Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
Seminars@Hadley
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
Presented by
Ed Haines
Moderated by
Dawn Turco
July 16, 2015
Dawn Turco
Welcome to today’s seminar at Hadley. I’m Dawn Turco,
and I am moderating our seminar today. We have a title of
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants. We are joined
today by Hadley Gardening Instructor and Vision
Rehabilitation Therapist Ed Haines. Ed is going to share
his suggestions for moving beyond the types of things we
find in our average gardening center and talk about other
choices among the wonderful world of native plants. I have
moderated several seminars at Hadley with Ed, and in
fact, I have to admit I look forward to doing so. Especially
when we are talking gardening which truth be told I know
so little about. So let’s sit back and Grow Wild with Ed. Ed
I’m handing you the microphone.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 1 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
Ed Haines:
Well good afternoon everyone, and I hope you’re enjoying
your spring. It’s particularly nice for me here in the north
where I live. The final snowbank just melted yesterday, so
that’s a huge landmark for us and a milestone rather. So
we’re quite happy that things are finally growing and
becoming green again, and I know all of you are as well. I
see a number of my former gardening students among the
list of participants, so welcome.
Thanks for joining me this afternoon for what I hope is an
interesting discussion about gardening with native plants.
This is a subject that I’ve become increasingly interested
in over the past couple years. I thought I’d like to share a
little bit of what I found out about gardening with native
plant with the rest of you.
The first thing we need to understand when we talk about
this subject is the definition of a native plant.
What is a native plant? Native plants can be many kinds of
plants. They can be grasses. They can be ferns, flowers,
cacti, etcetera, but what makes them native? Well, a
native plant, and I’ll give you a definition I got off the
internet, and I think it’s a pretty good one. It’s from Cornell
University. “A native plant can be said to be a plant that
grows naturally in a specific area over a period of geologic
time.”
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 2 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
In other words, a native plant is a plant that has evolved
over many thousands of years in a specific region.
What I love about this concept and this definition, and
what excites me about it is that it means native plants
have evolved with other organisms as members of a
community. So, for the purposes of this afternoon’s
discussion, unfortunately, because we have time
constraints, I’m going to talk about plants that have
evolved naturally in the North American continent. But the
idea of native plants and gardening with native plants can
really apply to any geographic area in the world. There are
plants native to every continent, every ecosystem, so it
doesn’t matter where in the world you live.
But because of time constraints let’s talk a bit about plants
that have grown in North American and grown in North
American before European settlement. We use European
settlement as a defining timeline, because Europeans
brought with them countless varieties of plants and
animals that have in many cases they’ve certainly
dominated and overrun our native species.
There are native plant purists, and I’m not one of them
who feel that a true native plant is a plant that is only from
within a 100 mile radius of where they happen to live. So if
you’re a purist, and you’re gardening with native plants,
you will only grow native plants that have evolved over
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 3 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
thousands of years within a hundred miles of where you
live within your specific geographic area and not
necessarily within the North American continent itself.
I’d like to talk in a more liberal way about gardening with
natives, and not really restrict the conversation to that kind
of limitation. Although there’s nothing wrong with that.
Probably, I’m sure all of you know that the North American
landscape prior to the arrival of European settlers was
made up of a wide variety of ecosystems, and they
included prairies, woodlands, wetlands, deserts, high
deserts, swamps, etcetera. These were all communities
that worked together as plants and animals and insects
and reptiles, and sadly, most of these communities in
North America have disappeared. And that’s primarily, of
course, due to urban development and agriculture,
etcetera. There really are very few original pre European
settlement ecosystems left in North America.
What I like about gardening with native plants is that it’s a
way for us individually to bring back just a little bit of that
original landscape. I’ll give you an example. For instance,
Hadley’s located in Illinois, and you may or may not know
that before European settlement, the state of Illinois was
65% original tall grass prairie. Today, the statistic I found
was it’s the State of Illinois is less than .01% of tall grass
prairie. So, in other words, it’s almost nonexistent. So the
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 4 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
predominant ecosystem and community of plants that
existed before European settlement in the State of Illinois
is now essentially gone.
Also, most of the plants that we grow and propagate, and
I’m talking about the plants we find in garden centers and
nurseries. They’re not natives. They’ve been introduced
from all over the world. There’s nothing wrong with that.
For instance, a lot of our houseplants originate really from
one temperate rain forest region of the Himalayan foothills.
It’s interesting how many of our houseplants we take for
granted come from one specific area. Tomatoes obviously
aren’t really native plants to North America, and a lot of
the annuals that I love and all of us love in our gardens
like begonias and chrysanthemums, these are all
nonnative plants. So, actually, it’s quite rare that we come
across real native plants, especially in gardening centers
and nurseries where most of us shop for our garden
supplies.
So native plants are plants that have evolved over a
period of thousands of years in a specific geographic area,
and in this instance, I’m going to refer to the geographic
area of the North American continent. I hope that definition
is clear about native plants, and so we’ve defined them.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 5 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
And now I’d like to suggest some reasons why you want to
garden with native plants. So in the first place, first big
reason, native plants will be likely adapted to your area.
That means they may be accustomed to your climate.
They’ll be used to your hardiness zone, your average
rainfall, and a whole host of other environmental factors.
I’ll give you a quick example of what I mean, and we’re all
aware that the State of California’s undergoing I believe
the most severe drought it’s experienced I think I saw in
the New York Times 1,200 years. The governor, in fact,
today just signed some sort of bill that restricts water
usage by 25% or something. It’s amazing.
Nonnative lawns and gardens in California are suffering
from lack of water, and will suffer even more in the future.
So people are tearing up their lawns, and they’re
establishing native landscaping. Essentially, they’re
growing plants that require much less water, plants that
have evolved naturally in an arid climate which is their
specific geographic kind of climate. So native plants will
likely be adapted to where you live.
Secondly, I mentioned earlier, and I’m going to touch on
this several times. Native plants evolved as communities
with other organisms as parts of communities. An
important part of these communities of course are the
insects who provide pollination.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 6 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
Therefore, regionally native plants in your garden may well
attract some of the pollinators, the insects that evolved
with them. And here’s the important thing about that. That
means native plants are often very attractive to local
butterflies. And I think butterflies add so much movement
and beauty to any container in any garden and anything
we can plant that attracts them is a huge plus. A terrific
example of a plant that attracts butterflies is the milkweed
plant, and you guys may know that that’s food source for
the Monarch butterfly. So, if you garden with native plants,
you may find you have an increased population of
butterflies or other insect pollinators like bumblebees,
etcetera.
Another reason for growing native plants, and this is a
good one, is that because they did evolve with local
insects, they may have more resistance and be less
vulnerable to insect pests. Also, they’ll probably be less
vulnerable to local diseases as well. Consequently, and I
love this part of it, native plants may require less care, and
they may require less pesticides. I try to use little to no
pesticides myself. One of the benefits of native plants is
that they will be more resistant to local diseases and
pests. That being said, there are exotic pests that have
been introduced into your environment like Japanese
beetles that natives may not have developed defenses
against. And if you folks if any of you live in the eastern
seaboard, particularly you’ll know that Japanese beetles
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 7 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
are horrific, and nothing seems to be safe from them. So
there are exotic pests. Natives won’t necessarily be
resistant to those. But they may have defenses against
local pests.
And finally, native plants, and I think this is maybe the best
reason to try growing a few, native plants are o0ften
beautiful. There are just so many wild flowers that are
native to North America that are just gorgeous. BlackEyed Susan’s, goldenrod, false indigo, lupines, and I think
all of these flowers are just as dramatic and exotic looking
as any flower imported from the South Pacific or from
Asia. So natives are beautiful.
Just to expand on those regions briefly that I mentioned,
the California Native Plant Society has come up with just
five bullet points for why you should plant native, and they
are – they pretty much echo what I’ve just said. They save
water. They’re low maintenance. They provide pesticide
freedom. They’re good for wildlife viewing, and they
support the local ecology. I think those are fantastic
reasons to grow anything, and particularly great reasons
to grow plants that are native to our continent.
Before I go any further, we should ask ourselves are all
natives fantastic? And the answer is no. Not necessarily at
least not to grow in our garden. First of all, some natives
are endangered, and that means so little of their habitat
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 8 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
and population exists that they have the potential for
extinction. So I would like to interject a word in this part of
the presentation about acquiring native plants, and I’ll be
talking about acquiring a little later in the talk also. But
here’s the cardinal rule. Never harvest or take native
plants from wild areas. So native plants can be
endangered, and native plants occurring in wild areas and
in their natural state are extremely rare, and they’re
precious. They should be left undisturbed.
In fact, I’m sure you guys know there are many
prohibitions in state and federal parks against harvesting
native plants, so please don’t walk away from this webinar
and think, gee I’m going to go grab some plants out of the
woods and put them in my garden. Do not pick them. If
you want to grow natives, you’ll need to purchase your
plants from a nursery that specializes in propagating them.
So not all natives are terrific under some circumstances,
and there’s a few other reasons why some natives are not
terrific. Certainly not as garden plants, and that is,
because some are harmful. And they’re harmful to people
although they may be harmless to insects or other animals
such as birds. And of course, a classic example of this is
poison ivy. Poison ivy is a native plant, but it’s certainly not
something we want to cultivate in our own garden even
though the birds enjoy the berries very much, and it is a
food source for animals.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 9 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
Some natives are undesirable, because they are invasive.
That means they will take over, and they will crowd out
your other plants if they’re not controlled. I can’t tell you
how many hours I have spent pulling up and digging and
cutting back Virginia Creeper from the corner of my
garden that actually was so aggressive it was covering
and killing a really large almost 40 foot tall spruce tree,
and every year I go back, and it keeps coming up. It must
have a root system that’s unbelievable. I spend days and
days cutting it back every spring and in the fall, and it
keeps wanting to return. So natives can be invasive. So be
very careful about what you introduce into your garden,
and make sure that you’re not introducing something that’s
going to take over.
Finally, some natives don’t make terrific garden plants,
because they’re delicate, or they require very specific
growing conditions to thrive. Native orchids specifically are
like this. The lady slipper orchids, it’s very difficult to
cultivate those in your garden. It can be done, but it’s not
something that a beginner would attempt. It’s certainly not
something I even attempt. I don’t have that much time.
Some plants have conditions that are very difficult to
duplicate in a garden environment, conditions like specific
soil composition or humidity.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 10 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
We’ve talked about why you want to grow natives, and
why you might not want to. So I’d like to talk briefly and
specifically about growing native plants in containers.
That’s because I teach container gardening, and I think
containers are more accessible for everyone, and it’s less
of a daunting idea to grow a few natives in a container
rather than to start a whole garden bed. A lot of us, we
may not have an entire garden bed that we want to fill with
natives, or we may not live in California, and we may not
want to tear up our lawn and fill it with native landscaping.
But it might be nice to duplicate just a little bit of a wild
environment in a container. So even if you live, or if you
live, in a condo or an apartment, you don’t have a lot of
garden space, you can have a container that duplicates in
a small way part of a natural ecosystem. A container, for
instance, that’s a miniature prairie, or a miniature desert,
or a shady woodland, and I think that’s a fun idea.
And because I’m going to focus on containers, and
because we have limits on the amount of time for this
discussion, I already said I wasn’t going to talk about
natives that aren’t native to North America. I’m also not
going to talk about trees or shrubs that are native to North
America. There just isn’t enough time, and there are
wonderful native shrubs and trees that I encourage you to
try if you have space. But, again, I think that’s a discussion
for another day.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 11 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
The first rule for gardening with natives is get a large
container. As large as you can manage. The larger
container the better. And there’s a few reasons for this. A
lot of natives are perennials. That means they come back
every year. They overwinter, and their root systems need
to survive through the winter, so they need to grow deeply.
A lot of the annuals we buy begonias are a great example,
for instance. They originated on the forest floors of
temperate rain forests, and those particular ecosystems
have very shallow topsoil’s, and of course they don’t have
winter. The temperature is equatorial, and it’s constant all
the time. So they don’t have to have big root systems. But
a lot of our native plants, of course, since they have
evolved in areas with winter and cold temperatures, they
made deep root systems, so we need good sized
containers.
Also, natives are more fun to grow as communities. I told
you I’d be coming back to this concept. And so, you need
a big enough container to hopefully plant several different
species at least. I’ve been doing some research about
growing mediums when we’re growing natives, and there
is some debate about growing mediums out there. But
most of what I’ve read basically indicates not using dirt
from your yard. It makes sort of intuitive sense to plant
natives in soil that you’ve taken from your geographic
region, your yard, because that would be the environment
they have evolved in. But most soils around areas of
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 12 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
residential construction have been disturbed, and they
really may not replicate or even be similar to the natural
soils that were there before we started building
everywhere. And they probably won’t contain the
composition that wild plants need, or it’s possible.
So, I think ultimately, commercial potting mix is really the
way to go when you’re experimenting with natives.
Commercial potting mix is usually well balanced. It retains
moisture. It’s easy to work with. It’s sort of a no brainer. It’s
not going to duplicate the actual soil composition of where
natives grow, but it’s generally all purpose. Here’s a big
important factor. Commercial potting mix weighs a lot less
than topsoil or your regular garden soil. So if you need to
move your container, and you might, it’s going to be a lot
lighter filled with commercial potting mix.
You’re going to need to plan your native containers with
the same kind of planning guidelines that you use when
you plan regular containers. And that is anything you put
in a single container has to have similar growing
conditions. So if you put three or four types of natives in
your container, they do need to have a similar need for
moisture, sunlight, temperature, wind exposure, etcetera.
You don’t want to have a shade loving plant mixed in with
two sun loving plants. Something’s not going to thrive in
there, and the container won’t be a happy one. And it
probably won’t look as nice as it could either.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 13 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
When you’re choosing native plants, or thinking about
native plants, don’t forget to think about foliage as well as
flowers. I mentioned earlier native plants are often
beautiful, and we know there are certainly many
wildflowers that I think are just breathtaking. One of the
great things about native plants is that many natives have
lovely foliage, particularly foliage that has different color
like bronze and silver and blue green. So when you’re
planting your container, don’t be afraid to go with natives
that don’t have any flowers at all, but may have just
wonderful foliage.
I think foliage is great to think about when you’re planting
your container for a number of reasons. The first is foliage
lasts a lot longer through the growing season than most
flowers will or blooms will. You’re going to have foliage
from start to finish. You don’t have to worry about
something blooming for effect over a period of three or
four weeks, and then that’s it. So foliage lasts a long time.
You’ll get a big bang for your buck. Foliage often changes
color with the seasons, so your container can actually
change visually over the course of your growing year, and
in fact foliage may be like we know with maple trees. It
may be an entirely different color in the fall than in the
spring or summer.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 14 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
And finally, I think we don’t do this enough, but take into
account the wonderful sensory nature of foliage. Flowers
are fine, but flowers are usually pretty delicate. Most
flowers. They don’t put up with a lot of manhandling. But
leaves and stems I think are more often more fun to feel
and to hold. And they also have an auditory nature to them
too. Listening to a breeze rustle through leaves is just an
unbeatable pleasure.
We’ve learned what you might want to choose when
you’re planting natives. I mentioned similar growing
conditions, but ideally you do want some variety with your
plants. Not with growing conditions, but with the plants
themselves, and I think particularly with regard to height
and differences in foliage.
So there’s three words I’m going to tell you, and I’m sure
you’ve heard them before. I’m embarrassed. I hadn’t really
heard these until last year. They describe a way of
designing a container, and if you can remember these
three words, you can always design a container that’s
going to be fantastic. And the words are thriller, filler, and
spiller. So if you haven’t heard these words before thriller,
filler, and spiller, this is just an easy way of remembering
how to compose a visually and tactilely appealing
container.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 15 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
So what do those words mean? The thriller is usually a tall
plant that you plant in the center of your container, and it
gives you that upright visual effect. And the filler is a
medium sized or bushy plants that you fill in around the
thriller and gives you sort of a full effect. And the spiller is
a plant that you can plant on the edges of your container,
so the foliage and flowers fall over the edge of your
container, and you have a really full beautiful little garden
all in one container. And so, if you plan a container that
contains all three, the thriller, the filler, the spiller - I’ll stop
saying that I promise – you’re creating a full container. It
has foliage and appeal all season long.
One last thing I need to mention if you’re going to try
containers. I did mention some natives need to overwinter,
because they are perennials or biennials, and therefore,
you may need to protect your containers from extreme
cold, so as I said, you might have to be prepared to move
them into a more sheltered area for the winter.
I hope I have got you a little interested in native plants,
and what they are, and why you might want to think about
growing them. And just a little basic idea of how to grow
them, so I hope I’ve peaked your interest and you’re
saying to yourself it’s spring. Maybe I should try out a few
natives in my garden or in my containers. So hopefully,
now you’re thinking what kind of natives should I grow?
What should I chose? Here’s a problem with that question.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 16 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
It’s a good one, but it really depends on your environment.
Obviously, if you live in the Southwest, you’re going to
want to plant succulents like cacti or other native species.
If you live in the temperate zone, you have tons of
choices. And I’d like to spend a little time now today
talking about some of my favorites and because they’re
my favorites I’m going to focus on natives that grow well in
my region which is the northern Midwest. But before some
of you may feel left out. I hope you don’t. Most of the
plants I’m going to mention in this discussion can be
grown in many parts of North America.
Let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about some of the kinds of
plants and flowers that might be fun for you to try in your
garden or your container. I’m going to pause and take a
glass of water before my voice gets all dried out. Okay,
thank you. So the first native I’d like to talk about is
actually in the grass family, and it’s called bluestem.
There’s a variety called little bluestem, and there’s a larger
variety.
And, if you remember, I promised I wouldn’t say those
words again. But, I did talk about thrillers, fillers, and
spillers, and bluestem is definitely a thriller. It has a really
nice growing height, and you would want to plant it in the
middle of your container. It grows two to three feet high
and has a beautiful color. The leaves are blue green, and
then in the fall, they turn red orange. So bluestem makes a
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 17 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
lovely display throughout your growing season and even
into the winter which is fantastic. The seed heads of the
bluestem are fluffy. They’re very ornamental, and they
have a real great tactile appeal as well. If you remember I
talked about natives attracting butterflies, and bluestem is
definitely a plant that will attract butterflies, and because of
the seed heads it will attract birds as well.
One of the great things about bluestem is its drought
tolerant, so it’s easy to care for. I like having a tall wavy
centerpiece in my containers. Remember I talked about
the sound of breezes blowing through foliage. Well,
bluestem to me, this is the number one native in my book
for that kind of auditory experience. It has a lovely sound
when it’s in the breeze. So you can’t go wrong with
bluestem. Try it out. It’ll grow pretty well all the way almost
from Georgia to Alberta Canada and everywhere in
between, and I really recommend it as a thriller.
Okay, another thriller, and I guess I’m just going to have to
say I’m going to say those words a lot. I wrote them down
more than I thought. One of my favorite natives that’s a
thriller is a prairie wildflower, and it’s called Prairie Blazing
Star, or the Latin name is Liatrice. I don’t know how it’s
pronounced. It’s L, I, A, T, R, I, C, E. But the common
name is Blazing Star, and if you find if you’re looking to
purchase it, that’s what you’ll find normally listed as the
plants a thriller, because again, it can grow to a height of
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 18 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
two feet or more. It is a perennial, and this plant has just
wonderful tall spikes of beautiful purple blooms. And
butterflies love it. My Blazing Star is always surrounded by
butterflies of all shapes and sizes when it’s in full bloom
and has a really purple, purple, color, so it’s just a terrific
purple. It’s hard in gardens sometimes to find true versions
of colors. They often are mixes of a bunch of different
things. But the Blazing Start is just terrific.
It also makes a wonderful cut flower. The foliage is also
nice, because it has really think grass like leaves which
will work well if you have some fillers with larger and
broader leaves. And one of the great things about Blazing
Star is that it’s a pretty popular perennial. So even though
it’s a native, it can be found at most nurseries and most
garden centers. I’ve seen it at some of the big box garden
centers that I won’t mention. But I’ve seen it almost
everywhere. So Blazing Star is an easy one to try out,
because it’s easy to find, and it is a perennial. It hopefully
will overwinter and come back bigger and better next year.
So give it a try.
The third native I’d like to talk about is one that’s less well
known, but it is available, and it’s called Butterfly Weed.
This is another thriller, because it can grow up to three
feet high. You want it in the center of your container.
Butterfly Weed is actually a variety of milkweed, and
remember we talked about milkweed briefly, and the
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 19 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
reason that Butterfly Weed is terrific is for the same
reason that milkweed is. It’s aptly named.
Butterfly Weed attracts huge amounts of butterflies.
There’s also a lot of nectar I guess. It’s lovely. It has really
great orange red and almost a flame red or flame orange
flower which little flowers that are sort of arranged in a flat
saucer patter on top of a stem. Butterflies go nuts over it.
The foliage is also larval food for queen and Monarch
Butterflies, so it does double duty in terms of creating
habitat for insects in your community. That being said, if
you don’t like coming across a squishy caterpillar while
you’re tending to your plants you might not want to choose
this one, but I think the benefits outweigh that particular
hazard.
Butterfly weed is just fantastic. It’s a prairie flower. It
occurs naturally in the Midwest. When the stems are
broken off, they don’t have that sticky milk that’s typical
with milkweed, so they also make a really nice cut flower
as well. One word of caution, however. Butterfly Weed
does not transplant well. So, it’s best if it’s grown from
seed, and direct seeded into your container. It takes a
while, and more of a commitment. If you can find a large
container of Butterfly Weed that’s already established that
would be a fantastic option.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 20 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
Choice number three, and that is Coreopsis. Coreopsis is
a wonderful plant. It’s a filler not a thriller, because it’s ten
to 18 inches tall. It has large spreading clumps of bright
yellow daisy like flowers. It is an incredibly cheerful plant.
It’s so cheerful. And it’s very rugged. It’s incredibly hardy
and very easy to grow.
One of the great things about Coreopsis is that it’s also
self-seeding, so you can easily establish a large bed or a
large container with Coreopsis, and it’ll come back from its
own seed every year. I use Moon Beam Coreopsis, and I
have used that, because it blooms consistently all summer
long. Coreopsis will flower more fully if the flowers are
deadheaded, so you have to do a little maintenance with
Coreopsis and take some time to take off the dead
blooms. They’re very easy to feel. They dry up quite
nicely, and it’s very easy to distinguish from the newer
blooms. Again, Coreopsis makes terrific cut flowers. Don’t
be afraid to try it, and you can sometimes obtain
Coreopsis in a regular garden center.
Plant number four, and I should say these are all plants for
sunny locations. I’m going to talk about some nice choices
for shady locations too. A terrific plant and wildflower, and
I think actually my personal favorite is the purple
coneflower. This plant is also called Echinacea.
Everyone’s heard that word before.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 21 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
I have many reasons why I like the purple coneflowers.
They are wonderful plants. But the main reason is the
flowers themselves. This is a flower that I like, because of
its blooms not because of its foliage. The flowers are large
pink slash purple daisy like flowers. They’re almost
sometimes as large as a tea saucer. They have a really
nice orange-ish raised center. The raised center may
almost be as big as the surface of a ping pong ball. And
the blooms, the flower petals slope down and away from
the orange raised center.
I think this flower has probably the best tactile features of
any flower out there. That raised center has this terrific
texture. It kind of feels like a puffy, prickly pincushion. It’s
terrific to rub your fingers and thumbs across the surface
of it. I probably sound nuts, but I do do that. Just because
it feels so great. So it’s a terrific flower for tactile purposes.
Of course, make sure you’re not sharing the space with a
bee when you’re doing that. Again, I think coneflower has
the best tactile appeal out there.
Purple coneflowers are drought tolerant, and for the most
part pest and disease free. I’ve had a little bit of problem
with mildew, but my garden has a high humidity level. I’m
very near one of the Great Lakes. I also like some of these
other plants purple coneflowers are a magnet for
butterflies, and those wonderful seed heads. Those
centers of the blooms when they dry out they attract
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 22 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
songbirds. Also an excellent cut flower. These days there
are actually lots of varieties that have been bread from the
original native that have different colored blooms. Mostly
reds and oranges. For purists that’s not technically native.
But you know what if you prefer a little bit of variety, I’ve
got purple and red and orange coneflowers all planted in
the same bed, and they just make a terrific display.
Finally, coneflowers do multiply very well. That means you
get more flowers every three years or so that you’ll have to
divide, and you can have additional plants for containers
or stuff to give away to your friends. I just said that these
I’ve discussed so far plants that require full sun, and if you
remember, I said you do have to pick plants for your
containers that have similar growing conditions or that
require similar growing conditions. So if you have a shady
area, and you’d like to grow some natives in a container in
the shade, you’ll need some different choices.
So for shady areas, I’ll say right off the bat that for tactile
and visual appeal for containers that require shade, you
can’t go wrong with ferns. Ferns are fantastic, and this is
where remember I said, “Sometimes it’s better to focus on
foliage,” and of course with ferns, that’s what we’re doing.
The foliage is the huge appeal. A great fern to try is the
maidenhair fern.
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 23 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
It’s a wonderful native, and it qualifies as a thriller,
because it grows up to two feet high or higher. It does like
moist shady soil. And here’s the thing, a lot of the tactile
appeal of the maidenhair fern comes from its stems. Not
the fronds itself, but the stems, because they’re shiny and
black and kind of slippery and smooth. I think they have a
terrific tactile quality, and it’s very hard to hurt them. I’ve
read the stems of maidenhair ferns can be used for basket
weaving. So they are very strong and will take a lot of
abuse. The foliage is a lovely deep green. It makes a
wonderful companion for low growing flowering, shade
loving plants, and you can’t go wrong with maidenhair.
There’s another fern I’d like to mention, and that’s also a
personal favorite. I’m telling you they’re all my personal
favorites, and that’s true of course. But it sort of loses its
impact after a while. So my personal favorite of ferns,
second most personal favorite, is the ostrich fern. The
ostrich ferns are terrific, again, because of their tactile
quality. The fronds of the ostrich fern have large upright
growth patterns, and the stems are all covered with a soft
fuzz which is really fun. The young fronds when they come
out of the soil, they’re tightly coiled in that fiddlehead
shape which also is a terrific tactile growth pattern.
Those are two thrillers for your shade loving container. If
you’re looking for a filler, you can’t go wrong with native or
purple violets. Violets are very strong and hardy. They’re
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 24 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
low growing. They’ll fill out the container. The foliage will
grow over the edges of the container, and of course,
violets have beautiful flowers that are also edible.
Violet blossoms make a wonderful garnish on salads. Did
you know they’re edible? They are. At least I hope they
are. Don’t go out and eat them without checking, but
actually I’m almost positive they are. I have eaten them
myself. Some people make candied violets even they
decorate deserts with. Violets do double duty. They’re
edible, and they have lovely flowers, and they’re very hard
to get rid of. These are invasive, so they’re best grown in
containers. I’m continually digging out violets from corners
of my garden where I don’t want them, because they’re
self-seeding, and the birds take their seeds all over the
place and drop them, and then they come up everywhere.
They’re very strong. Another terrific shade loving native
that’s also a filler is woodland phlox. It’s in the phlox
family, woodland phlox. It grows only six inches to a foot
high. It blooms in the spring, and it attracts hummingbirds.
I’m going to run out of time, so I want to talk about a few
others for shades. I’ve got just two I want to mention really
quick. The first one is coral bells. The Latin name is
Heuchera. Here’s the great thing about coral bells. It can
be a sun or shade loving native depending on the variety
you get. Some do well in the sun. Some do well in the
shade, and this is a plant that you plant for its foliage
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 25 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
rather than its flowers. It has really large, broad, flat leaves
that are upright, and the leaves can have wonderful
patterns on them. They can be variegated. That means
with stripes or changes of pattern. Coral bells are very
tough. I’ve chopped them up with a shovel, and they have
these tuberous roots that they grow out of. I’ve chopped
up those roots and stuck pieces of those roots in the
ground elsewhere in my garden, and they come up no
problem. They grow in shade if you buy coral bells with
light colored leaves, lime green leaves. Those are
beautiful leaves, and those kinds of coral bells grow well in
shade. If you buy a coral bell that is dark purple or
blackish almost leaves, and those are amazingly dramatic,
those grow well in sun. So coral bells can tolerate lots of
abuse, and they are very versatile. They’re a wonderful
native. They do have flowers. They don’t last long, but
they’re very thin stems with little bell like flowers on them
that come up in the spring. Again, I don’t plant them for
their flowers. I plant them for their foliage.
One more for the shade, and that is sedum. There are
many varieties, and sedum grows throughout the northern
hemisphere not just in North America. But in North
America there’s a native variety called woodland
stonecrop, and it’s very shade tolerant. Again, I like this for
its tactile qualities. It has round fleshy sort of succulent
leaves that are really great. It’s hardy to zone four, so it
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 26 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
can take a lot of cold temperatures. It grows two to six
inches high, so it’s a terrific filler for your container.
I did want to mention one – I have a long, long list, but I
really can’t go through them all. I’ll save four for bright sun,
I forgot one columbine. Everyone should get some
columbine seed. At the grocery store, you can find it
everywhere. It’s a wonderful native. It’ll grow in cracks of
the sidewalk. It has beautiful flowers. Yellow, red, orange,
purple, blooms in mid spring. The foliage turns to maroon
in fall. I’m going fast now, because I’m looking at the clock.
I know I’m running out of time.
Columbine is not particular about soil, and you can just
sow the seeds directly. Here’s what I love about columbine
most. It is a real favorite for hummingbirds. So if you like to
attract hummingbirds columbine is almost guaranteed to
bring them in. It is hardly to zone three which means you
can grow it as far north as northern Canada. So
columbine, you can’t go wrong.
I’ve hurriedly talked about some of the plants I recommend
that I’ve tried that I really love, and a lot of them you’ve
noticed it’s not just the blooms, it’s the tactile nature of the
plants which I think is just as important. Gardening, and
I’ve said this in some other webinars. Gardening is
primarily a tactile activity. It’s something you do with your
hands, and the beautiful thing about plants is that they
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 27 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
respond to that, and they give back to you so much more
than just a visual appeal.
Hopefully now you’re thinking I do want to plant some
natives, and you’re thinking where do I get mine? So
here’s the hard answer to that question, and that is you’re
going to have to be a bit of a detective. I mentioned that
Blazing Star or cone flower, those are pretty popular
commercial plants. You’ll find them at any garden center
or nursery. But remember the key to natives is that they
are regionally specific. So ideally, you do need to find a
grower or a nursery that’s active right in your area.
So here’s what I recommend you do. I tried looking up
some general resources I could present to you. I have one
website that I think is a good one. But for all of you, you
really need to focus on natives that are regionally specific.
At least a little bit. So the great thing is that there are
native plant societies in every state in every province. And
all you need to do is open up your search engine and type
in let’s say you live in Illinois. Type in Illinois Native Plant
Society, and you will come up with a whole list of very nice
people that belong to organizations. People and
organizations that already are interested in native plants in
your specific geographic area, and they will know exactly
how to get natives and where to obtain them. And there
are nurseries and garden centers all over North America
all over the place that will be growing natives that are
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 28 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
suited to your conditions. So type in Native Plant Society
and the name of your state or your region, and I guarantee
you’ll come up with some resources.
That being said, there’s a pretty good website I found
called Plant Native dot org. I’ve not tried it with JAWS, but
it does work fairly well with voiceover. And the reason
being is that the upper right hand corner of the website
does have a text only option which is wonderful. You hit
that option, it’ll eliminate a lot of steps, graphics and
visuals as you swipe through the material. There is a
dropdown list where you can type in your zip code or your
state, and it’ll immediately give you a database of all the
growers and sources of native plants in the region that you
typed in. So it’s very helpful.
Another terrific website, a place to start, is Wildflower dot
org, but honestly, it’s pretty tedious to use with voiceover,
and I imagine very tedious with JAWS as well. It’s actually
the organization started by Lady Bird Johnson who was
the wife of President Lyndon Johnson. She was very, very
fond of wildflowers, and there’s a foundation that is
committed to her interest. It is a very informational site, but
not so accessible with Screen Reader, the one I tried. At
any rate, find a database that has nurseries and growers
in your area.
If you are lucky enough to live near a large botanic
garden, I can’t recommend enough visiting a botanic
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 29 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
garden. I’ll give you an example. Hadley is located very
hear the Chicago Botanic Garden, and they have a native
garden within the botanic garden. I believe they have three
different native gardens. One is a prairie garden. The
other is a woodland garden, and the third is I think the
greatest. That’s the habitat garden, and that is a collection
of native plants designed to create a habitat for other
organisms like butterflies and birds, etcetera. So any
opportunity you have to actually visit a native garden
already in existence will give you as really good idea of
what’s going to work for you, what’s going to thrive, and
you’ll without question find someone there who is nuts
about native plants who is more than willing to share all of
their advice and experience and give you some insight into
growing something that’s going to work for you.
In closing with this webinar, I hoped to get you interested
in trying to create just your own little bit of a wild
environment. It would be wonderful if you thought about
using a container or a small garden bed to recreate a part
of our world that’s sadly now for the most part lost to us.
As I’ve said many times native plants have evolved as
parts of communities, and those communities have many
members. Insects, animals, plants, even bacteria and
fungi. So when you garden with native plants, you are in a
small way recreating a community. You’ve become part of
a world that includes not just plants but also native
butterflies and birds among others. So as Dawn
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 30 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
mentioned at the intro, I’d like you to think beyond the
confines of your local garden center, and maybe just
dedicate a little bit of your garden space to plants that
grew herein North America before most of our ancestors
arrived. I know you’ll find it exciting, and I’m pretty sure
you’ll find it to be pretty fun. So thanks very much.
Dawn Turco
Well, my goodness gracious, this is why I love Ed’s
seminars so much. They are so packed full of information,
and we get to know Ed pretty well too. I’ve enjoyed
obviously hearing all of your recommendations, and I’m
enthusiastic. I’m hoping that participants today are as
enthusiastic. We did come up to the hour, but I’m going to
open the mike just in case there’s a pressing question. If
we don’t have time, or you think of one later, I’m going to
explain in a moment how you can get us that question
after the fact, or if you’re listening to the recorded version
of this seminar. So Ed thank you for sharing with us so
much. It’s like wheel barrel full of information on native
plants today. I particularly enjoyed your Illinois examples.
Thank you for those of us who work out of the Hadley
central office, and we can take advantage of those
recommendations and examples. Folks we time this
seminar today for those of us who are a little anxious to
get going with some planting. It’s been a long rather chilly
spring for us here in the Chicago area, but there is hope of
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 31 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
sunnier days ahead. And for you and your more northern
location as well Ed, so we’ll be thinking of you in the
weeks to come as you’re getting out there and doing your
thing.
I am going to hand the microphone back to Ed in just a
minute for a farewell. Also a reminder that our seminars
are archived at the past seminars site on the Hadley
website, and it just takes us a day or two to get it up there,
so feel free to relisten to it, because I know I’m going to
have to. As much as I got the thriller, the filler, and the
spillers, I’m going to need to hear some of those plants
over again. So recommend it to others or listen again, or if
you feel the urge take the container gardening course that
Ed teaches. That would be fun as well. Of course,
feedback. That’s where if you think of something later
send it to feedback@Hadley.edu, and I will pass it on to
Ed. And then finally as we all get into social media, we
have a hashtag for our seminars and that is hashtag
SeminarsAtHadley, hashtag Ed Haines, hashtag Grow
Wild. Maybe that’s what we should do Grow Wild. Ed I’m
handing it back to you.
Ed Haines
Well, thanks Dawn, and thanks everyone for listening, and
Alice and Deborah I appreciate your comments. I just
encourage all of you if you don’t have space to garden
yourself you can’t go wrong by going out to visit a garden
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 32 of 33
Grow Wild Gardening with Native Plants
this spring. It won’t be a waste of time. Get out there in
nature just a little bit. You can’t go wrong.
Dawn Turco
Thank you again Ed, and we will look forward to anyone
who is participating today in our next Seminars At Hadley,
so thank you very much and goodbye.
[End of Audio– 01:00:02]
©2014 The Hadley School for the Blind
Page 33 of 33