Last weekend, I was doing the usual seasonal clutter sort and purge, and I discovered several partially used bags of planting material in the garage and a whole lot of vintage stuff piling up around the house that needed to be redistributed before holiday guests arrived. What better time to design a Winter Solstice container garden to brighten our porch entryway? It was time to clear out all of the gardening tools that had piled up in that corner, anyway!
I visited my local native plant nursery and found some deeply discounted, cold-tolerant native plants with which to deck the halls (or, in my case, the front porch). Wanting to create a layered effect, I searched out examples of ground cover, rushes, sedges, ferns, and small shrubs, going for as much color as this transitional time can offer.
To my delight, I found a small young pussy willow (Salix discolor) with reddish branches, an intriguing Soft Rush “corkscrew” variety (Juncus effusus var.), some Appalachian Barren Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragarioides), Broadleaf Sedge (Carex platyphylla), Coral Bells (Heuchera americana), and abundant berrying Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). Any number of native plants could be used to achieve a similar effect, depending on what is available locally. Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana), Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea), American Holly (Ilex opaca), Winterberry (Ilex verticillata), Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), and Pretty Sedge (Carex woodii) would all be great Maryland native options.
Some of what I found on clearance were “nativars,” cultivated varieties of native plants, or are endemic to other ecoregions of Maryland, so I may not be inclined to put them all in the ground, but I’m comfortable with using them in a lovely container planting like this. With more advanced planning next year, I’ll pre-order more local, native “straight” species.
My discount plant haul was so large, though, that I needed to upgrade my container from the old terra cotta pot I had on hand to a re-purposed oak whiskey barrel I found at a local hardware store. Its aroma indicated that it was the real deal, no imported factory knock-off! This did require drilling some holes for drainage, though, to protect the barrel against freeze and thaw, and water ponding at the bottom.
I added potting soil with a small amount of leftover 50/50 peat/sand mix over a layer of small rocks to retain soil in the pot while allowing for drainage, then it was time to plant!
Following a vigorous growing season, my new plants were more than a little root-bound, so I trimmed the root ends with garden shears to allow me to ease the plants out of their nursery pots, then gave each root ball a light massage between my palms.
Everything nestled into the container well, and I was able to tuck it all in with some small scraps of moss left over from an earlier project, for insulation and moisture retention. I finished the display off with a green Jarrahdale pumpkin that will eventually become a homemade pie and some vintage decor I had around the house, along with a colorful watering can that reminds me to water.
I was pleased with the final result as a way to celebrate the transition from fall to winter and brighten the entryway of our front porch.
Container gardening is a great way for small-space gardeners to get into growing native plants throughout the seasons, as well.
If you try Winter Solstice container gardening this year, please drop us a note or picture below in the comments!
Photos & Text: Stacy Small-Lorenz, Ph.D. University of Maryland Extension | Statewide Specialist for Residential Landscape Ecology
You may have suddenly noticed yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) crowding into your mulched garden beds or lawn in late summer/early fall. Also known as “chufa sedge, tiger nut, or earth almond,” this charismatic and fascinating plant was one of humanity’s earliest cultivated plants. It is still cultivated and considered a culinary treat in North and West Africa, western Europe, and China for its nutritious nut-like tubers attached to underground stems known as “rhizomes.”
Yellow Nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) can quickly colonize bare spots in a mulched planting bed. Photo credit: Stacy Small-Lorenz | UMD
Yellow nutsedge can be identified by its yellowish coloration, stiff triangular stem, and three long leaf bracts at the base of a puffy brown flower. It tends to thrive in sunny areas with moist, disturbed soils. While similar in appearance to straw-colored flatsedge (Cyperus strigosus), it can be distinguished by its small, nut-like tubers. One yellow nutsedge plant can produce thousands of tubers, which allows it to produce more vegetation in the spring. Yellow nutsedge flowers in late summer and early fall and is a wind-pollinated plant that cannot self-pollinate.
Yellow Nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) tubers and rhizomes. Tubers distinguish it from Straw-colored Flatsedge (Cyperus strigosus). Photo credit: Stacy Small-Lorenz | UMD
Yellow nutsedge colonized North America before Europeans did, so it is considered native here by some sources. In Maryland, it is most abundant in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain ecoregions. It is often treated as an aggressive agricultural and lawn weed across the U.S. because it can quickly take over disturbed areas and may outcompete lawn or garden plants. It tends to thrive in mulched beds and lawns that are overwatered or mowed too short.
To remove yellow nutsedge manually, you’ll have more success starting early in the season, when the plants have fewer than five small leaves. If you’re pulling in late summer or early fall, once flowers have developed, you might leave tubers and rhizomes behind in the soil that will only multiply. So, if you’re trying to manage its spread, try to remove as much of the underground plant material as possible, then stay on top of pulling it early when it emerges again next summer. You might also consider re-planting the area densely with a variety of native plants suited for sunny, moist conditions, then stay on top of weeding in spring.
If you choose to make peace with yellow nutsedge as part of your landscape, however, you can take comfort in knowing that its large underground biomass contributes organic matter and aeration to clay soils, improving water infiltration and soil structure for enhanced plant growth. It also makes a greater contribution to biodiversity than turfgrass – it’s a food source for Wild Turkeys and a wide variety of mammals that root up the tubers, and it is noted by the Maryland Biodiversity Project to be a larval host plant for the Dun Skipper (Euphyesvestris).
The Dun Skipper (Euphyesvestris) uses Yellow Nutsedge as its larval host plant. Photo Credit: Katie Woods | iNaturalist CC BY-NC
By Stacy Small-Lorenz, Ph.D., Residential Landscape Ecology Specialist, University of Maryland Extension.Read more posts by Stacy.
I’ve been thinking a lot about habits lately—a whole lot. Changes in just one or two simple habits can radically transform our personal lives, society, and how we relate to the natural world, hopefully for the better but sometimes for the worse. How many of us have made a resolution or started a new habit already this year involving nature, gardening, or land stewardship? Are you sticking with it or just getting around to thinking about starting it? I am here to say: “If it matters, don’t give up!” It can take time and practice through repetition to establish or change a habit, according to an accumulating body of fascinating research around the human psychology of habits. A little bit of knowledge about how habits work can go a long way toward establishing and maintaining new habits.
The habit loop
Habits are a big part of what powers us through the day without having to think through the details of each and every step in a routine action. From wake up routines to commuting patterns, we carry out a series of regular actions based on established and regularly repeated cues, routines, and rewards. This is known as the “habit loop,” as vividly described by Charles Duhigg in his best-selling book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
Duhigg describes how habits, deeply encoded in one of the most evolutionarily ancient parts of our brains, the basal ganglia, relieve us of some of our daily cognitive load so that the more advanced parts of our brain can be devoted to higher order activities like reasoning, innovation, and decision-making. Habits can become ingrained fairly quickly if the chemical neurotransmitter reward in our brains is great enough, if the cues and rewards are strongly linked, or when routines are simplified and reinforced through regular repetition and behavior reinforcement.
Caption: An example of the habit loop illustrating part of my winter bluebird care routine. I spot a messy bird bath after a day of heavy use (visual cue), spring into action to scrub the basin and refill with clean water (routine), then enjoy the thrill of spotting a bluebird taking a drink of fresh, clean water the next morning (reward). My craving to see bluebirds in winter helps to power me through this frequent winter routine on freezing cold days. I suspect some endorphins are released in my brain every time I witness the scene of a bluebird drinking fresh water outside my window on a freezing cold winter day. Graphic: S. Small-Lorenz
Cue-routine-reward. Cue-routine-reward. A habit cycle powered by an incessant craving for a drop of neurotransmitter joy. Habits can become so routinely mechanized that they are difficult, yet not impossible, to change. It is entirely possible, though, to modify habits just through tweaking routines. It is also possible to create new habits through repetition, with clearly identified cues and rewards. To instill a new habit, it can help to establish the cue, the reward, and a simple sequence of action steps in between.
Caption: We lose the valuable benefits of leaf litter when we bag it and send it off site. Photo: S. Small-Lorenz
It occurs to me that the way we typically manage residential landscapes in Maryland is driven largely by culturally reinforced habits that may not always represent the best possible stewardship of our surrounding ecosystems. Feed the lawn with bags of manufactured fertilizer. Water that lawn with a hose tapped into municipal or well water. Mow the lawn with a roaring gas-powered machine. Rake or blow the leaves to the curb, prune and trim, then bag it all up and send it off in trucks to be dealt with off-site. There are exceptions, but as I travel through suburban Maryland, this is what I often see, all in support of a preferred aesthetic of an emerald green carpet lawn dotted with a few ornamental trees or shrubs offering low habitat value, with a high cost to our watershed, ecosystems, and climate. A whole series of lifelong, deeply ingrained lawn care habits multiplied across acres and miles depleted of beneficial insects, butterflies, and birds.
These habits also reflect missed opportunities to create better soil with higher soil organic matter that absorbs more stormwater where it falls, which would result in a more flood and drought-resilient watershed because soil with higher organic matter absorbs and retains more moisture. This, in turn, creates a foundation for a flourishing landscape that supports a wide array of biodiversity.
Keystone habits: Small actions that lead to big results
Then there are habits known as “keystone habits.” Like the architectural feature that supports an arch or keystone species that sustain an ecosystem, keystone habits are those habits that have the power to make big change throughout a system, by means of small actions. Small action = big change. It sounds so simple and gratifying, right? But is it realistic?
Duhigg gives examples of successful organizations and individuals who have identified and implemented keystone habits to achieve positive change and desired outcomes. These include daily habits drilled by Michael Phelps that helped him to break a world swimming record in an Olympic race, even while his goggles failed him, and former Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill’s singular, unprecedented obsession with workplace safety that dramatically transformed its corporate culture and overall productivity, despite initial deep doubts and laments of indignant shareholders. Think about a life-altering habit that you have adopted, changed, or left behind. How hard was it but how much did it transform your life to eventually change that habit? Research has shown that cues and rewards of the habit loop can be difficult to rewire, but that it is also entirely possible to alter the routine between the cue and reward to achieve a more desired outcome.
My primary driving question these days is: “How do we change habits to improve habitat?”
As I review the many sustainable practices promoted through our Bay-Wise Living Landscapes Program, I am searching for those potential keystone habits that we should emphasize in 2025 that represent small actions for big changes. Small behavior changes across the landscape that, when added up, could have an outsized, beneficial impact on our watersheds and their ecosystems.
My 2025 keystone habit for Maryland
If I could foster one keystone habit change across Maryland in 2025 it would be this: “Recycle yard debris on-site.” This one habit actually captures a number of low-cost but beneficial practices, such as leaving leaf litter where it falls, leaf mulching, grass-cycling, and creating wildlife brush-piles from yard prunings. So, technically, we’re talking about habits within a habit.
Caption: Leaf litter (L) and a log under a layer of snow (R). Firefly larvae take shelter in leaf litter and logs throughout the winter. Yard “debris” has high habitat value, providing overwintering habitat for many beneficial insects and wildlife species. Photos: S. Small-Lorenz.
Managing our yard “debris” like leaves, grass, clippings, branches, stumps, snags, and prunings in ways that acknowledge their ecological value can improve soil and water, laying the groundwork for more climate-resilient landscapes and communities. Leaving leaves where they fall nourishes soil and vegetation, retains soil moisture, creates a substrate for native plants to establish, and provides an insulating ground layer of habitat for a wide array of species.
Leaf mulching and composting on-site are other sustainable options for managing leaf litter. Grass-cycling by leaving grass clippings on the lawn instead of bagging it up and sending it off-site provides a free, natural fertilizer with a much lower carbon footprint than trucking it off or applying manufactured fertilizer. Arranging downed limbs and pruned branches into brush piles provides shelter for songbirds and small mammals on extended snowy days like we’ve had this month and throughout the year and returns carbon and nutrients to the soil. (The main exception to this habit is to remove and properly dispose of invasive non-native plant materials, especially those that reproduce vegetatively or have gone to seed, to avoid spreading them.)
Caption: Brush pile in deep snow, surrounded by animal tracks. Photo: S. Small-Lorenz
How does habit change take root in the community?
However, pleading with people or even providing scientific evidence is not likely to make these habit changes take hold on a large enough scale to make a measurable impact across an entire watershed. Study upon study has shown that people are more likely to respond to a combination of seeing their neighbors do it and financial incentives over any amount of urging, pleading, pledging, or piles of scientific evidence (Bergquist et al. 2023). Could this be because neighbor cues and financial rewards better tap into this primal habit loop of cue-routine-reward? There is evidence that the answer to this question is “yes.”
Friction, cues, and incentives
In a fascinating review, Mazar et al. (2021) identified three successful strategies for motivating environmental behavior change through policy, and I believe these strategies are applicable to individuals and organizations as well. First is the strategic use of friction. Identify where friction can be reduced or increased to motivate habit change. Make it easy to implement the desired behavior (reduce friction) or a little more challenging to do it the old way (add friction). They cite a number of environmental behavior change studies, including one that made it easier to recycle by reducing steps to the recycling bin or a little more expensive to use disposable bags through token bag fees. This is a matter of simplifying the routine in the cue-routine-reward habit loop to lead to the desired behavior or complicating it to deter less desired behavior.
Caption: A blue male Eastern Bluebird points his bill upwards as he drinks water from a bird bath during a snowfall. An adjacent inkberry provides winter cover for birds. Photo: S. Small-Lorenz.
Eastern Bluebirds are fussy and require water to drink alongside their breakfast of shelled sunflower seeds and mealworms, which requires maintaining a clean, heated bird bath throughout the winter. In my own practice of wintering bluebird care, I had to find a way to reduce “friction” to make it easier to regularly scrub our heated bird bath during a busy winter work week, especially when it gets dark before I come home from work, and we have shut off outdoor taps to avoid freezing and burst pipes. We finally installed a simple adhesive hook under the sink so that I could easily find my special scrubber, and I now keep the watering can near the front door for easy refills. I found that I could vastly reduce the hassle of refilling and scrubbing the birdbath simply by making it easy to reach for my tools, speeding up the process and frequency of scrubbing the bird bath and heater. I simplified the routine so that the visual cue – a messy birdbath – more easily resulted in the reward – waking up to my bluebirds and their flock mates drinking clear fresh water right outside my front window.
“Re-setting the default” is a related strategy. A variety of studies have shown that setting the desired behavior as the default results in more rapid and widespread adoption of the more environmentally friendly option. For example, placing vegetarian meals at the top of a menu or adjusting office thermostat default settings resulted in significantly higher uptake of the desired pro-environment behaviors. In a different but related example, if I see salad at the start of a buffet meal, I will undoubtedly fill my plate with a bed of greens. If I encounter the dessert table first, you’d better believe I’m starting with the cheesecake!
Second is implementing clear cues to action – for example, studies showed that improving signage on cafeteria recycling bins using clear visual symbols right at the disposal site resulted in positive environmental behavior changes. I see this as directly tapping into the cue part of the cue-routine-reward habit loop.
Third is psychologically informed incentives that steer people toward desired environmental habits or away from detrimental habits. It turns out that people really like and value free things. Small fees, like the bag fee, have resulted in major societal behavior shifts by imposing a very small cost on the behavior of accepting a disposable bag. My local natural foods store takes it a step further by offering a wooden nickel token for each reusable bag a customer deploys, to donate to their choice of three local charities. There’s a double reward to accelerate that cue-routine-reward habit loop. Save the bag fee and donate it on the spot to a charity making a positive impact in the community.
Savor the intangible rewards
Rewards don’t always have to be financial, although small financial rewards or rebates have been shown to motivate environmental behavior change on a societal level. Rewards may come in the form of cost and time-savings or they may be as intangible as the smell of rich organic soil that you and your tree co-created, the endorphins released during the exercise of planting a common witch hazel shrub, the pleasure of seeing an Eastern Bluebird take a drink of fresh water from your clean, heated bird bath on a freezing winter day, or the joy of sighting that first firefly flicker of June.
Captions: Top: leaf litter, prunings, and standing woodland sunflower stems in the winter during a January snowfall event. Bottom: litter and songbird tracks in a light layer of snow. Photos: S. Small-Lorenz
If we can get comfortable with a slightly rougher and wilder aesthetic in our residential landscapes, the biodiversity and climate-resilience benefits could be immense. These new habits lend themselves to creativity – you can be as messy, manicured, or artistic as you would like with them yet still enjoy the benefits of rich soil, sustained soil moisture, pollinators, songbirds, hawks, and owls in your yard or park.
If you have resolved to become a better steward of nature this year, or even if you are just now thinking about trying your hand at some aspect of ecological landscaping, try putting your new knowledge of the habit loop to the test. If you’re looking for a place to start, join me in recycling your yard waste on-site in 2025. It may take a while to adjust and get the hang of this way of doing things, but once you get in the habit loop by identifying your cues, routines, and rewards, I predict that the workload becomes lighter, the cost savings will add up, and the many intangible rewards of being a better watershed steward right where you live will be noticeable and energizing.
References
Berguist, M. M. Thiel, M.H. Goldberg, S. van der Linden. 2023. Field interventions for climate change mitigation behaviors: A second-order meta-analysis. PNAS 120(13).
Duhigg, C. 2023. The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Penguin Random House. New York.
Mazar, A., G. Tomaino, Z. Carmon, W. Wood. 2021. Habits to save our habitat: Using the psychology of habits to promote sustainability. Behavioral Science & Policy, 7(2). Pp. 75-89.
By Stacy Small-Lorenz, Ph.D., Residential Landscape Ecology Specialist, University of Maryland Extension. Read more posts by Stacy.
It’s that most glorious time of year in Maryland, peak autumn, a time of constant change where every day brings new explosions of color. Beyond leaf peeping along our morning commutes, changes large and small are detectable in exquisite detail, if we only pause to step out in nature to look, listen, and smell the fragrance of the season in the air.
Right now, migratory birds are coming and going, shrubs are blooming and berrying, bees of all stripes are scrambling for the last drops of nectar as fall flowers fade. With some surprisingly low-cost, low-maintenance strategies, you can begin right away to transform your local landscape into a brilliant fall banquet for birds, bees, and butterflies.
Pollinators continue to gather nectar from late fall flowers. Photos: S. Small-Lorenz
At this time of year, wintering birds are beginning to arrive from the north, while some summer visitors linger to enjoy the bounty of fall. Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis) are already returning from their northern breeding grounds. I spotted my first juncos of the season flitting about the raised garden beds on Halloween right outside of the Anne Arundel County Extension office.
Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) butterflies were introduced to North America and are common across Maryland. Their larvae are considered to be crop pests. They typically reach the end of their adult life cycles toward late October. Photo: S. Small-Lorenz
On the same day, Cabbage White butterflies were still mobbing blooming New York asters in the brilliant noon sunlight on a day of record-breaking late October heat. The viburnum berries had already been plucked, possibly by the Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) singing nearby, and its outermost foliage had turned a deep Cabernet red on a chillier night. I suspect that mockingbird has now staked out the American holly berries ripening nearby, as he seeks to maximize his energy intake before winter sets in.
At Howard County Conservancy the day before, I noticed winterberry shrubs loaded with ripening berries, where another singing mockingbird steadfastly stood guard. Native honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) is flowering and berrying simultaneously, gracing the trellis archway into the native plant garden, and the common witch-hazel (Hamamelisvirginiana) is blooming, our only witch-hazel to bloom in the fall.
Ripening American Holly (Ilex opaca) Berries. Photo: S. Small-LorenzNative Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). Photo: S. Small-LorenzWinterberry Holly (Ilex verticillata). Photo: S. Small-LorenzFall-blooming, native Common Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana). Photo: S. Small-Lorenz
Taking cues like this from nature can be an excellent strategy for planning our conservation landscaping for year-round color. Planting native berrying shrubs and evergreens not only extends our color palette, it provides natural sources of food and shelter for songbirds like Gray Catbirds (Dumetella carolinensis), Northern Mockingbirds, Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum), Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis), Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata), Ruby-crowned Kinglets (Corthylio calendula), and thrushes as temperatures cool and extra energy is required to fuel up before, during and after migration.
Leaving fall seed heads standing into winter also provides resources for a whole array of seed-eating birds like sparrows and finches. Even as flowers begin to wilt and fade, they still provide essential nectar resources to native insects that are beneficial for their pollination and pest control services, not to mention as songbird prey.
So if you are considering what you can do right now for nature and the environment in your own neighborhood, here are a few low- to no-cost fall strategies to get you started right away:
Map out one or more locations that you would like to dedicate to a native shrub planting area. Make note of conditions (wet/dry, sunny/shady, soil type) so that you can select the right plants for your site when the time comes. It isn’t too late to plant native shrubs in most parts of Maryland, but if you choose to wait for spring, you can still start preparing the bed and browsing for fall-berrying shrubs now (see #5)! If you don’t know your soil type, this is the perfect time to do some home soil analysis. Observe where stormwater flows off of your property, and consider planting a mulched stormwater buffer using arborist wood chips and native plants to absorb rainwater which can both help reduce downstream flooding and improve water quality while beautifying your landscape.
Pledge to leave the leaves this fall. Raking a thick layer of leaves into your designated shrub planting bed will almost immediately start to create habitat, retain soil moisture, and build rich living soils. I call this “Raking by Design.” Think about this – who rakes the leaves in the forest? Towhees, sparrows, jays, bats, squirrels, deer, and many more wild residents…a reminder that leaf “litter” is an important habitat component for many creatures, and it puts essential nutrients back into the soil as the leaves decompose. If you’re concerned about leaves blowing around, it’s fairly easy to contain whole leaves with low garden border fencing, but it isn’t entirely necessary. Consider designating a portion of your yard a ‘no-rake’ wild zone, where you leave the leaves undisturbed, right where they fall.
Leave the leaves for healthy soil and habitat. Photo: S. Small-Lorenz
Leave your native flowers standing well into winter, beyond peak bloom. Birds, bees, and butterflies will benefit from the stems and seed heads well into fall and early winter.
Use fall prunings, cuttings, logs or stumps to create shelter for overwintering birds, bees, and other wildlife. Recycling your “yard waste” is one of the easiest, low cost ways to start building healthy soil and creating habitat to benefit biodiversity in your local landscape. This can take the form of a brush pile, wood pile (situated well away from your home’s foundation), leaving a natural stump instead of stump-grinding, or building a simple “bug snug” like the one pictured here.
A “bug snug” made with cut woody stems, seed heads, and leaves will provide a shelter for overwintering insects, stem-nesting bees, and birds. Photo: C. Carignan
Browse options for native berrying shrubs to plant this fall or next spring that would be right for the conditions in your yard. While browsing native plant resources like Alliance for Chesapeake Bay’s Native Plant Center, also make note of whether the shrubs you choose are dioecious or not, meaning that you may need to consider planting female and male plants near one another in order for flowers to be fertilized and berries to form. Finding native plants locally right when you want them can be a bit challenging when getting started, so take some time to familiarize yourself with Maryland native plant material sources via Maryland Native Plant Society’s native plant shopping resources.
Which of these low-cost, low-maintenance strategies are you planning to try to enhance your fall living landscape? Which berrying shrubs might you consider adding to your fall banquet? Leave us a comment below, and don’t forget to let us know which wild visitors are enjoying the fall feast in your neighborhood!
By Stacy Small-Lorenz, Agent, Residential Landscape Ecology, University of Maryland Extension.Read more posts by Stacy.
I recently visited a splendid Bay-Wise demonstration site at Baltimore’s Cylburn Arboretum with Maryland Extension’s Native Plant Specialist Lisa Kuder. We dropped in on a workshop with Cylburn staff about dividing perennial plants and visited the Arboretum’s rain garden, brilliant with colorful fall native plants.
Rain garden at Cylburn Arboretum. Photo: Stacy Small-Lorenz
Along the way, Lisa and I discussed strategies that can be practiced to expand herbaceous native plant coverage, as we admired the Arboretum garden grounds and mansion. We noticed right away that the gardeners wisely left the post-bloom common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) standing in all their wilted majesty throughout the otherwise manicured gardens as the seed pods developed and cracked open to release seed.
Milkweed seeds. Photo: Stacy Small-Lorenz
To seed or not to seed?
Cylburn horticulturalists are allowing the milkweed to go to seed and expand by putting out runners and sprouting new growth along the edges of their otherwise traditionally immaculate garden beds. Garden Educator Ron Roberto explained that they prefer to allow the milkweed to spread throughout the gardens by seed or rhizomally, by sending out runners, rather than dividing and transplanting (although I have personally had some luck transplanting “rescue” milkweeds from dense patches a few times).
Milkweed sprouts at Cylburn. Photo: Stacy Small-Lorenz
In days past, people may have viewed common milkweed as a messy weed to be eliminated from such stately grounds, and some still may. Now its importance to the rapidly declining monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and other beautiful pollinators is more widely recognized, but it is important to note that the stems and seeds of the plant have ecological value beyond its prime bloom time. Common milkweed flowers are boisterously showy and fragrant, but keeping the sturdy stems, fading leaves and seed pods standing after blooms’ end is an important ecological practice and requires us to expand on what we consider beautiful to encompass more aspects of our ecosystems and all of the wondrous life cycles contained within. For small-space gardeners, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is a somewhat more demure but also beneficial and beautiful native milkweed to consider planting, but research has shown that monarchs lay the most eggs on common and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata).
Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Photo: M. TalabacCommon Milkweed ( (Asclepias syriaca). Photo: M. TalabacButterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa). Photo: C. Carignan
Allowing plants to reproduce by seed maximizes genetic diversity and helps avoid having monocultures in your landscape, an important sustainable landscaping principle. Genetic diversity is required to allow plant populations to adapt to variable and changing climate conditions. Too much of the same genetics can result from strictly practicing vegetative propagation from cuttings or plant divisions, leaving plants vulnerable to things like disease, pests, reproductive failure, or climate extremes of drought or flood. So let those fall milkweeds stand and go to seed. There’s a good chance that the stems will also become host to beneficial pollinators like native bees over the winter, as well.
Why divide perennials, then, you say?
Well, divisions are necessary to keep some perennial plant species healthy, to stimulate new growth, reduce crowding, and sustainably manage garden beds. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants writes, “Our elders taught that the relationship between plants and humans must be one of balance. People can take too much and exceed the capacity of the plants to share again. That’s the voice or hard experience that resonates in the teachings of “never take more than half.” And yet, they also teach that we can take too little. If we allow traditions to die, relationships to fade, the land will suffer. These laws are the product of hard experience, of past mistakes. And not all plants are the same; each has its own way of regenerating.”
Carefully dividing perennials can be a sustainable and economical way to expand your native plant coverage in your landscape and keep your plants healthy. Native plant exchanges across neighborhoods are one strategy to boost genetic diversity if you’re interested in spreading the native plant love beyond your own yard by safely sharing your native plants. We look forward to establishing a Bay-Wise Native Plant Exchange via social media in the near future, so watch this space for more details to come.
When should I divide perennials?
In general, you’ll want to avoid dividing plants while blooming. The cooler temperatures of spring and fall also help reduce heat stress on the plant. It will be easier to dig and separate out plants at the roots following a rain. I know what I’ll be doing this weekend! I have a sprawling patch of woodland sunflowers (Helianthus divaricatus) along my driveway that were a veritable AirB&Bee all summer long that have now gone to seed, so it’s time to thin them out and expand my sunflower bed to absorb more of our stormwater runoff.
Red-banded hairstreak butterfly on woodland sunflower. Photo: Stacy Small-Lorenz
If native grasses are your thing, cool-season grasses are best divided in the early fall, warm-season grasses in early spring. More details about when and how to divide different types of perennials can be found on Clemson University’s website.
The great divide
To get started, you will first need to decide if you are going to pot or immediately relocate your divides. If you are potting up your divides, set up a simple potting station nearby with small pots, a transplant tool or knife, loose, clean soil, and compost or leaf mulch. I like Leaf Gro because it is a Maryland sustainable product made from locally collected leaves. You may want to have a water mister bottle or some wet cloth (burlap or a light cotton towel or damp sheet will do) or paper to protect the exposed roots, as well. If you are relocating the divides elsewhere in your landscaping, prepare your planting hole ahead of time by digging double the volume as the root ball and sprinkling in layers of leaf mulch and loose soil.
Now you are ready to divide the plant. If the soil is damp, this whole process will be easier on you and the plant. Gently dig up an outer portion of your native plant, working your way around the entire section with the shovel, assessing root depth as you go. Try to get all the way under the root tips before lifting the plant out of the ground. Think vertically rather than horizontally. Our aim is to divide the root system but not to cut the roots short.
When dividing or transplanting any native plants to transplant within your yard, you may want to keep some of the soil that the plant is currently rooted in, as the roots tend to establish important relationships with local soil microbes and fungi. If you wish to share with your neighbors and Bay-Wise Community, though, please be mindful of not spreading weed seeds or pests like invasive jumping worms! Don’t share soil from your yard if you know jumping worms or other invasives to be present. If you are unsure about the presence of invasives in your yard, bare root plants in sterile potting soil instead, to be safe. Mindfully sharing divided perennials is just one way of spreading the native plant love for a climate-resilient and healthy Chesapeake Bay landscape!
After digging up a small portion of the plant, gently knock off chunks of soil back into the hole you dug it from with your planting tool or fingers. Shake loose soil right back into the hole with some leaf mulch to repair the garden bed and gently work excess soil out of the roots with your fingers.
Woodland sunflower, bare roots. Photo: Stacy Small-Lorenz
Keep the roots moist as you work, using your damp cloth, paper, or mister bottle, and have your new planting hole prepared for quick relocation. If immediate relocation isn’t your goal, have your planting pots and tray, clean water bucket, sterile potting soil, and compost ready at your planting station.
You’re now ready to divide the root ball with a transplanting tool or knife into smaller sections, being careful to wear good gardening gloves, or you can gently work the roots apart with your fingers if you’re working with small clumps. At this point, you can remove any dead vegetation and trim the green portions back to about 6 inches. Re-pot in clean, small pots with loose, sterile soil and a sprinkle of leaf mulch.
Now you have native plants to safely share or relocate to expand your pollinator or rain garden!
QUICK TIPS: Try to get photos of your plant in bloom to share in your plant exchange or for your own garden design needs. Label the pots or mark your garden map so that you don’t forget what you have over the winter!
By Stacy Small-Lorenz, Agent, Residential Landscape Ecology, University of Maryland Extension.Read more posts by Stacy.
The news out of the southeastern US following Hurricane Helene is heart-wrenching. Up to a foot of heavy rain fell on saturated soils across mountainous western North Carolina, in the fallout of a hurricane that made landfall in Florida but dumped 40 trillion gallons of rainwater across several states.
Aerial photo of Tropical Storm Helene flood damage in North Carolina. Photo credit: Sgt. 1st Class Leticia Samuels, US Army National Guard
Inland communities were not spared from this coastal storm that sent torrents of water through mountain towns, leaving a wake of wreckage in its path. Roads, bridges, and buildings have collapsed under the force of debris-laden flood waters throughout the region.
Airlift rescues and supply drops are underway, but many residents remain cut off, and countless are yet unaccounted for across the region at the time of writing. The Federal government has issued Major Disaster declarations for areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Marylanders hold all affected by this powerful storm in our hearts and stand ready to support their recovery.
Extreme precipitation events like this are becoming a new norm, brought about by increasingly powerful storms carrying more water, driven by the heat energy of warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures. Hurricanes and tropical storms forming over warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico contain more energy and hold more moisture, with the potential to bring record amounts of rainfall anywhere throughout the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and New England regions. Tropical Storm Helene reminds us again that inland and upland regions can still be devastated by coastal storms. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed is no exception.
Animated satellite image of Hurricane Helene. Source: NWS/NOAA
It is with all of this and more on my mind and in my heart that I assume the new role of Residential Landscape Ecologist at University of Maryland Extension. I look forward to advancing green strategies that reduce flood risk and pollution from stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay while enhancing biodiversity. This work is vital to addressing the most extreme impacts of climate change like floods, heavy precipitation, heat waves, and drought. We can do it in ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well and bring a great deal of joy to our lives and communities while we’re at it. The Maryland Bay-Wise Landscape Management Program encourages widespread and strategic uptake of nature-based practices that improve water quality and reduce flood risk.
In this position, I will work closely with university colleagues, agency and NGO partners, and Maryland residents to promote sustainable landscape practices that contribute to a healthy and climate-resilient Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Efforts to retain, slow down, and filter stormwater using native plants and landscaping strategies like rain gardens, pollinator gardens, forest conservation, and riparian buffer strips can help reduce the overall amount of water running off from lawns and impervious surfaces like rooftops and asphalt. Allowing more rainwater to be absorbed where it falls reduces and delays flood peaks downstream while ensuring cleaner water for aquatic species and habitat for beneficial insects, declining songbird populations, and other Maryland wildlife.
Here in this space, I look forward to sharing perspectives on emerging science and trends in climate-resilient sustainable landscapes, environmental horticulture practices and gardening for wildlife, and dialogues with bearers of traditional knowledge – getting my own hands dirty along the way as I share some of my personal experiences with conservation landscaping in my wild corner of the Earth.
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to join you and my Extension colleagues on this important journey, as there is vital work to be done to ensure a healthy and sustainable future for Maryland communities.
If you would like to help those impacted by Hurricane Helene, Charity Navigator has compiled this list of highly rated organizations providing relief assistance for those affected. Emergency resources for those in the impacted area and their families can be found at FEMA.gov.
By Stacy Small-Lorenz, Agent, Residential Landscape Ecology, University of Maryland Extension.
