Turfgrass removal using newspaper and mulch. Photo: Beth Blum Spiker, University of Maryland Extension Master Gardener
Q: Our place is almost entirely lawn and we want to convert the yard into a biodiverse, native habitat for birds and butterflies. Since it is almost fall, do we cover the grass areas with newspaper and then mulch on top or leave it until spring? How do we prepare the ground for planting in spring? Can we plant things now?
Answer: If you already have decided on the beds or habitat areas, then killing the grass now is an excellent idea. Mow as low as you can. Newspaper and mulch (especially leaf mulch available in fall) should work well. Use several layers of newspaper under the mulch. Do a soil test now. Fall is a great time to plant woody plants and herbaceous perennials. However, unless you must plant now (gift plants, donated plants), you may want to wait until you have a planting plan designed for each bed. Winter is an excellent time to plan.
The Woods in Your Backyard is a comprehensive program that helps homeowners figure out how to do just what you have in mind. When selecting native plants, a great reference isNative Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation Landscaping. This online publication features photos and growing requirements for each plant in an easy-to-use chart format. Also, refer to the Home & Garden Information Center’s website for more information about native plants.
By Ellen Nibali, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center. Ellen writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun.
Have a plant or insect question? University of Maryland Extension’s experts have answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension.
Maryland temperatures are predicted to increase 5⁰ F to 11⁰ F by 2100. Higher temperatures will cause native plants to experience more heat-related stress, a situation that will be made worse by longer droughts. Warmer temperatures will cause earlier leaf out and bloom times, de-synchronizing relationships between plants and their pollinators. Invasive plants will become even more aggressive because higher atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels preferentially promote the growth of invasive plants.
Graph from NOAAs Maryland Climate Summary
Some species will adapt to the changing climate, allowing them to maintain or even expand their natural ranges. Native species that still thrive in your region, for example, have adapted to all the climate change that has occurred so far. City native plants have also adapted to all the warming associated with the urban heat island effect, and they have done so in just a few decades.
This common milkweed is thriving in a Washington D.C. hellstrip. This species’ ability to conquer the urban heat island suggests it can tolerate some climate warming. In fact, herbarium studies show that common milkweed is expanding its natural range southward despite climate change.
As the climate warms, the temperature conditions with which a species co-evolved will move north or to higher elevations. But plants can’t just get up and migrate the way some animals do. Plants migrate through seed dispersal. For northward migration to work there must be large, contiguous blocks of natural area. Species that are adapted to life on Maryland mountaintops are in peril because there are no higher elevations to migrate to.
Plants in tidal habitats must also cope with sea level rise. As of 2018, around the Chesapeake Bay, sea level is rising at a rate of ¾”to 1” every 5 years. Additionally, tidal environments are being pounded by more intense storms. Unfortunately, upslope migration is often blocked by hardened shorelines.
There are several things you can do to make your native garden plants more resilient to climate change. For example, don’t plant natives in conditions that are too sunny or too dry for them, and avoid species that are near the southern end of their natural range. Gardeners can also help protect wild native plants by helping to preserve natural area corridors that species need for migration. You can get more detail on these topics by visiting our Native Plants and Climate Change webpage.
Trees are different from other types of native plants because they live longer. If you buy a tree now, you need to select one that will be adapted to temperatures in the year 2100. In a best-case scenario (society begins to curb climate emissions now, left), the arrows point to where Marylanders should currently source native trees from. In a worst-case scenario (we do not change our emissions behavior), the red arrows (right) indicate where you should source native trees. These maps also show about how quickly plants would need to migrate. Could they migrate from Virginia to Maryland by the end of the century? Seems possible. From Georgia to Maryland? Less likely.
By Sara Tangren, Ph. D., Senior Agent Associate, Sustainable Horticulture and Native Plants, University of Maryland Extension, Home & Garden Information Center (HGIC)
Q: I would like to plant a more natural garden but am worried about irritating the neighbors who might think it is sloppy or not a garden at all! Any advice?
A: Make a natural garden look intentional. Here are three major design tips to make a garden’s intent obvious:
1) Give it obvious edges. Edges can be botanical, such as a row of blue sedges (pictured) or can be hardscapes such as pavers, bricks, a path, low wall, or low fencing.
2) Give it an obvious shape. This can be geometrical lines and angles (circle, triangle, parallelogram, etc.) but also can be flowing lines made obvious with big or repeated curves.
3) Within the beds, make plant choices obvious. Use blocks or ribbons of plants, repetition of key species, or a predominant plant family (e.g. grasses) with a few other species mixed in. Of course, banish all invasive plants. Use at least 70 percent native plants.
By Ellen Nibali, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center. Ellen writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun.
Do you have a gardening question? University of Maryland Extension experts have answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask an Expert.
Many Maryland gardeners would like to try planting a native meadow. It’s a great alternative to lawn care, and better for water quality, the climate, native plants, and pollinators.
A planted native meadow at the University of Maryland Arboretum.
People who set out on their first meadow making project face a set of common challenges:
They underestimate how much labor is involved in creating and maintaining a meadow, so they start with a project that is much too large for them.
They are not familiar with the plants native to a Maryland meadow, which ones to choose, what they look like throughout their life cycles, and there are no good resources for them to turn to for this information.
They purchase seeds from distant seed vendors because locally native seeds are not commercially available, which decreases chances of project success and makes their project less beneficial to the environment.
They lack the expertise needed to successfully order and use native seeds. It’s not like working with other garden seeds!
When it comes time to remove weeds, they can’t tell the native plants from the weeds. You can’t maintain a meadow if you don’t know what the good guys look like!
The conventional approach to meadow projects requires an investment of hundreds or even thousands of dollars in seeds, supplies, and equipment, not to mention weeks of labor. Yet, in our experience, most Marylanders who undertake a meadow project experience disappointment and failure in the end.
In this blog, we offer an alternative for beginning meadow-makers, a modular meadow approach. Using this approach, you will create a small, pilot meadow using plugs purchased from local native plant producers. During the first year, you will plant your new meadow, then study the plants, becoming familiar with their needs and their appearance throughout the seasons. In the second year, you will have one successful project under your belt. You can decide whether to expand the meadow or not, and you will be making that decision based upon a wealth of knowledge and understanding of the resources required vs. what you have to devote. Continue reading →
American sycamore tree in winter. Photo: Paul Wray, Iowa State University, Bugwood.org
I knew I had to go back to school to study horticulture when I was in my mid-twenties. Every day on my way to work I found myself looking out the windows at trees instead of watching the road. The Catoctin mountain forest was particularly enticing. Route 15 was a much quieter road then, and fortunately, there were no mobile phones to provide additional distractions. Although I admired the landscape in general, there was one tree that stood out amongst the others: the sycamore. Against a blue daytime sky or a sunrise dancing with pink and purple hues, its white bark was remarkable. The shape of this towering tree with its dazzling bark and color contrast inspired me to leave a secure job in search of knowledge for the things that ignited curiosity in me. Continue reading →
This post oak thrives despite being squeezed between a parking lot and a sidewalk. November 2013. Takoma Park, MD.
If you live in one of Maryland’s older towns, you probably have a lot of heritage trees – native trees inherited from the forests and fields that existed before your town was built out. It’s part of what gives old towns so much character. In my home town, Takoma Park, one of the heritage trees I admire the most is the post oak (Quercus stellata).
Post oaks inspire me. I see beauty in their shiny, cruciform leaves and their tiny, striped acorns. I also admire the species’ capacity to cope with adversity. Many of the post oaks in Takoma Park are confined to little hell strips, those narrow grassy areas between slabs of asphalt or concrete. There they must cope with soil compaction, deicing salts, copious quantities of dog urine, and the urban heat island, to name a few.
Post oaks are one of the most common trees at Soldier’s Delight Natural Area, where the serpentinite bedrock gives rise to a soil so laden with heavy metals that it’s too toxic for most plants to grow in. Perhaps tolerance of metals helps the post oak perform well at urban sites, even sites near train tracks and in industrial parks. Continue reading →
Want to support nesting songbirds? Shoot for a minimum of 70% native plant cover in your landscaping, and 94% would be better, according to a recently published study by the University of Delaware’s Desirée Narango and others. For their study, the scientists chose Carolina chickadees as a representative suburban songbird. Homeowners across the southeastern U.S. delight to see them in our yards and at our bird feeders. Like most songbirds, chickadees provision their nestlings with insects from the landscape around their nest.
Caption: Landscapes with more than 94% native plants were excellent habitat for plant-eating caterpillars. These habitats provided enough caterpillars that Carolina chickadee parents could feed their young. Landscapes with 70 to 94% native plants may or may not support enough caterpillars. Nestlings in landscapes with less than 70% native plants were food-limited and had low survival rates. Image of chickadee courtesy of the National Zoo.
Study results show that baby chickadees reared in landscapes with less native vegetation are food-limited and much less likely to survive. So much so that the authors termed landscapes with less than 70% native vegetation as “food deserts” and “habitat sinks”. A habitat sink is a place with habitat sufficient to attract animals but insufficient to support their survival or the survival of their young. Habitat sinks are bad for a species because breeding pairs do not produce enough young birds to replace their parent’s generation. It would actually be better for the chickadees not to have that habitat available at all. Continue reading →
