We’re the generations — current homeowners young and old — who must convert from lawn-dominated biologically “dead” landscapes to life-sustaining natural landscapes full of native plants. It’s not easy because we grew up with a manicured ornamental landscape as a homeowner’s ideal, and these conventional landscapes are those we learned how to maintain. But learning — actually inventing — new management practices is an important and essential effort.
NOTE: I (and others) have chosen to use the term “manage” rather than “maintain” to emphasize the difference between maintaining a static landscape where every blade of grass is in place as opposed to managing the abundance of plants to maximize their ability to support life while keeping it presentable.
The task of the generations who next occupy our homes and landscapes will have an easier task: to merely manage the natural landscapes we’ve created using the management practices we’ve invented and they’ve seen us use.
We’ve been planting for many years (since the late 1990s) and have enjoyed watching plants as they grow.
Now, in the early 2020s, we see that we need to have explore how to manage our landscape.
This isn’t to say we expect it to be static. Plants grow, plants multiply, and plants die. But in our smallish (about 1/3 acre) suburban yard there is only so much space.
So here are some management principles we’re experimenting with. These may change as we observe our landscape and how it responds to these practices, but this is what we’re trying currently.
Each minute in spring
Every minute I spend editing, pruning, and weeding in spring is worth at least ten minutes later in the season. Everything is still small and it’s easy to see how many of each plant we have. (And to do this, we need to know which plants are which in the spring: use plant labels!)
By the way, I use the term “editing” to mean removing or transplanting my intended native plants as opposed to “weeding” plants I didn’t intentionally plant and don’t want. We have much more editing to do than weeding since our multitude of native plants [looking at you, asters!] outcompetes all but the most pernicious weeds. And those are weeds that I should have dealt with when I first saw them. Which brings us to…
Nip it in the bud
It’s tempting to see a few plants of an unwanted weed appearing here and there and figure I can get to it later. It doesn’t seem like an urgent problem at the moment.
The reason these are so unwanted (besides the fact that they aren’t native and don’t belong in our plant community) is that they spread so easily. From now on, I intend to take the time to eradicate every one I see as soon as I see it.
How I wish I had eliminated the non-native creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) when they were in just one small section of the yard! Of course, at the time (about 30 years ago), I just thought of them as pretty blue flowers.
Take the “one minute in spring rule” above and multiply by a hundred or more for these noxious weeds! (The photo shows its underground root system.)
To a lesser extent, this “nip” rule can also apply to native plants that are just too enthusiastic (asters come to mind). I’ve let some of my newly-purchased and newly-planted natives succumb to their more aggressive native neighbors; I should have allowed these new plants space to grow.
NOTE: It’s much, much easier to pull out extra plants when the ground is moist! Take advantage of the days after a good rain!
Protect the borders
I started with logs bordering my paths, with my new young plants planted in the beds. Over the years, I was delighted to see most plants thriving, and I enjoyed seeing my favorites. Why would I “edit” them out?
So… over the years, as the plants flourished, the logs lining the paths were sometimes covered over or sometimes I even pulled them out into the path to give the plants more room even though our paths were becoming narrower — too narrow, in fact.
Now, I see that I want to maintain the original width of my paths, and I want to actually see the line of logs. (And I have to admit I enjoy watching them decompose into soil while supporting many little creatures and sometimes bigger creatures, even a pileated woodpecker!)
I reluctantly have to remove those extra plants, beautiful though they may be. I can sometimes find a space to transplant them, but most I just compost. There’s only so much space. (In the past, I might have given them away, but since we now have jumping worms in our yard, it’s too risky.)
Another issue is the stone border lining our stream. I had carefully placed a border of pond stones along our path in the back yard, but over the years:
1) Plants started growing over them — yes, even the plants I love such as these pussytoes! — and
2) The stones sunk down into the soil so much of the stone was now hidden. This is also partly due to the path level rising as we’ve added mulch to the paths every few years.
So I pulled out and reset the stones, pulling some of the earth under the paths into the hole so I can enjoy seeing the stones and maintain a neat border.
I resolve to protect the borders of my paths!
Pruning
We’re finding that many herbaceous plants take well to being pruned in mid-June or so.
As an experiment, I pruned these late bonesets at the end of the driveway quite a bit in June 2021. I wondered if they would bloom as soon as the unpruned ones halfway up the driveway.
They did! And they were much more manageable. (You can see I propped up the huge ones in back with a table!) Now in 2022, I’ve become much more ruthless since these plants, while nice to have, are too large for this part of our yard.
I’m going to be more ruthlessly pruning some other valuable, but too-tall, plants, too. I plan to experiment again with these other plants, pruning some in their group and not pruning others, then comparing the results as I did with the boneset.
Policies for overly enthusiastic plants
Some plants, such as jewelweed or flowering raspberry (pictured), would take over much of our yard if we let them. In the past, I wasted a lot of time debating whether to remove this stray jewelweed or those raspberry stems expanding beyond their current area. Should I let this one stay? Yank that one out?
I finally realized I had to create what I call “policies” for these few favorites that I just can’t let spread as much as they want.
I decided that the flowering raspberry can grow as much as it wants … BUT only to the end of the porch. The jewelweeds can come up anywhere in the area between the porch and the path, BUT any I see anywhere else in the yard I just pull and place on the ground to decompose. End of dilemma!
And now I find that I can be even more aggressive cutting back the flowering raspberry in the spring. I had trimmed it to its allotted space, but it soon expanded beyond. I don’t have to worry about not ever having enough flowering raspberry!
Fencing helps
One way to keep the borders neat is by keeping the border plants standing upright. We use single sections of fencing for supporting plants where needed rather than long lengths of fencing as it’s sold.
We separate each section of the fencing by cutting off all the connecting pieces of metal. (We also use these fencing sections to hold our signs.)
We keep the small 6″ or so connecting pieces we cut off. Since they already have a hook at the end where they attached to the next fencing unit, they make useful pegs for holding down netting, such as the bird netting we use around our blueberry bushes.
Look for seedlings
Who doesn’t want free plants? If I’m growing a plant I like, why not have more of them? Those little volunteers popping up can be used to create a larger patch or to fill in spaces elsewhere.
BUT… to do this I’ve had to learn to identify these seedlings since they might look a little different from their parent plant until they get a bit bigger.
I’ve also learned to check near plants in the spring to see if any seedlings have popped up, like this little twinleaf.
In the past, I might not have paid any attention to this little nondescript plant, a twinleaf seedling, or even pulled it out as a weed. This time, though, I gently removed it from under the parent plant and transplanted it.
Keep stepping stones visible
I’ve created a network of stepping stones throughout my planting beds, not just to have a place to step but as a natural way of creating some space between plants.
I like having these stepping stone so I don’t step on the soil at random since this would harm the soil structure.
BUT by summer I found that many of these became hidden not just by the plants as they grew, but also by being covered some by soil. So I’m trying to 1) find them and clean them off in the spring; 2) keep them exposed as the plants grow; and 3) if the stone isn’t very large, create a cluster of two or three stones so they become more visible and useful.
As plants grow, I’m finding that by summer I can’t keep all of them fully exposed. But by cleaning them off in the spring, they’re less likely to be buried by soil and hidden from sight the next spring. The largest stones are more useful since at least a part of them stay visible and they’re more effective at providing some spacing between plants.
The good news is that by following my “One Minute in Spring” rule, I’m in the beds only when the plants are small and the stones are visible. By the time they’re hidden by plants, I rarely need to enter the beds anyway.
Prune shrubs (at the appropriate time)
A good rule of thumb is to prune after flowering, but since I’m trying to maximize not just flowers for decoration (and for pollinators) but also for berry production, this may not apply. This makes it hard to find a good time to prune, but another rule of thumb I’ve heard is to prune when the pruners are sharp and you have the time!
Even better, if I had planted some of these shrubs a little farther apart and especially farther from the paths, I wouldn’t need to prune as much at all. And of course, planting a species that won’t outgrow the available space is even better.
So as I add plants, I’ll try to prevent this problem but also try to prune just a third of the plants each year so I always have some mature plants producing food.
Resources
- Xerces Society:
- Tufts Pollinator Initiative:
- Joe Gardener:
- The Humane Gardener:
Reflections
On “Management of native plant landscapes” rather than “maintenance”:
This word choice is important because it highlights managing the ever-changing living community so that it is healthy, is aesthetically pleasing, supports a wide range of ecosystem functions, and provides service benefits to the people in the area.
Maintenance on the other hand suggests the following of procedures to retain an identical appearance over time. One maintains a lawn — always flat, always straight-edged, always devoid of weeds, always green …
Dynamic outdoor spaces go beyond the value of active plants as habitats for insects, birds, and other wildlife. Native plant landscapes can reconnect people to biodiverse ecosystems in which all living beings can thrive.
~ Managing Native Plant Landscapes