow at Angelica Park.

This blog entry is getting long, but in brief: good management and species diversity are important components of meadows, whether they are in public parks or your own back (or front!) yard.

The only reason there is not more invasive purple loosestrife than Blue Vervain at Angelica is because the purple loosestrife is managed aggressively - and even with those controls, there are still many plants there. And the miscanthus grass that Mike and Jan planted in their front yard meadow many years ago - one of the few non-native species included there - is being slowly replaced by them with native species, as it threatens to take over more than its share of space in the yard.

Species diversity also ensures that many different types of birds, butterflies, and other wildlife may find habitat that suits them perfectly - and provides food, shelter, and breeding grounds throughout the seasons.

Here's a good article on meadows that came out recently in the Hardy Plant Society newsletter - with some familiar names!

Local Homeowners Fighting the Good Fight....and Winning!

This year, I have been invited to many people's houses to come and look at their natural areas and help them identify plants, and so far, I've had the opportunity to get to 3 of them. All 3 were so amazing, I just had to write a post about them!

The first was a property in Mount Penn. Contrary to my assumption that Mt. Penn was basically just Perkiomen Avenue, and perhaps a side street or two, I soon discovered that there is an entire village built right into the side of the mountain, which really shows how sheltered I've been that I didn't know this existed! Winding my way through the narrow streets, passing house after house that seemed to have been carved right out of the bedrock, each different and unique, many extremely quaint, I really had the sense that I wasn't in familiar territory. J. greeted me on the steps of her house, which had to be at least 30 ft. above street level, but was only about 10 feet from the street. Considering the extreme slope of her front yard, I vowed to never complain again, EVER, about my terrain. You saw it in writing here.

Turns out her property continued up at the same extreme angle in her backyard, so walking to look at plants felt a little like climbing Mount Everest. I was frankly amazed that J. managed to plant anything at all, considering how precarious it would be to set foot on one of those hills and attempt to dig a hole, but plant things she had. She chuckled when we passed the spicebush she'd paid $20 for the previous year, only to realize later that her property was covered with mature specimens already!

J.'s property, like the other 2 properties I visited, was a beautiful woodlands property, with a canopy of mature chestnut trees and an understory of - yes! - spicebush, but invasives were lurking everywhere. J.'s major problem plant appeared to be multiflora rose, but we also saw a new stand of mile-a-minute weed dangerously close to some beautiful colonies of Jack-in-the-pulpits. Our major discovery was a young paw-paw tree, which J. first thought she recognized, and then we confirmed - and not only that tree, but several babies all around it! J. was overjoyed, and we determined that her first priority would be to keep the multiflora rose away from that small stand, to let it continue to grow and develop. J. was fanatic about the invasives, and described to me her continuing efforts over the years. Even as we walked along, she was pulling them here and there. In addition to keeping close tabs on the invasives, she had industriously planted many natives throughout her property, including a hazelnut most recently.

The other 2 properties I visited were even closer to home, just a few minutes away in Robeson township. However, they could have been a world away for all I could recognize of the landscape - these two properties were like fairylands, yet they were inhabited by real people. Perhaps the feeling I was in fairyland was heightened by the amazing, sinuous cob wall at the front yard of the first property - a hand-made earthen wall, with a slate-tiled roof, and beautifully gnarled branches accenting and forming the windows and doors. Now that's just something you don't see every day!

But, back to the properties. Here was a situation where two neighbors, with contiguous properties, realized they were gardening soulmates, and have been jointly gardening and caring for their two properties ever since. Their properties were also on a hill - one at the top, one at the bottom - making for another steep descent and climb, although not nearly as extreme as Mt. Penn. And it was yet another example of people who have managed to coax the beauty back into their landscapes, which had been completely taken over by invasive plants when they first moved into the houses. D. described the property thus: "It was like the forest around Sleeping Beauty's castle - so dense, you couldn't even see your way in." D. also called the tree of heaven the tree of hell (just like I do!), and from her description, she and her husband had taken out hundreds of them, big and small, over the course of many years. The same with the multiflora rose, which undoubtedly was a major contributor to the Sleeping Beauty effect. And their efforts paid off - the understory was lush with Christmas fern, lady fern, cinnamon fern, spicebush, massive rosebay rhododendrons, pinxterbloom azaleas, and white wood aster.

The other D.'s property, nestled in a small valley at the bottom of the hill, boasted a babbling brook running right alongside the house, with a steep slope of mountain laurel, in full, gorgeous bloom, directly opposite. It really seemed like the kind of place that people would pay several hundred dollars a night just to have the opportunity to see that vista when they woke up. Everywhere we walked, they talked about their ongoing projects - here a native meadow border, there a new cob cottage, here planning to put some natural stairs near an amazing-looking rock formation, there clearing away the plants to reveal an old stone wall, nestled deep in the woods - and everywhere, how to best control the invasive plants encroaching from all angles. We identified a few plants they were dismayed to learn were invasive plants, which were in their woods - barberry, burning bush, and the first-year form of garlic mustard, which is just an attractive looking mound of leaves with pretty scalloped edges - in addition to commiserating about the ones they already knew about and were dealing with.

Coming away from these visits, I felt more invigorated than ever in my own small battle to take back the woods around my house, and the Sugarbush property, which is also a nearly impenetrable thicket of invasive plants - because these 3 homeowners had showed me what was possible, with some extreme dedication and time committment, to the task of managing the invasive plants. Perhaps my property doesn't have the same "wow!" potential that theirs do, even with lots of work, but I'm sure it can at least be a decent Pennsylvania woodlands, which is really all I want, since a decent PA woodlands is one of the most beautiful landscapes going. And if they can do it, so can I - and so can you!

Now would be a good time to mention a few good invasive plant websites that can help you ID your own invaders:

Weeds Gone Wild: http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/factmain.htm

DCNR Invasive Plants Tutorial: http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/Forestry/invasivetutorial/List.htm

Wishing us all good luck!