Include Native Plants in Your Yard

Include Native Plants in Your Yard

By Estelle Rodis-Brown

How does your garden grow? 

If you spent good money at your local garden center for showy ornamentals to adorn your landscape, just to see them wilt, wither or get infected by a dreadful fungus, maybe you planted the wrong plant in the wrong place. Avoid that pitfall. Plant native flowers — not ornamentals — this season.

A Natural Fit
“The biggest benefit of planting natives is that it helps the whole food chain while saving you time, money and energy,” says naturalists Dr. Jim Tomko and Kim Pease from Moebius Nature Center in Aurora.

Since native plants have evolved to our seasons and soil types, they thrive in less-than-ideal conditions. Native flowers flourish in their natural habitat, even if the soil is depleted, if there’s not enough or too much rain, or if you see caterpillars and other insects on the plants. 

Says Pease, “Ornamentals are more finicky and temperamental, so they require more care.”

Non-native ornamental plants do not provide ideal food energy for their wildlife visitors, often require insect pest control, and simply take more water, work and fertilizer to survive… or they are incredibly invasive and take over the landscape.

In contrast, according to the U.S. Forest Service, native plants:

  • Do not require fertilizers
  • Require less water and help prevent erosion due to their deep root systems, significantly reducing water runoff and flooding
  • Provide shelter and food for wildlife while promoting biodiversity

PLANT THIS; NOT THAT!
Try this compare-and-contrast guide for substituting ornamental plants with natives.

Sun-Loving Flowers:
PLANT medium-height natives like asters, bee balm, foxglove and milkweed (essential to attract and sustain monarch butterflies); NOT Purple Loosestrife.

PLANT tall natives such as colorful Joe Pye weed, ironweed, sunflowers (five varieties native to Ohio: Giant, Sawtooth, Maxmillion, Ashy and the Jerusalem Artichoke), purple asters and goldenrod; NOT invasive Japanese anemones, yarrow (even though some are native), tansy or ornamental grasses.

Shade-Loving Flowers & Ground Covers:
PLANT Jack-in-the-pulpit, Mayapple, trout lily, bloodroot and native violets (in white, yellow and blue hues), wild ginger and native ferns, which will reseed themselves and thrive throughout the growing season; NOT lily-of-the-valley, common periwinkle, pachysandra, English ivy, snow on the mountain/bishop’s goutweed or yellow archangel — all of which are relentlessly invasive, spread quickly and overtake a large area, choking out other plants in their vicinity.

Shrubs:
PLANT Butterfly Weed; NOT invasive Barberry.

PLANT Spicebush, which attracts and fortifies swallowtail butterflies; NOT Burning Bush, which is invasive.

Trees:
PLANT Sassafras; NOT Catalpa or Tree of Heaven.

PLANT an oak tree, which supports up to 500 species of caterpillars (future pollinators and food source for birds); NOT Gingko, a non-native which supports only five species of caterpillars.

WHERE TO FIND THEM
Many local nurseries carry both ornamental and native flowers, including:

  • Auburn Point in Bainbridge 
  • Avalon Gardens in Chardon
  • Perennials Preferred in Chesterland
  • Graf Growers in Akron
  • Holden Arboretum in Kirtland 
  • Suncrest Gardens in Peninsula
  • OPN Seeds (previously Ohio Prairie Nursery) in Hiram 
  • Bremec Garden Centers in Chesterland

Additional local nurseries that offer native plants can be found at ohionativeplantmonth.org/native-plant-sources.

(Sources: Marty Sickinger of Moebius Nature Center and Donna Hessel of the Emerald Necklace Garden Club)

About the author

A Portage County resident, Estelle has been writing for Mitchell Media since 2016. She now serves as digital/associate editor of Northeast Ohio Thrive magazine. Her curiosity drives her interest in a wide array of writing topics and secures her enduring commitment to lifelong learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

1 Comment

  1. It’s Avonlea in Chardon, not Avalon.

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