A TALE OF
THREE DITCHES
Deborah Jones, North Delta BC
Many suburban dwellers see
drainage ditches as eyesores,
nuisances, potential safety hazards,
and even indicators of a second-class
neighbourhood. My Tale of Three
Ditches is not only about three
ditches in my own neighbourhood,
but also about my personal
transformation from a ditch doubter
to a ditch dabbler to a ditch
enthusiast.
The setting
We live in an older area of North
Delta.
Our stormwater drainage
system is a patchwork of concrete
and plastic culverts (pipes), shallow
grass-covered ditches which homeowners have adapted as part of their
lawns, and a few deeper ditches -last vestiges of the seasonal streams
which probably once flowed down
our slopes.
Our house sits on a lot which is
shaped roughly like a quarter-piece
of pie. As luck would have it, the
outer edge of our piece of pie fronts
the street, which means that, in
relation to our total lot size, we have
quite a daunting swath of municipal
property to look after, roughly 65
meters long and 5 meters wide. With
the exception of our driveway and a
short parking strip adjacent to it, that
swath of land originally featured
drainage ditches of the deeper “wild
and woolly” sort.
Like most stormwater drainage
systems in the Lower Mainland, and
indeed just about everywhere, ours
eventually empties into fish habitat,
without benefit of any water
treatment. No, those little grates we
see in gutters and parking lots don’t
lead to the sewage plant! They lead
to a stream, river or bay where fish
are trying to survive. But at the time
my tale begins, I was only vaguely
aware of the significance of all this.
Ditch #1:
Neighbourhood eyesore
Alas, Ditch #1 is no more -- though
in the late 1980s, when we paid the
Corporation of Delta a hefty sum to
install a culvert and fill the ditch, we
thought we were doing a good thing.
Ditch #1 used to stretch up the street
from our driveway, in full sunshine
-- a jungle of vegetation waving high
above the neighbours’ tidy lawns.
Despite Delta Engineering’s twiceyearly mowings, and my husband
Ib’s occasional Herculean efforts
with a scythe or shears, the ditch
generally looked messy and unkempt
by suburban standards. Neigbours
continued thanking us for years after
we replaced it with culvert and lawn.
Now I wonder what biological
treasures might have been lurking in
that ditch and on its banks. I vaguely
recall thistles, grasses, garter snakes,
and the occasional frog. The Great
Buttercup Invasion had not yet
reached our neighbourhood, so
perhaps some little native plants may
have had a chance there.
Ditch #2:
The triumph of ivy
Stretching in partial shade to the
other side of our driveway and
parking strip, Ditch #2 never quite
managed to achieve the rank of
Neighbourhood Eyesore. Grasses
didn’t grow as exuberantly there, nor
was it directly facing any neighbour’s front entrance.
Furthermore (saints forgive us, we
knew no better!), we planted English
ivy on the inside of a low retaining
wall, and over time it cascaded over
the wall, down the ditchbank, across
the ditch and up the other side to the
road, obliterating everything else in
its path.
The great expanse of ivy was very
healthy, tidy, and much-admired by
neighbours and walkers. But back in
1998, as I gazed down upon it, I
couldn’t help feeling it was too much
of one thing. Ib, having patiently
awaited the day when the ivy choked
out the last weeds, somewhat
grudgingly agreed that I could carve
out a little streambed at the bottom of
the ditch.
I did this (that short phrase does not
do justice to the labour involved and
the mountains of ivy produced), and
then started lining my little creek
with rocks -- rocks that appeared as I
yanked out ivy roots, rocks Ib
screened from our garden soil, rocks
unearthed at nearby construction
sites, rocks commissioned from my
stepson Niels and his friend Tamara.
Ib added some cattails at the lowest
end of Ivy Creek, just before it
disappears into the culvert, thus
creating a miniature wetland and
completing my riparian vision ... or
so I briefly thought.
It didn’t take long before I began
imagining that the creek needed a
bit of colour. I began slashing and
yanking away at other bits of ivy,
substituting some easy-care, drought
tolerant perennials.
Niels helped
carve out a path just below the
retaining wall; more recently (20012002), Ib has gotten into the ivyclearing act too. Gradually, the ivy
monolith is giving way to more
varied plantings.
Beware the killer pavement
On April 9, 1999, about a year after
the “daylighting” of our Ivy Creek,
the Vancouver Sun published an
article by Patrick Condon entitled
“Beware the Killer Pavement”. Mr.
Condon wrote:
“ ... curbs are evil, and I say
this only partly in jest. Curbs block
rainwater falling on streets from
going onto the soft adjoining
surfaces. Since it can’t be absorbed,
it must be piped.
“Once storm water goes into
a pipe, it is almost impossible to get
it out again before it is dumped, dirty
and torrential, into the nearest
stream -- destroying fish breeding
grounds in the process.”
Suddenly, I saw our neighbourhood’s
old-fashioned curbless streets and
remnant ditches in a whole new light,
as “fish-friendly” stormwater drainage features.
In contrast to the stormwater pipe I
had seen emptying “dirty and torrential” into Cougar Canyon Creek at
Nicholson Road, our ditches slow the
torrent, thus reducing downstream
erosion and allowing pollutants (road
runoff, garden chemicals, carwashing
soap suds, garbage, dog droppings)
to settle out and/or break down
through exposure to sunlight and air
Furthermore,
our ditches
are
porous, so that some natural recharge
2
of groundwater takes place -- good
for our gardens and for water
conservation.
The Stewardship Series:
Caring for wildlife at home
I jobshare a cataloguing position at
Vancouver Public Library, specializing in science and technology
materials. Around the same time that
I was pondering drainage issues, I
also catalogued several titles in the
Stewardship Series, published by
Naturescape British Columbia.
As I skimmed these publications,
another light bulb went on: Ditches
have great potential as wildlife
habitat for small animals, and as
wildlife corridors for larger ones.
Ditches can provide water (at least
seasonally), mud, rock piles, rotting
wood, shrubby cover, native and
non-native berries and nectars, etc.
I ordered a couple of Naturescape
publications for myself, mulled them
over at length, went out to have a
look at our neighbour’s ditch,
pondered the books some more,
looked at the ditch again ....
Ditch #3:
A pre-emptive strike
Immediately upstream from Ivy
Creek lies our neighbour’s ditch,
Ditch #3. It’s at the back of Peter &
Carol’s property, hidden from their
view by a cedar hedge. (Their lot
has two street frontages, and the
house is oriented toward the other
frontage.) Municipal mowing and
homeowner weed-whacking kept the
ditch vegetation down to a dull roar
... until Peter & Carol inherited
another house and, with it, a major
renovation project and a huge
garden. They rented out their old
home, keeping it in the family till
such time as their son or daughter
might want to take it over.
With Ditch #1 under lawn, Ditch #2
landscaped in rocks and ivy, and
Peter & Carol’s attention diverted to
their new home, Ditch #3 rose to
assume the rank of Neighbourhood
Eyesore.
At 30 meters long and 5 meters wide,
its sunny portions overflowed with
reed canary grass. Even the five
large yuccas and one santolina which
had been planted some years before
were gradually being smothered by
grass.
The grass was in turn facing
competition
from
Himalayan
blackberries, which were in the early
stages of takeover, arching and
coiling their way up sunny banks,
over the grasses and yuccas, and into
the cedar hedge.
In the shadier areas, buttercups
reigned supreme -- huge, succulent,
and doing their best to strangle a
couple of flag iris, some gladiolas,
and a spread of lemon balm that, like
the yuccas, all had their origins in the
lovely garden behind the hedge.
Reed canary grass, Himalayan
blackberries, buttercups -- invasive
alien “thugs”, all of them!  And yet
... a habitat of sorts. Like the English
ivy, they protected the soil, they held
back the runoff (better than a

Pojar & MacKinnon, in Coastal Plants of British
Columbia, say: “It is not clear whether reed canary
grass is entirely introduced or whether it is
indigenous in parts of the coast and has extended
its range through human influence.”
charming stony creek, in fact) and, as
I later discovered, they harboured
enormous numbers of hardworking
earthworms. I was beginning to see
beauty even in a tangled-butsomewhat-functional mess of alien
invaders, but I doubted that anyone
else in the neighbourhood shared my
view.
I was distressed by the thought that
the ditch might be culverted,
whereupon it would probably
become a gravelly-weedy parking
strip. Eventually, a “killer-curb”
would perhaps be installed, and that
would be the end of yet another
stretch of natural drainage in North
Delta. The ditch desperately needed a
pre-emptive strike -- a splash of
beautification that would stave off
any neighbourhood pressure to fill it
in at owner or municipal expense.
Early in 2001, with Peter & Carol’s
blessing, I started to “play” in their
ditch -- or rather, the Corporation of
Delta’s ditch, since it’s really their
property. I contacted Delta Engineering, to make sure they didn’t
have any immediate plans for
culverting, and came away with their
cautious approval of my “ditchscaping” project.
Delta would be liable if any flooding
were to occur, so quite logically, they
cautioned that I must
(a) not
interfere with the ditch’s ability to
prevent flooding, and (b) not plant
anything large on the outer bank of
the ditch, just in case municipal work
crews needed to bring in trimming or
scouring equipment in the future.
Save a fish &
meet all the neighbours
The idea of gradually transforming
Ditch #3 into a quasi-native, quasiornamental and fully functional
“water feature” garden seemed like a
worthy but somewhat unrealistic
long-term goal. “Bit by bit, over the
next 10 years,” said I. Little did I
reckon on my own compulsiveness,
the growing interest of passers-by,
and the clever tactics of Evelyn &
Rob, our new-ish neighbours
immediately across the street from
the ditch.
The pair of them were frequently
hard at work in their own front yard,
transforming it from a derelict weed
patch to a showpiece worthy of
Sunset Magazine. If I cleared the
buttercups from so much as a square
meter of ditchbank, and managed to
pop in one sword fern, I’d hear, “It
looks fabulous!” from Evelyn, or
“Lookin’ good” from Rob.
And so I was spurred on to greater
efforts. Bit by bit, the GBB (grass,
blackberry, buttercup) stranglehold
started to disappear, replaced by
natives such as elderberry, vine
maple, salal, sword fern and
hardhack, mixed with various quasinatives (cultivar cousins, naturalized
immigrants) and garden perennials.
Early on in my efforts, not many
walkers stopped to talk; I probably
looked just too crazy to be
approached -- especially as I’m not
averse to gardening in the rain or in
near darkness.
Rob, Evelyn, and
neighbour Lois with her Dachshund
Spartacus were at first my only
regular
visitors,
keeping
me
entertained with friendly conversation as I toiled away in the mud.
Neighbour John and Cocker Spaniel
Christie (her humans Grace and
Albert in tow) soon joined in on the
visits. As things progressed, I made
the acquaintance of more and more
neighbours and other strollers,
joggers and cyclists, some of whom
came by specifically to check up on
the improvements.
Improvements?? I wasn’t so sure ....
Here I was, trashing one ecosystem
and not certain of any measure of
success at replacing it with another
one. The GBB cabal kept threatening to reclaim its lost territory, and
my landscape “compositions” were
frequently a marathon of trial-&error plant placement. But the new
plants all thrived, with no watering
other than during their initial
planting.
I referred to it all as my “salmon
stream restoration”, though I knew
full well that no salmon could ever
climb the drainage culvert up the
steep escarpment to the ditch -- and
even if they could, like as not they’d
find no water in summer and early
fall.
So the fish were a joke ... until I
learned from neighbour Gary that he
had found salmon fry in a larger
ditch at the foot of the escarpment
while collecting water for his wife
Brenda’s biology class.
(There’s
now a GVRD fish habitat enhancement project in that same vicinity,
where the recently-twinned sewer
line crosses a creek.) So after all,
though I didn’t have a salmon
habitat, I did at least have a
“nutrient-bearing stream”!
3
In praise of yuccas, stumps
& woody debris
I was raised to “make do” and “waste
not”, so there was no way I was
going to get rid of those five
established yuccas, even if they
weren’t my idea of “native habitat”.
They’re healthy, tough, droughttolerant -- and probably nearly
impossible to dig out anyway.
The yuccas became goalposts on my
struggle up the ditch. One by one, I
extricated them from their GBB
captors. One by one, they became
focal points around which to build
little chunks of landscaping. They
added coherence and a mature look
to the evolving chaos.
Similarly, three old Douglas fir
stumps provided more good focal
points, plus of course their nutrient
and habitat value for bugs, plants and
woodpeckers.
Following Naturescape BC’s advice, I added more
“woody debris”, some of it offered
up by neighbours (especially Rob
and Evelyn), some from our own
garden, some from strangers’
roadside garbage piles, and all of it a
great aesthetic and functional addition to the ditchscape.
Compost chief, rockhound,
greenthumb & cook
For the most part, I worked on my
own, enjoying the setting, the
physical exertion, and the solitude
punctuated by conversations with
passers-by.
But while I got the
public credit, Ib took care of behindthe-scenes essentials that made the
whole enterprise possible. He moved
immovable boulders, composted
impossibly dense mats of grass, and
dug planting holes through hardpan.
4
He humoured me in my ill-fated
experiment with transplanting some
heavy clumps of reed canary grass,
which I thought might be tamed
sufficiently to form a part of the
ditchscape. A couple of months after
Ib’s transplanting labours, I ended up
removing those grasses.
They
looked innocent enough in early
spring, but by summer, at five feet
tall and their roots beginning to
ramble, they were obviously
incapable of “playing nicely with
others”.
And the rocks!! Though the ditch
banks themselves produced an
enormous number of rocks, which I
tossed into the creekbed, there was
always room for more -- especially
large ones, for ditchbank stabilization, small-critter habitat, and
aesthetics. Ib collected and ferried
countless loads of rocks from vacant
lots and building excavations, first in
the back of our old Ford Escort
wagon, and now in our new Ford
Focus wagon.
While I was lost in contemplation
down in the ditch, crowbarring out
blackberry roots or placing plants
and rocks, Ib obligingly “kept the
home fries burning” -- cooking
meals, cleaning house, and celebrating his recent retirement with
books and cups of coffee (and only
the occasional nap) in a chaise
longue in our back garden.
In addition, experienced “plantsman”
that he is, he propagated seeds and
cuttings in his small greenhouse.
Geum, burdock, dryas, lupine,
mimulus and others began to crowd
onto the greenhouse table alongside
Ib’s various other projects. The only
native plant I had identified and
liberated from suffocation, along the
entire bank of Ditch #3, was a little
geum which bloomed enthusiastically all summer long, so I was
especially excited about the prospect
of more geums grown from this
plant’s seeds. (As it turned out, the
geum also self-seeded profusely.)
“The Source”
As summer wore on, I slogged
upstream toward “The Source”, the
two plastic culverts which fed
stormwater into the ditch at its
highest point.
My mother and
brother arrived for a late July/early
August visit, just in time to provide
the inspiration (Mom) and the
muscle-power (Cedron) for clearing
the grass and blackberries from
around The Source and installing a
grotto.
(More rocks please, Ib!)
Neighbour Rob later added some
character river rock (not from a
vacant lot, I fear, but very beautiful).
I screened the soil to produce more
rocks for the creekbed, then in went
the shrubs and ground covers and a
final yucca donated by neighbours
John and Helen.
At last, including Ivy Creek, the
ditchscape stretched from its rocky
“spring” at the top, past open, sunny
“meadows” of sorts, through a
shaded woodland, and finally down
to the cattailed “wetland” at the
lowest point, before entering the
culvert.
There was still more work to be
done, clearing a last stretch of reed
canary grass on the outer bank, and
filling in various gaps in the
vegetation, but things were “lookin’
good”, after just one growing season
(and it was largely a clearing season
at that). Under winter snow, one
could almost imagine that the ditch
was indeed a lovely unspoiled creek.
Spring 2002
Compared to 2001, a piece of cake!
A few days’ labour took care of the
remaining grasses -- and regular
GBB patrols down the ditch, coffee
cup in hand, seem to be winning the
war against those invaders.
Empty spaces are gradually filling up
with Ib’s greenhouse output, plus
natives and perennials from various
local nurseries (David Hunter in
Surrey has been especially helpful),
from the UBC native plant sale, and
from an outing with Ib to the
inspiring Pacific Rim Nursery atop
Chilliwack Mountain.
Now, little more than a year since I
began, I can stand back and watch
how it all evolves. For the time
being, the habitat is rather open -great for robins, bathing chickadees,
peanut-hiding Stellar’s jays, and the
occasional rambling raccoon or
stump-chucking woodpecker. No
sign yet of frogs, salamanders or
garter snakes, but I’m hopeful. The
rock piles, the rotting wood, the
“pool and drop” structures and the
mud are all in place. Meanwhile, all
the plants are thriving, with no
pampering of any kind, and should
soon produce lots of shrubby hiding
places and succulent berries for
birds.
The plantings and ditchbanks have
withstood freezing, thawing, snowmelt, torrents of rain, and a veritable
Niagara of water-main flushing.
(Delta Engineering produces this
amazing phenomenon by fully
opening a fire hydrant and running
the water through a chlorineremoving contraption and thence into
the ditch, over a period of 30 minutes
or so.)
Stormwater runoff has
washed road sand into culverts, and
from the culverts into the ditch,
where it has formed miniature
sandbars here and there. Nothing
like Nature to make things look
natural!
An end & a beginning
Thus ends my Tale of Three Ditches.
But I hope it might also be a
beginning for other gardeners and
nature enthusiasts.
There used to be dozens and dozens
of little salmon streams in the
Vancouver area. Their destruction
didn’t happen overnight, it happened
one culvert at a time, as ever-larger,
ever-dirtier volumes of water were
piped into local watercourses.
Preserving one short stretch of open
ditch won’t accomplish much. But
preserving many ditches (urban
North Delta alone still had over
22km of ditch in the year 2000), in
conjunction with other drainage
improvements such as storage ponds
and stream daylighting, could make a
huge difference. In our immediate
neighbourhoods, we could enjoy
“ditch-based” riparian/wildlife/
parkland corridors. And in the larger
setting, we could once again take our
children to a nearby creek to watch
the miracle of wild salmon returning
to spawn.

Corporation of Delta. Engineering Dept.
Drainage system upgrading [report to
Council]. Feb. 29, 2000. p. 6
5
Appendix I:
Tips for ditchscapers
There are just two absolutely critical concepts that
ditchscapers must always keep in mind:
(d) Make dtichbank and ditch bottom stabilization a
top priority.

Native versus non-native plants? Personally, I like
the eclectic approach. I suspect it’s more likely to
appeal to the whole neighbourhood than a strictly
native approach, plus it’s faster and less costly to fill
in gaps with divisions of one’s own or one’s
neighbours’ familiar perennials. But avoid “thugs”,
the most invasive alien plants, such as Scotch
broom, purple loosestrife, and English ivy, whose
seeds or berries can easily be spread downstream and
elsewhere, squeezing out native vegetation. If you
find any natives in your ditch, leave them; they’re
telling you they like it!

Don’t remove native plants from the wild; purchase
them, grow them from seed or cuttings, or rescue
them from construction sites. There’s no point in
creating an artificial-natural habitat at the expense of
a real-natural one.

There’s lots of good advice out there for creating
habitat gardens. Most of it can be adapted for
ditches. I relied heavily on the following few sources,
simply because they’re good sources and I had them
close at hand. But there are library books, bookstore
books, newsletters and websites galore with useful
information.
(1) The ditch must continue to do its job of preventing
flooding of neighbouring structures, roads and gardens.
(2) Every ditch, like every culvert, eventually empties
into fish habitat.
All the other principles of ditchscaping flow (pardon the
pun) from the above two basics:


Check with local authorities before starting work.
They need to know that you won’t interfere with
necessary drainage, and you need to know that they
won’t infill or mow your emerging ditchscape.
Never obstruct the flow of water, but seek only to
slow it down. “Pool and drop” structures made from
rocks or small logs are good, if the ditch is deep
enough. Cattails and other water plants are also
okay, but be careful that they don’t become so dense
as to impede drainage.

Never ever use fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, or
gas-powered equipment in a ditchscape.

Chlorine is highly toxic to fish and amphibians, so
never allow tap water to enter ditch water. (In other
words, avoid sprinkling in a ditch.) Rainbarrel water
is fine, as is water which has sat for several hours and
been stirred to let off chlorine gases. All the more
reason to choose native and drought-tolerant plants,
which manage amazingly well with no watering.

During the initial phases of ditchscaping, there’s a
great danger of making water conditions worse for
downstream fish. Silt kills fish, so do everything you
can to minimize downstream silting. For example:
(a) Begin in dry season by creating a shallow pool
(ideally, planted with some cattails or rushes) at the
lowest point in the ditch. This will allow any silt you
do churn up to settle out, before the water goes on to
downstream fish habitat.
(b) Work when water is low or absent.
Campbell, Susan. Naturescape British Columbia : native
plant and animal booklet, Georgia Basin. Victoria, BC :
Naturescape British Columbia, c1995.
Campbell, Susan and Sylvia Pincott. Naturescape British
Columbia : provincial guide. Victoria, BC : Naturescape
British Columbia, c1995.
Clark, Lewis J. Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest from
Alaska to Northern California. Sidney, BC : Gray’s
Publishing, c1976.
Pettinger, April. Native plants in the coastal garden.
Vancouver, BC : Whitecap Books, c1996. [A new edition
of this has recently been published.]
Pojar, Jim and Andy MacKinnon. Plants of coastal British
Columbia. Vancouver, BC : Lone Pine, c1994.
Sunset western garden book. 5th ed. Menlo Park, CA :
Sunset Pub. Corp., c1988.
(c)When there’s water in the ditch, do not walk on
the ditch bottom unless it’s protected by rocks or
thick vegetation.
7
Appendix II:
Plant list for Ditch #3 & the “native
retrofit” of Ditch #2
A native plant purist would probably shudder at the
variety of species rubbing shoulders in Ditches #2-3.
240 square meters is a large and expensive area to plant,
so freebie garden cultivars have come in very handy. If
anyone notices some truly noxious plant in this list, do let
me know!
Prunus sp. (Siberian or Moscow plum)
Ribes sanguineum (Red-flowering currant) **
Sambucus racemosa (Red elderberry) **
Sambucus sp. (Variegated elderberry) *
Santolina chamaecyparissus (Lavender cotton)
Spiraea douglasii (Hardhack) **
Symphoricarpos alba (Snowberry) **
Vaccinium sp. (Huckleberry) **
Yucca sp.
There are indeed many natives -- grown from cuttings or
seed in Ib’s greenhouse, or purchased from various
nurseries such as the ever-helpful David Hunter in Surrey
and the inspirational Pacific Rim in Chilliwack.
Ferns
But there are also numerous non-natives -- whatever
happened to be in the ditch already (yuccas, a santolina,
some gladiolas, iris, & lemon balm), various purchases,
donations from neighbours, divisions from our own
garden plants, and recent “volunteers” and garden
escapees such as blue star creeper and ajuga. All have
proven self-reliant, managing nicely without watering or
fertilizing.
Perennials, Biennials, Grasses
** natives
* quasi-natives (cultivars, cousins, non-thug naturalized
immigrants, or native to other parts of North America)
Trees and Shrubs
There are lots of trees and shrubs in the “borrowed
landscape” near
the ditch, including Douglas fir,
hemlock, cedar (tree and hedge), Norway spruce,
European beech, birch, English laurel, red Japanese
maple, weigela, and quince. In addition, the ditchscape
now contains:
Abelia “Edward Goucher”
Acer circinatum (Vine maple) **
Aronia melanocarpa “Autumn Magic”
Cornus alba (Red twig dogwood) **
Cornus alba “Gauchaulti” (Variegated) *
Cotinus coggygria “Royal Purple” (Smoke tree)
Gaultheria shallon (Salal) **
Ledum groenlandicum (Labrador tea) **
Lavandula augustifolia.(English lavender)
Lonicera involucrata (Black twinberry) **
Lonicera sp. (nitida?) (Honeysuckle shrub) *
Mahonia nervosa (Dull Oregon grape) **
Oemleria cerasiformis (Indian plum) **
Physocarpus opulifolius “Diablo”
(Diablo eastern ninebark) *
8
Adiantum pedatum (Maidenhair fern) **
Blechnum spicant (Deer fern) **
Phyllitis scolopendrium (Hart’s tongue fern)
Polypodium glycyrrhiza (Licorice fern) **
Polystichum munitum (Sword fern) **
Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s mantle)
Arctium minus (Common burdock) *
Centaurea montana (Bachelor button)
Camassia quamash (Common camas) **
Digitalis purpurea (Common foxglove)
Dodecatheon dentatum (White shooting-star) **
Dryas octopetala *
Endymion sp. (Bluebells)
Erythronium oregonum (White fawn lily) **
Festuca ovina glauca (Blue fescue)
Geranium sanguineum (Bloody cranesbill) *
Geum macrophyllum (Large-leaved avens) **
Gladiola sp.
Heuchera “Palace Purple” (Coral bells) *
Heracleum lanatum (Cow parsnip) **
Iris douglasiana (Douglas iris) **
Liatris spicata (Gayfeather)*
Lupinus arcticus (Arctic lupine) **
Lychnis coronaria (Rose campion)
Melissa officinalis (Lemon balm)
Mimulus guttatus (Yellow monkey flower) **
Penstemon digitalis “Husker red”
(Beard tongue Galane) *
Penstemon fruticosus (Shrubby penstemon) **
Penstemon ovatus (Broad-leaved penstemon) **
Penstemon “Prairie dusk” *
Polemonium occidentale (Western Jacob’s ladder) **
Primula “Wanda”
Smilacena racemosa (False Solomon’s seal) **
Tanacetum sp. ex Archibald (Tansy) *
Tanacetum vulgare (Common tansy) *
Verbascum phoenicum (Mullein) *
Viola glabella **
Water-Tolerant Plants
Caltha biflora (White marsh marigold) *
Caltha palustris “Plena” (Yellow marsh marigold) *
Iris pseudacorus (Yellow flag iris)
Iris pseudacorus hybrid (Variegated)
Iris sibirica hybrid (Siberian iris)
Juncus effusus (Common rush) **
Lysichitum americanum
(Yellow skunk cabbage) **
Rumex occidentalis (Western dock) **
Typha latifolia (Cattail) **
Typha laxmanii (Dwarf cattail) *
Ground Covers
Ajuga reptans (Carpet bugle)
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (Kinnikinnick) **
Bacopa
Laurentia fluviatilis (Blue star creeper)
Clematis sp.
Cotoneaster dammeri (Bearberry cotoneaster)
Echeveria sp. (Hens and chicks)
Fragaria chiloensis (Coastal strawberry)**
Galium odoratum (Sweet woodruff)
Mahonia repens (Creeping Oregon grape) **
Maianthemum dilatatum (False lily-of-the-valley) **
Moss sp. **
Rubus calycinoides “Emerald Carpet”
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