Native Plant Designs
For the past few years Beth has been volunteering her talents to the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District's Annual Native Plant Sale. Each year she prepares a planting plan based on a theme and featuring plants that will be for sale at the upcoming February sale.
Native and Edible
Butterflies and Beneficials
Rain Garden
Design Design #1 : Native and Edible
(December, 2009)
Narrative and Plan
Design #2 : Butterflies and Beneficials
(October, 2008)
Plan
Last month I received an email from Teresa Matteson, tireless worker at the Benton SWCD, asking if I would be interested in designing a butterfly garden with the native plants available at the upcoming BSWCD plant sale. Sure, I wrote, but I would like to add to that “beneficials,” those insects and arachnids that kill the troublesome bugs and thus, arguably, improve the health of the entire ecosystem.
I did my homework, cross referencing butterfly and beneficial lists with the Native Plant Sale list. Hands down, Achillea was the winner. Yarrow, as it is commonly known, is loved by hoverflies, ladybugs, mini wasps and other “good” predators, while also providing pollen to butterflies (and they love the easy landing pad).
I designed backwards, if you will, first researching the plants then deciding on the perfect space for them. What I came up with was a low, sunny border planting , 30’ wide by 5’ deep, that can go alongside your vegetable garden or be a low planting in front of taller shrubs. Curved, it can be a gracious edge to a lawn. Stretched out, it can replace the grass in your “hell strip” as it is sometimes called, that no-man’s land between your sidewalk and curb. Any which way, it will need plenty of sun and little water once established.
Grasses are included here because “clump-forming grasses provide excellent summer shelter and overwintering sites for . . . beneficials.” (Cheryl Long, Organic Gardening Magazine). As one amazing study showed, more than 1,500 beneficial predators were found in one square yard of grass-covered ‘beetle banks.
You’ll notice the rocks and mud-hole on the plan. I suggest that, for your butterfly garden, you find some rocks and put them where they will be in the sun for a good part of the day. You might just find that this becomes a favorite “wing-drying” spot.
The mud-hole, on the other hand, is just an experiment. Last spring, I tried to maintain one and no butterflies ever showed up. However, all my readings say that butterflies just love to play in the mud. Actually, they are not playing; they are sucking needed nutrients from the muck. So, you might want to read up on what exactly they are sucking, and when they need it, and provide the perfect “fast food” for them. Once you have success, you have my permission to laugh at my feeble efforts.
This plan will look good year-round. The strong-foliage plants (milkweed, aster) will compliment those with airier foliage, such as the grasses and yarrow. There are some evergreens for winter interest (huckleberry and strawberry). What might concern me are that there may not be any flowers in the spring. In that case, you may want to add poppies, another all-star on the beneficial lists (but not available at the plant sale).
Design #3: Rain Garden
(November, 2007)
Plan
Rooftop runoff has become a hot issue lately. Or, as I read on one website, it’s a “hot, fast and dirty” issue. That’s because, if you live within city limits, your rooftop rainwater goes into your city’s pipe system, which then enters nearby waterways warmer and faster than normal overland water, and full of particulates to boot! This is bad news for fish and other stream-dwellers—and the folks who eat them!
What can you do as a homeowner? Disconnect your downspouts from the city’s drainpipes and connect them to a “rain garden.” With a rain garden, your rooftop water ends up in our waterways the way nature intended: cool and clean.
A rain garden, at its most simplest, is a depression in the land about 2-3’deep populated with plants that tolerate winter soil saturation and summer drought. Our native plants are great at this and the BSWCD is offering a good sampling of these tough-and-beautiful plants.
The area of your rain garden should be 5-10% of the rooftop square footage that your downspout delivers. In Corvallis with our clay soils and about 6” of rain per month during the rainy season, I would opt for the high end. (Maybe as more people create rain gardens in the area, we can get a more accurate number.) So, if one downspout carries the rain for 500 square feet of rooftop, the rain garden should be about 50 square feet, or 7’ x 7’.
Design
In this design, I am creating two depressions and connecting them with a “dry creek” so that, during downpours, it will be one big rain garden. One depression is about 36 sf. and the other 50 sf. (heavy dashed line). This enough rain garden for about 900 sf. of roof. They are intentionally amorphous so they look natural. Each depression will be about 2-1/2’ deep at the center (+), gradually sloping up to the existing grade (thin dashed line). Here and there, you might want to add pea gravel and large, rounded rocks for visual interest (not shown). This design is for an area that gets strong afternoon sunlight in the summer.
Plants
It was fun choosing from the BSWCD list because each plant has so much to give! Just to name a few: the rose will provide summer fragrance, and the golden currant will provide habitat and food birds. The huckleberry, strawberry and sword ferns will stay green all year, and the tiny huckleberry leaves contrast nicely with the fern’s bold texture. The monkey flower and camas will naturalize and create nice drifts of yellow and purple. The broad foliage of the fringe cup will contrast well with the other perennials. And columbine has such delicately complex flowers; every garden should have them. I expect that this small garden will be alive with birds, bugs and other wildlife throughout the year.
You may need to water your rain garden in the summer a bit, but not much. After all, these are all natives and they have handled summer drought for millennia.
Some rain garden do’s and don’ts:
- Do choose a flat site—it’s a lot less work!
- Don’t place your rain garden where water already ponds (runoff will not soak in).
- Do locate your rain garden well away from your house.
- Don’t install a rain garden over a septic drainfield.
(c) 2007 Beth Young Garden Design. All rights reserved.
Plan
Qty Common Name Botanical Name
3 Golden Currant Ribes aureum
3 Evergreen Huckleberry Vaccinium ovatum
3 Clustered Rose Rosa pisocarpa
25 Great Camas Camassia leitchtlinii
6 Sword Fern Polystichum munitum
11 Yellow Monkeyflower Mimulus gutatus
12 Fringe Cup Tellima grandiflora
9 Blue-Eyed Grass Sisyrinchium bellum
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