“The garden is like a hospital: All the plants are on intensive care. Watering, mulching, fertilizing, maybe, even someone, chopping off their little dead heads. In a prairie garden or meadow, the plants are fully capable of fending for themselves. They require no fertilizers, watering, or special care, as long as one has selected native plants to match their soil and sunlight conditions.”
Reflecting on a Wildscape
As I sit and stare out the window on to a landscape of skeletal remains of Goldenrods (Solidago altissima), Annual Sunflower (Helianthus annuus), and Fall Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifoium) intertwines with the less structural Texas Cupgrass (Erichloa sericea), Gregg’s Mistflower (Conoclinium greggii), and Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora), I have concluded that we have created a mini-prairie.
Doug Tallamy would be proud of us. Four years after we had the landscape designed and installed by Feldman Design Studios (Carol Feldman, Landscape Architect), the garden has matured, the plants are battling each other for space, the trees are growing and filling out.
We have achieved our goal of providing a haven for birds, butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, insects, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. I know we are successful from the sheer number of species of wintering birds I recorded this fall and winter: 18 species of finches and sparrows (including Harris’ and White-crowned Sparrows), 4 species of warblers, plus a host of permanent residents who call the yard, home.
I see the Hispid Cotton Rat run across the path between the clumps of Texas Cupgrass (Erichloa sericea) and Lindheimer’s Muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri), the Fox squirrel raiding the Chinquapin Oak (Quercus muehlinbergii) of its acorns or the armadillos or skunks leave their marks of rooting up grubs. Just like a Wildscape in nature should be.
Now What Do I Do?
Now that I have a yard which is supporting wildlife year around.
- What do I do with it now?
- How does one take care of it?
There are plenty of books, articles and websites that have information about the native plants and how to create a native landscape, but not much about how to take care of it once it is established. As we start the new year, I thought it might be helpful to give a season-to-season tips for maintaining your prairie garden. I will glean information from expert NPSOT members, native nursery personnel as well as articles and websites. I hope this will be of some value to our members.
January’s Prairie Garden Tips
Let’s get started for January. What can we do now? Not much. What we don’t want to start doing is cutting back our dead plants from last year’s growth or raking up leaves and debris. At least not until around February 15th or later. You want to wait until we have our daytime temperatures consistently in the 50’s. This usually occurs by March 1st, plus or minus a couple of weeks.
The reason we leave everything in place is because leaves on the ground provides places for bees to hibernate, habitat for snails, insects and salamanders. It also harbors moth cocoons, butterfly’s eggs, larva or pupa. One can cut the dead flower heads off, but allow them to fall to the ground, so they provided food for small mammals and birds. And what they don’t eat, will reseed and germinate, starting the cycle over again.
Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora)One exception to this is a plant which re-seeds a little too readily and you do not want it to overrun an area (I cut the spent flowerheads from my Goldenrod). One should leave the plant stalks of all plants standing at least 12-24” tall, because a lot of pollinators and other insects will deposit their eggs in the hollow stems of these plants or overwinter in them.
There are a few projects that can be done in January / early February. Pruning should be done before trees and bushes actively start growing. We will have more on this topic next month. Another project for this time of the year is weeding. This is the best time to eradicate early spring weeds that might have germinated in your garden. When they are small, it is easy to hand pull them without disturbing the soil too much. If you wait until they are more mature, the roots are well established, you will disturb a large amount of soil or they may have to be dug out, either way, it will harm any native plants growing near them and may bring new weed seeds to the surface.
One other thing while weeding, be sure you know the difference between a wildflower you want to keep and a weed. If you are not sure, ask one of your friendly NPSOT members if they know what it is or let it grow up and flower, but be ready to get rid of it if it turns out to be an obnoxious weed.
Find Your NPSOT Chapter
January is the best time to sit back and plan your garden out. A little bit of planning now, choosing native plants that will match your goals, your garden’s soil, moisture and sunlight conditions, will save you time and frustration but, also, bring you joy and pleasure throughout the rest of the year.
Also, this is a great time to join your local NPSOT chapter (Collin County for us) so you will have the resources to help you select the right plants for your garden. You will have access to online information from the State website, meeting, forums, classes and plant sales. And best of all, you will be in contact with people who have the same interest in native plants as you, and they are willing to share their knowledge and are willing to help you succeed in your garden.
Please consider joining one of our chapters through NPSOT’s State website. Happy New Year and looking forward to growing native with you!
