plant selection

Want Flowers Next Year? Here Are Some Pollinator-friendly Plants to Plant This Fall

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Although the end of the summer/early fall may seem like an odd time to think about planting, don’t be fooled! This is actually prime time to allow plants to establish and grow strong for next spring. In fact, planting in the early fall gives time for plants to establish their root system, acclimate to the new conditions, and be ready to grow as soon as the spring conditions become ideal for them to develop. In today’s post, I want to present a couple of very neat plants that can be planted now to bloom and provide resources for next spring’s pollinators. And because these are some plants that are just close to my heart, let me try to convince you to add some (or all! 😊) of these to your green spaces, so you can enjoy them next year. Let’s talk about mountain mints, beardtongues, and Culver’s roots.

Narrow-leaved Mountain Mint – Pycnanthemum tenuifolium

As its name may let you infer, this is a plant that belongs to the mint family (Lamiaceae) and, as a mint, it is very aromatic. The genus is native and restricted only to northern North America, and we are lucky to count several species within Maryland’s native flora. As is the case for most Lamiaceae, mountain mints do not only present beautiful flowers; they have been used traditionally as a food seasoning and in medicinal teas to treat colds, coughs, and fever by many Native American tribes. Although some species are currently protected in the state, some are common, one of which being the narrow-leaved mountain mint (P. tenuifolium) I want to introduce you to.

white flowers of mountain mint with a butterfly visiting for nectar
(Left) The plant establishes very well in sunny areas where it displays its clusters of white flowers. Photo: SB_Johnny (CC). (Right) The delicate flowers of the mountain mint attract a very large diversity of pollinators, such as this Pearl Crescent butterfly. Photo: S. Cadwell (CC)

This plant is a favorite of mine because it is relatively tall (~ 3-4ft), makes a lot of flowers, attracts a bunch of insects, and tolerates conditions that many other plants don’t like. As is the case for all mountain mints, the flowers of this plant are clustered, and in this species, the flowers are white and bloom in the summer. The plants attract a very large variety of insects and for that reason are one of the recommended plants by the Xerces Society for supporting pollinators in our area. Bees of all sizes, beetles, butterflies, wasps, flies, and hoverflies… nobody can resist this beauty! And to top it all, this plant grows great in full sun and even in relatively dry conditions, which makes it a great one to plant close to roads or in those areas of our green spaces where other more water-needy plants may not do so great.

Hairy Beardtongue – Penstemon hirsutus

I have to say that I have a weakness for Penstemons specifically and plants of the whole family they belong to (the figwort family; Scrophulariaceae) generally. Their complex flowers always get to me, and plants of the genus Penstemon are to me one of those that I can look at and marvel at forever. So, this is one of the first ones I want to grow every time I can… maybe I’ll convince you to plant it too?

The genus Penstemon is almost restricted to North America, where they represent one of the largest groups of native plants on the continent. They are characterized by having tubular flowers, and their coloration varies by species, going from white, to pink, purple, red, and blue. Although there are a few species native to Maryland, and several can be grown, I want to talk a bit about the hairy beardtongue, P. hirsutus (but also check out the foxglove beartongue, P. digitalis!).

pink-lavender flowers of hairy beardtongue
lavender flower with a bee
(Left) Hairy beardtongue plants display a large number of tubular flowers. Photo: K. Woods (CC). (Right) The tubular flowers of hairy beardtongue provide nectar and pollen to a variety of pollinators, such as bumblebees, other bees, hoverflies, and butterflies. Photo: A. Espíndola

The flowers of this species are multicolored, with purple tubes tipped with yellow and white. The flowers are visited by bees (including bumblebees), hummingbirds, and butterflies, and have been described to support the adults of the Baltimore checkerspot, our state insect! The plant itself is not overly tall (~2-3ft) and makes a lot of flowers. They prefer drier conditions and full sun to some shade and will bloom in the late spring/early summer.

Culver’s Root – Veronicastrum virginicum

I feel that plants with small white flowers (like this one) are often kind of forgotten, to the benefit of showier and more colorful flowers. However, Culver’s root is a little gem native to our region that any local interested in supporting pollinators should consider having around.

Belonging to the Plantain family (Plantaginaceae), the genus counts only a couple of species, one of which is the only North American native: Culver’s root (V. virginicum). Like all members of the genus, this species presents its white flowers arranged in long spikes. This species will become taller over the years, reaching 4-5 feet at full maturity. They prefer sunny to shadier spots, where sufficient moisture is present (e.g., wood edges).

The flowers mature sequentially, and because there are so many flowers in their long spikes, a single plant is likely to flower for weeks. Besides its sustained floral display, this plant is super interesting and important for pollinators because it happens to flower at a time when few other plants flower in our region (July-August). Their white flowers attract and provide food for bees, butterflies, wasps, and (hover)flies.

spiky white flowers of culver's root
Once established, Culver’s root can reach 4-5 feet in height, displaying their long spikes of white flowers. Photo: E. Enking (CC)
close up view of culver's root flower spike
A tiny bee collects pollen on Culver’s root (can you spot it?). Note the multitude of flowers present on the long spikes. Photo: A. Espíndola

By Anahí Espíndola, Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. See more posts by Anahí.

Anahí also writes an Extension Blog in Spanish! Check it out here, extensionesp.umd.edu, and please share and spread the word to your Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues in Maryland. ¡Bienvenidos a Extensión en Español!

Q&A: Late Bloomers for the Garden

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a red-spotted purple butterfly is feeding on nectar from a native Eupatorium plant with white flowers
Red-Spotted Purple butterfly on a native Eupatorium in September. Photo: M. Talabac

Q:  A lot of my new native plant garden beds contain species that bloom in spring and early/mid-summer. What can I add for pollinators that blooms late?

A:  Fortunately, there are numerous late-season nectar sources, though most are sun-loving species. They are very attractive to migrating Monarchs and any other butterfly on the wing in late summer and autumn, plus bees, wasps, beetles, flies, and plenty of other insects. Seed-eating birds also appreciate the food source once the seeds of those plants ripen by the end of the growing season; nature’s bird feeders.

Lots of late-flowering native plants are in the aster family, including: Ironweed (Vernonia); Goldenrods (Solidago and Euthamia); Asters (formerly genus Aster, now named Doellingeria, Eurybia, Ionactis, or Symphyotrichum); Cut-leaved Coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata); Blazing-star (Liatris); Elephant’s-foot (Elephantopus); Beggarticks (Bidens); Wingstem (Verbesina); Helen’s Flower (Helenium); perennial Sunflowers (Helianthus); Climbing Hempvine (Mikania scandens); and the Eupatorium group (several common names and genera; Eupatorium, Eutrochium, Conoclinium, Ageratina).

Outside of the aster family, you can also consider Rosemallow (Hibiscus), Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana), Turtlehead (Chelone), Common Witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana), Gentian (Gentiana), Tall Phlox (Phlox paniculata), Lobelia (Lobelia), and Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia corollata).

By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Gardener Magazine. Read more by Miri.

Have a plant or insect question? The University of Maryland Extension has answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension. Our horticulturists are available to answer your questions online, year-round.

Native Plants Add Beauty and Support Wildlife 

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wild bergamot flowers are lavender color
Native wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) attracts pollinators from butterflies to hummingbird moths and is both deer and rabbit-proof. Photo: Elmer Verhasselt, Bugwood.org

I love native plants. I garden for beauty and wildlife and nothing supports healthy habitats better than native plants. 

So what are native plants? They are beautiful, resilient plants that naturally occur in an area.

Having evolved over millennia with native wildlife, they naturally support them best. A native white oak supports 557 species of butterflies and moths while a non-native gingko tree supports just five.  

So if you want to support bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects that help control pests, native plants are the way to go. 

They also support larger wildlife such as birds with their seeds, fruit, shelter, and places to raise young. Again, native plants evolved with them, so they naturally provide what they need.  

According to conservationist, author, and entomologist Doug Tallamy who penned the bestsellers “Bringing Nature Home” and “Nature’s Best Hope,” native plants support 29 times more wildlife diversity than non-native plants.  

Well adapted to our soil and climate, native plants are resilient with a capital “R.” They’ve persisted through many hot, dry, wet, and cold years, surviving all previous climate change that has occurred, positioning them well to adapt to future changes. 

Adapting over eons makes you tough. Native plants have fewer pest and disease issues and some have deep roots which make them drought resistant. That means less watering, fewer chemicals, and a healthier landscape. 

Did I mention how beautiful they are? There is a nasty rumor out there that native plants are weedy. Bosh and balderdash.   

Native coral honeysuckle trumpets red/yellow/orange flowers that welcome hummingbirds. Threadleaf coreopsis wafts a riot of petite yellow daisies in a drift of lacy foliage.  

Wild blue indigo sports 4-foot stems of deep blue sweet-pea-like blooms. Cardinal flower flashes brilliant red and is a magnet for hummingbirds and butterflies.  

Bees love to rummage among the pure white blossoms of native foxglove. And goldenrods carousing with purple asters are the very definition of fall beauty.

Don’t get me started on native trees and shrubs. I love ninebark’s white pompoms, the red dangling fruit of chokeberry, the deep maroon flowers of Carolina allspice (native from our South), skinny willow oak leaves, and the giant leaves of pawpaws. 

red flower of Carolina allspice
Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus). Photo: Miri Talabac

How can you find out what native plants might work in your landscape?  

Discover many resources – including recommended native plants for Maryland on our website and on the Maryland Native Plant Society website.

My favorite native plant reference, “Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation Landscaping,” has color photos and plant profiles. Download it for free.

Where do you find native plants? Visit your favorite garden center. Native plants are becoming more common. If they’re not there, ask. Nurseries grow and buy based on client interest.  

The Maryland Native Plant Society website also lists native plant sales and nurseries on their website.

Many Master Gardener groups – including ours – hold spring plant sales that include native plants. Contact your county/city coordinator to learn if one is scheduled near you.

I hope I’ve encouraged you to include some native plants in your landscape to add beauty, invite wildlife and support a healthy ecosystem.  

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension. This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.

How to grow a healthy garden

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It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gardening advice in books and websites. So I thought I’d simplify things by sharing my top 10 tips for keeping a garden healthy. 

Start with your soil. Healthy soil grows healthy plants. So get a soil test to know what you have and need.  

Add compost or other organic matter regularly to enliven the soil and keep the soil community happy. This intricate web of beneficial microbes, fungi, bacteria, worms, and more is crucial to healthy plants. 

Well-adapted native plants such as this white penstemon naturally resist pests and disease. Photo: Kathy Vesely

Minimize soil disturbance. Every time you turn the soil, you bring up weed seeds and wreak havoc on the soil community. So dig and till minimally.

Keep the soil covered with plants, an organic mulch, or cover crops. Bare soil invites weeds, encourages soil-borne disease, and promotes erosion. 

Put the right plant in the right place. Choose plants that suit the site whether it’s sunny or shady, wet or dry. This matchmaking helps plants not only survive but thrive.

Use native plants. These tough, well-adapted plants need less water and fertilizer. Since they co-evolved with native wildlife, they support pollinators and other native species best. 

Encourage beneficial insects. These are the good bugs that help control bad bugs. Nine out of ten insects are beneficial, naturally controlling the few true pests. Put them to work for you. 

How? Reduce or eliminate chemical pesticides which kill both good and bad bugs. Use organic products instead and try other controls like hand-picking or floating row covers.

Further, encourage beneficial insects by planting a wide variety of plants to provide food and shelter. Add a rock to a birdbath so insects can sip. 

Wait to cut back perennials and grasses until spring to give beneficial insects a safe place to overwinter. Many tuck into hollow stems or leaf litter.

Check your plants often. When you’re strolling, be patrolling. Look for spots, yellowing, or other changes that might be clues to a problem. Early detection makes fixes easier.

If you live in Washington County, Maryland, e-mail or call me if you need help identifying an insect or disease. Just send me a photo or bring me a sample. If you live in another area of Maryland, contact your county or city Extension office, or send your questions to Ask Extension.

Many problems are preventable. Honest. About 80% have cultural or environmental causes and aren’t due to pests or diseases. So there’s much we can do to prevent problems.

Water wisely. Water in the morning and avoid overhead watering. Leaves that are wet overnight tend to have fungal problems.

Removed diseased plants. Add compost which naturally suppresses some diseases. Space plants so air circulates. Cover bare soil so rain doesn’t splash fungal spores up onto plants.

At the end of the growing season, thoroughly clean up vegetable plant debris which can harbor harmful overwintering insects and disease.

There you have it, my top 10 tips for a healthy garden. When you work with nature, not against it, you naturally limit pests and diseases, grow more resilient plants, and build a healthier garden and community.

That’s a very good feeling indeed.

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension. This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.

Plant shopping soon? Avoid buying invasive plants

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It’s a sunny day in late February and that means I’m looking at seed catalogs and dreaming of new plants! Have you been plant shopping yet this year? Adding new plants and seeds to your garden creates new scents, textures, colors, and shapes and is the easiest way to increase biodiversity in your landscape!  

As you begin revitalizing your garden space this spring, I want to bring some attention to invasive plants, a category of plants that should strike fear and dread in your heart! Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but truly this is a topic that everyone needs to learn more about. 

Q. What is an invasive plant?

A. An invasive plant is a non-native, “alien” species that was introduced intentionally or by accident into the landscape and causes ecological and/or economic harm. These plants tend to be free from predators, parasites, and diseases that could help keep them in check. These plants reproduce rapidly with multiple methods (i.e. seeds, stolons, root cuttings, runners, etc.) and spread aggressively. They tend to be deer resistant or deer tolerant, a big reason why they are purchased and planted in landscapes. Below is a photo of purple loosestrife. Notice how it is creating a monoculture, a visual key that might mean the plant is “invasive.”

purple loosestrife flowers crowding a field
Invasive purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria).
Photo: Richard Gardner, Bugwood.org

Did you know that some invasives are still for sale at nurseries, greenhouses, and in mail-order catalogs?   

It’s true. Many of the plants on “watch lists” are still readily available to purchase. Japanese barberry is an invasive plant that is a very popular landscape plant still being widely planted today; however, research shows that black legged ticks have been found in areas with invasive barberry thickets because these non-native, invasive forest shrub thickets create ideal microclimates.   

Continue reading →

Lawn alternatives for shady yards

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Although a non-native example, this New Zealand Hair Sedge (Carex comans) illustrates the soft, flowing look multiple sedge species provide. Photo: M. Talabac

Q: I’m happy to try a lawn alternative for my shadier areas but I’d like it to look more like a lawn than a groundcover or mix of flowering plants. What kind of grasses work for that?

A:  Not many true grasses will grow well if you have less than full sun, but several perennials that look like grasses can work nicely. My primary recommendation would be to try one or more species of sedge (Carex). I was excited to see the study results for sedges from Mt. Cuba released recently: “Carex for the Mid-Atlantic Region” that may be a useful reference.

Mt. Cuba Center is a public garden and research facility in Delaware which displays and studies native plants, and they perform periodic plant trials to evaluate species and cultivars for garden performance. Lately they have been including an assessment of pollinator appeal as well, though in this particular case that wouldn’t apply since sedges are not grown for pollinator draw. (Even though the caterpillars of several of our less-often-seen butterflies feed on sedges.)

Sedges are a species-diverse group and make for an excellent grass-like aesthetic in partial shade to full shade. Many form low soft-looking tuffets, though with time or dense planting can form a more-or-less uniform “lawn.” Still, don’t expose them to much foot traffic since nothing is quite as tolerant to that as turfgrass. Well over one hundred sedges are native in Maryland, and the Mt. Cuba study results include lists of those well-suited to more sun than shade, more shade than sun, and a tolerance to mowing (not that they require it by any means).

A few true native grass species tolerate some shade, but won’t give you a comparable look to a lawn since they grow much taller or have a different leaf color or texture (often wider, coarser leaves). Examples include river oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) and Eastern bottlebrush grass (Elymus hystrix), which still could make nice accents if you wanted spots with showier seed heads.

The non-native asparagus relative mondo grass (Ophiopogon), which has dark green grassy evergreen leaves and a slowly-spreading growth habit, has been successfully grown as a lawn look-alike under mature trees. I would not recommend using its cousin Liriope, the spreading form of which (Liriope spicata) can be too aggressive and is considered invasive. (Plus, it’s way over-planted.) Mondo grass thus far does not appear to be colonizing natural areas in or near Maryland.

By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun and Washington Gardener Magazine. Read more by Miri.

Have a plant or insect question? The University of Maryland Extension has answers! Send your questions and photos to Ask Extension. Our horticulturists are available to answer your questions online, year-round.

Q&A: What is a good summer-blooming plant that’s deer resistant?

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Yellow flowers of St. Johnswort plant
St. Johnswort flowers. Photo: M. Talabac

Q:  What can I use as a summer-blooming shrub, especially if this part of the garden is sunny and somewhat dry? I also sometimes have deer problems.

A:  I think St. Johnsworts (Hypericum) are underused, and several species are native here in Maryland, though those might be harder to source. Some of the commonly-grown forms are non-native hybrids, though well-behaved ecologically. (The only locally invasive species, Hypericum perforatum, is fortunately not likely to be sold at a nursery.)

St. Johnsworts bloom anywhere between June and September, prefer direct sun, generally tolerate drought well, and are distasteful to deer. Blooms are nearly always an intense yellow, and some species or cultivars have colorful summer or autumn foliage. A few cultivars have berry-like seeds that ripen by fall and make good bouquet accents. I love the bark on native Hypericum densiflorum – peeling with a smooth underlayer that’s a rich, warm-toned cinnamon-brown that’s especially showy during dormancy.

You’ll find St. Johnsworts sold as both perennials and shrubs, because some species stay low, sprawl like a groundcover, and have stems that aren’t very woody, occasionally dying back in winter as other perennials do. Other species have woody stems and grow to about three or four feet tall and wide. Flowers are loaded with pollen, but no nectar, so butterflies will probably detour while bees and flower flies (predators we like to keep in the garden) will visit. Don’t deadhead developing seed capsules if you want to support Gray Hairstreak butterfly caterpillars, which can use Hypericum as a host plant (among a huge variety of other plants).

For more plant ideas, visit the Home & Garden Information Center’s pages on Plant Selection and Deer-Resistant Native Plants.

By Miri Talabac, Horticulturist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center. Miri writes the Garden Q&A for The Baltimore Sun. Read more by Miri.

Questions about home gardening? Send them to Ask Extension