Wisconsin Public Television University Place  Gardening with Native Plants in the Northwoods  Patrick Goggin  2/9/13 UP836  cc >> Welcome. My name is Patrick Goggin. I'm with UW Extension Lakes, and the title of this seminar is Gardening with Native Plants in the Northwoods. We're going to head north today, up into zone 3B country. Anybody struggle with that? Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Although, with climate change, we're all scratching our head a little bit. But we'll talk today a little bit about how I've gone about gardening with native plants up north, and hopefully by telling you the story of how I've gone about it, you can learn a little and see the wonderful opportunities that are out there to work with this beautiful plants and this plant material. I work with something called the Wisconsin Lakes Partnership. It's a partnership between UW Extension Lakes, we're out of the College of Natural Resources at UW Stevens Point. We also have our partners with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and then over here you see Wisconsin Lakes, that's the advocacy piece, and together we come together to do good things for lakes. 

Basically, the litmus test for you to be a part of our partnership is if you love lakes and you want to do something to protect them, we want you on our team. So, with that, our helper is going to pass around a clipboard, and if you want to sign up for Lake Tides, our quarterly newsletter, we'd love to have you stay in tune with what's going on with lakes around the state. And native plants come up in the mix of that with things like shoreline restoration and dealing with the habitat around our lakes, and we'll talk a little bit as we move ahead with that. Here are some of the themes I want to explore with you today about native plants, and we'll start with some definitions and just talking about some background information around native plants and why we might even think about landscaping with them on our home properties. But then I want to spend most of the time showing you the different kinds of beds I've creating using native plants. Things like wetland beds, butterfly gardens, and some other opportunities, a meadow restoration in the backyard, that kind of thing, again as a way to see how you might begin to explore yourself with working with this plant material. Then I'll also share with you some of the resources I've collected over the years of working in the world of native plants. Just to give you ideas about how to deal with these different aspects of the plants and to maybe get started yourself. And we'll go through all these themes in one shape, way, or form. So, you with me? >> Yep. 

>> All right, guys. So, definition. Basically, these are plants that evolved in North America, and, specifically, this part of North America here in Wisconsin. And the thing to keep in mind is these species are tuned to our soils, to our climate, to our moisture, and to our weather conditions. And these have created plant communities that go with that. So here it's things like hickory and oak woods in Wisconsin or other deciduous forests. Beech-maple forests, for example. We have our tall grass prairie in the southern part of the state and so on. We use native plants for different reasons. Gardening with native plants may become the norm because of the benefits we get from native plants. 

Not the least of which is saying no to some of the pesticides and the fertilizer inputs that go with some of the other options besides native plants. And saying yes to the biodiversity that comes with native plants and the benefits and functions that those plants can provide. And so, there's more of this going on than ever. A couple other reasons we use native plants. Stormwater management. Now, on our microscale of our home parcels, that might not always be a challenge. Where I live, it's pretty in the middle of dry country, jack pine habitat, and the water movement and the challenges of erosion and those kind of things aren't a particular issue I deal with at my homestead. But a lot of folks do deal with that. And stormwater can come into play when we use native plants. You might have heard of rain gardens, and we'll talk a little bit about those as we move ahead. 

Another thing to think about is a lot of these native plants have some toughness about them that gives them a little leg up. Now, I'm not going to be one of those people that tell you deer won't browse a plant. They'll eat anything if they get hungry. I've seen some digging around in the snow up where I live that proves it. However, plants like this plant in the bottom right corner here, rattlesnake master, you see it looks like a cacti of sorts with those prickly kind of leaf margins and just the toughness of that plant, it's not a plant deer are particularly fond of. Another one are things like mints. They don't like the scents of those kinds of things or other herb kind of quality plants. And so that milieu of native plants can deter deer. We'll talk about that a little when we talk about meadow or prairie restoration here a little bit later. Another reason we use native plants, I love the educational opportunities. 

It's a way to bring young people into the fold and start teaching them some of the biology that can go with these plants, whether it's the pollinator story or the functions around water control, great opportunities. And, to me, there's still nothing more magical in the world than planting a seed and seeing a six-foot or 10-foot plant come from that little seed, and to have kids a part of that is an opportunity that native plants can provide for us. Sense of place. Some of these native plants are real near and dear to our hearts, partly because they fill our stomachs. This morning I had a waffle and good old maple syrup on top of it. So another benefit that these native plants have is that kind of value, cultural value and the significance that goes with sense of place. And wild rice is certainly another great example of that in our state of Wisconsin and here in the Midwest. Beautification. I live up in the town of Phelps and I've donated native plants to our community just to beautify our downtown area, and I'm sure some of you in the audience have done that too as master gardeners or the like. It's a way to have groups of people come together on a project and do good things to help Mother Earth. 

So, beautification is another reason we might choose native plants. And then there's this idea of maintenance. Now, that's not to say there's no maintenance with native plants, and we'll talk about what some of those challenges are, but overall, I think we can lessen our load a little bit when we use some native plants in our landscape. And you see some of the reasons that native plants can help reduce maintenance there, whether it's longevity depending on the species, the seasonal interests and so on. I should say before we continue, if you didn't jot down my email, it will be on the last slide or I'll share it with you again, but if anyone wants a copy of this PowerPoint, I'd be happy to work with you and get you a copy. So write down that email address. P, as in Patrick, Goggin, G-O-G-G-I-N, at UWSP.edu, and I'd be happy to work with you to get you a copy. And then probably the biggest reason that a lot of us enter the world of native plants is it helps bolster the habitat that is good for critters and for birds and for other wildlife out there. And so native plants provide that food and shelter and a structure whereby those critters can make a living out in the landscape. And this is a big reason that folks are starting to beautify their backyards but also bring those functions around wildlife habitat back to the fold using native plants. 

A person who studied this pretty deeply and trying to understand why these native plants are so much more beneficial is this fellow: Doug Tallamy. This is his recent book. And what he's been doing is looking at comparing horticulture varieties of plants versus native plants and seeing which critters are using them and starting to understand what that picture looks like. And here's just some examples here. The blueberry one is the one that blows me away. Over 288-some species are using at least some part of their life cycle using that plant to get by and to make a living. So if there's one plant you go out there on the landscape and maybe put in the ground, blueberries might be it. But you see buttonbush isn't that far behind, and phlox certainly does its fair share of lifting too. And these are just some few examples. So what Doug's been trying to do is quantify exactly how much more these native plants are being used, especially by insects. 

And, of course, insects are at the bottom of that food chain and that radiates up into the food chain in terms of if the native plants are there, the insects are there that go with those native plants. However, when we start to denude those native plants from the landscape, the insects go with them, and we have challenges, then, to the food web and the long-term survival of the species because that food source is gone. That's something that he spent a lot of time looking at. So know that by planting native plants you're helping to bolster that. My work with lakes across the state, 15,000 here in this state alone, the county I live in, 1300, back in 2007 the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, did its first ever national lake study. And lo and behold, you see up there on the top of that chart, the number one stressor to our lakes, not just in Wisconsin but nationwide, is the loss of habitat right there along that land/water interface. And so habitat, native plants is very important to our lakes, our water quality and the future because we all rely on this water to get by. So, that's part of the story to be sure. So let's think a little bit about some of the guidelines that go with the use of native plants. Probably the biggest one is what you see underlined up there. 

Match the environmental conditions of the source of your plant material to that of the planting site you have chosen. What that means is get seed stock within 100 or 150 miles or plant material from 100 to 150 miles of where you're living. Why? Well, again, let's think back of how these plants have evolved. They've evolved to the soils in your area. They've evolved to the winter conditions. Madison is a little different sometimes than the Northwoods in terms of how cold it gets. That makes a difference. You see the example up there of a red pine, or, excuse me, a red maple. A red maple grown in Alabama is going to be a very different kind of species. If we brought that up to the Northwoods and stuck it in the ground, it's going to have a rude awakening. 

Much like my Thailand relative, newlywed to my brother, had when she came to the Northwoods for the first time. [LAUGHTER] So, again, that's part of what we're keying in here is using those local genetics, that local ecotype, and it's very important when we choose our native plant material. And vendors are pretty, for the most part, in tune with this, and if you're working with a good native plant source, they should have a sense for this and be able to set you up. So, again, here are some of the reasons we think about landscaping with native plants. They help us save some energy. They can be a place for children to explore and to learn about biology. Native plants stay put. They're not like some of these invasive plants that are causing havoc in ecosystems across the state and across the world. For the most part, they're well behaved. Once in a while we do get native plants that can cause problems, but for the most part, they're a little more behaved. 

Why is that? Because there's predators, fungus, bacteria, things that are balancing that plant in the long-term. And, of course, invasive plants, those balances aren't here when they are a plant out of place. Native plants can also help enrich the soil and/or deliver water into the soil. Especially some of these prairie plants. 10, 15 feet into the ground these root structure can go, and as they do that, they're building those little pipelines for that water to infiltrate back into the ground. Big deal when drought's happening. Biggest drought since 1956 we just went through this past year. So, again, one of the things we're doing with native plants is benefiting the connectivity of water and getting water back where it needs to be instead of it maybe flowing too quickly out of the system. And then native plants are just interesting. They're fun from a biology point of view. 

They're fun to propagate and play with. They're just fun to play with. All right, so, let's jump into the family truckster. And yes indeed, there really is a family truckster. If you remember Vacation, that's it. Anyone ever drive one of these luxury motor vehicles? Yeah? [LAUGHTER] Nice stuff? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah. No kicking and screaming. Everyone get in. Let's head north. We're going up to Vilas County. 

And specifically, right over here to the bottom right, you see maybe Phelps in the left-hand corner, but we're up right near the UP border. We're up north. We're at about 1700 feet on top of some glacial outwash. So it's pretty sandy, rocky soil. I have some Vilas County friends here who can tell me putting a shovel in the ground can sometimes be a little rocky, but we can grow things, especially native plants can do pretty well. And so, I thought what we might do is look at some of the native plant beds I've put in around the property with my wife, and just share with you how we went about that. Maybe that can help evoke ideas about how you might apply native plants to your own situation. So here's where we're at. We're up in northern Wisconsin. Our property is about 4.5 acres. 

And this way would be north. And so you're looking at our little log cabin, and we're right next to the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. That's pretty cool. We could head out the back door and come on down to Green Bay and be on the national forest almost the whole time. So the first beds, some of the first beds we put in when we bought about 10 years ago, to give you a sense, there was nothing at this house except for you see the river birch there in front of the house. That and a little garden around that was about all there was and a couple gardens next to the house. Other than that, everything you're going to see has kind of been put in since. And my back is feeling it just looking at some of it. But the butterfly gardens were some of the first. Here's what it kind of looks like up front, right? So, a few years into it. 

You could hand out, helper, the bird and butterfly guide. I have a little, one of the native plant companies out there, Taylor Creek Nurseries, has a little guide they put together for bird and butterfly gardening. So the idea is here is a template of how to create your first bed. So here's a template for how to create a butterfly bed. I didn't have that guide when I did it. I kind of did it a little more whimsically. But, basically, they're just little football-shaped gardens. Maybe 15 feet by three feet across. And you can see I just took the sod out and started planting native plants. I'm a plug guy. 

I really like to work with plant plugs of about two-and-a-half-, three-inch size, maybe four-inch size. That's the kind I like to grow and propagate, and those are the kind I like to play with. You could easily just as well seed an area like this, just know that that's a little different a process and there's some great information out there on how to do that from some of our native plant vendors. But plant plugs is how most of the beds we're going to look at today have been created. So you see what's in there. Things like bergamot, yellow coneflower, oxeye daisy there on the left, queen of the prairie there in the middle. You see its delicate pink bloom. Culver's root is that white, elongated white bloom that glows at night. If you go out on a full moon night, it just is a beautiful plant to see. It likes wet feet, but you can see that's one of the things we're going to talk about here as we move forward through the day is I'm growing this stuff in sugar sand, pretty much, with rocks in it. 

Now, that doesn't mean, I do water once in a while. If we get in drought situations like we've had over the last decade, once in a while I get the sprinkler out and give these guys a drink if they're looking a little beat up. But a lot of them are built for that, and these native plants can handle that for the most part, within reason. But sometimes it doesn't hurt to pull the hose out and give them a drink once or twice over the course of the growing season. You see right in the middle there the big sunflower trying to, I thought-- I'm not much of a designer, and we'll talk a little bit about landscape design as we go. I'm glad to see there's other talks here, and my wife would be the first one to tell you I'm not a designer. I put anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 plant in a year, so I'm more about just getting that sucker in the ground, and good luck to you, little fella. [LAUGHTER] But, in terms of design for this, the basic design was taller stuff kind of in the middle, and then flanking to either side, a little shorter was the general cue there. For each of these beds we go through I have some future goals I'm listing. Just ideas about how I might enhance these beds over time, that kind of thing. 

So you can take a look at that as we go ahead. And there you see butterfly insect favorites. I'll be giving a talk on birds and butterflies tomorrow. I'm happy to see a lot of other folks talking about that same topic here. A lot of times that's what brings people through the door to think about working with native plants, and there's nothing wrong with that because if you garden and like veggies, that's another reason these native plants can really make your world because the pollinators they're going to bring in will bolster your vegetables to no end. And I've really seen a difference over 10 years in terms of the amount of pollinators moving around our property, and the diversity has just been something to watch. That's another fun aspect to be sure with working through these kind of native plants. And then, I mentioned the rain garden, so what rain gardens are are basically perennial beds that we put water-loving, or at least plants that can deal with wet feet, and you see, we get some rain and that fills up and allows that water to infiltrate back into the ground. And, again, instead of that water carrying pollutants maybe to some of our waterways, it's able to infiltrate back into the ground. So rain gardens like this one installed up in the Northwoods can make a difference in small or large ways depending on the size of the gardens and the system of rain gardens you might put in. 

And Madison's really hip to that. They've done a good job in this community of getting those out and about. To me, it's one of those urban things that you can really do that makes a difference in terms of helping water quality and habitat-wise. Here's another bed we have. This is about it for our mesic conditions. By mesic I mean kind of moist, wet situations. Not wetland wet, but moist forest kind of conditions or like a mesic prairie. In this case, it's a north-facing bed along our log home here. This is probably around June when the interrupted fern and the hostas and everything kind of popped. But before that, it's also where I have a bunch of the cool native plant spring ephemerals. 

The parade of plants we see in our woodlands that come out before the leaves come out on trees. And so it's guys like this. Up there in the far left is Virginia bluebells or the big trillium. We just have blankets of that in our forest up near where I live. Something that's more of a dry feet situation, up here on the top right is barren strawberry. Great little plant. Tough as nails. Moving down to that second row of plants we have Dicentra, the Dutchman's breeches. In the middle there is a beautiful, delicate little plant, the bellworts. This one is sessilifolia with that nodding head to it. 

Next, to the right of that is the hepatica. So we have a couple of those, the sharp lobes and the round lobes. Great little spring ephemerals. And then to the bottom two plants on the left side you see bloodroot. Kind of a sign of spring. Kind of like trailing arbutus, one of those first plants we see up and about. Typically there's no one around that guy when he's going to bloom. But they're tough and they make it through. And then I've brought shooting stars. They're not really part of the ecosystem dynamics of our Northwoods, but they're doing pretty well where I live and they're just to pretty a plant to not have them. 

So that's some of the stuff that's in this north-facing bed. Then around the garage there's some other beds we've put in. Everything from asters in there, you see the white Baptisia flowering in this picture here. There's some Tradescantia, the spider wort, in there. This kind of fine leafed plant is a great plant to take up space and a self seeder. That's the grass-leaved goldenrod. Real beautiful, little yellow flower to it. Moving on over here, this is one of my favorite plants here. It's not quite flowering yet. Easy plant to grow. 

It's kind of got a minty seed. That is the wild licorice, Agastache. Beautiful either pink or purple flowers depending on the species. And, like I say, easy to grow, and bees love it. Great plant to have. And then you see our white clematis and then some of that -- in here, the barren strawberry, and some other things. I've got to switch clickers. Sorry. Then on the other side, this is kind of on the west side of the garage, some interesting stuff in here. One of the plants in here is a zone 5 plant. 

That's the guy you see with the yellow flower. This is Carolina buckbean, Thermopsis caroliniana up here. Where is it? Right there. You see that beautiful yellow legume flower. Bees just go nuts for that plant. Zone 5 but doing fine here in the Northwoods. I mulch it a little bit, so that's one of the things I do come winter, but it's doing well in this bed and has been in there for a few years. Another one of the neat plants in here is this guy right here. That's one of our native honeysuckles. That is the yellow honeysuckle vine, Lonicera reticulata. 

It has taken a few years to get up and fill that arbor out a little bit, but one of the vines that I encourage you to play around with. A great native plant vine. Okay. Moving on. This is kind of one of my newer areas. You see my neighbor, 92-year-old Leonard, firing up the old, I swear that thing is steam-powered, tractor. I wasn't complaining, believe me, though. That's a hell of a lot of wood chips I didn't have to haul around. One tip I'd have for you is when the folks come along to do the tree trimming underneath the wires, they usually are making wood chips. And in this case I got 18 truckloads of wood chips thrown on the side of my property, and I've just been milking those things for a few years. 

In fact, now they were a story high, and at this point they're about my height. So they're just becoming some nice material, and once in a while I see a snake in there and it's some habitat. I can grab wood chips when I need them. So this is an area I'm kind of going to start goofing around with some of the woodland plants as well. And then, the other thing I want to do with this area that I think we denude from our properties a lot of time, is that mid-layer, that shrub layer that's so key for bird species. And so I want to fill this area. I'm starting to get some native roses in there. Things like the hazelnuts. Things like the dogwoods. Witch hazel would be a great plant. 

Although, that's a plant that kind of stops a county or two before it gets to Vilas, but we're going to give it a whirl up there. And then I just point out is you'll notice in the landscape that we're kind of creating at my house is the natives are mixed in with the other plants. In this case, that's a hundred year old Concord grape. Literally a guy just cut a stick of Concord grape. I buried it in the ground and two years later it started sprouting, and it's just been producing Concord grapes ever since. So it's kind of fun to have that heritage on the site. So, in my case, I like mixing the native plants in with things. And here's kind of the vision I have for things to add to that bed. Some of these woodlands things. Wild ginger is just the coolest, neatest plant. 

If you have shady areas, needs a little moisture or it doesn't hurt to have a little moisture, can't go wrong with wild ginger. May apple is one I'm going to start playing with a little bit. Up near us, the plants here on the right, that's wood betony. That's quite often found in the aspen/jack pine complex dry forest by me. That second row plant to the right is one of the coolest plants out there. Named from our third president, that's Jeffersonia diphylla. You see the two-sectioned leave there where the diphylla part comes in. Beautiful spring ephemeral kind of plant, and it has this little delicate flower that's a little hard to see there. But a plant I highly recommend growing. And then, who can not like the hummingbird attractor of a Columbine? So, these are some of the plants I'm going to start fooling around with in this particular bed. 

Okay, now we're moving to my wife's area of the garden where I'm not allowed. [LAUGHTER] I'm not even sure I'm allowed to talk about it, but I'm going to sneak it in anyway. [LAUGHTER] I don't know if others of you struggle with group gardening or spousal gardening. I don't know what to call it. [LAUGHTER] But we have that challenge. My wife tells me I make gardening competitive. Fancy that. [LAUGHTER] So, the truce we came up with is we have the so-called cottage or English garden in this front yard part, and I'm not allowed in there. I can give plants once in a while, and she might put them in the ground, but I'm not allowed in there, and I stay out for the most part. And it's created harmony. 

So, if any of you are struggling with that particular issue, maybe this technique will work. So she's got a few natives planted in along the way, although she likes to play around with some of the other horticultural varieties or other things. But some of the things you would find in there native-wise would be things like the dotted mint. There's some Spirea in there. A little blue stem I think I got her to add at some point. Some Joe Pye. I always want, that's my on-going list is to create more native plants. You see here there's some Liatris spicata, the Gayfeather. An elder sneaked in. I'm sorry, an elderberry sneaked in. 

I'm sure a bird brought that in. You see some goldenrod in there. So, natives are sneaking into the English garden as well. Okay, the next little project, I think this was about two or three years into us owning the property, is I had some old mattress frames. You know when you buy a house, you think you're paying someone to go inspect the house and get rid of that kind of stuff. I guess I didn't pay the guy enough or whatever. There were some mattresses I didn't know what to do with, so I just buried them under a truckload of sand. These are all rocks from the property that I hauled from different parts of the property. I tried to kind of give it a north/south feel to it. Just look on the bottom there for you rock garden purists. 

This is not trying to be real rock garden. All it really is is a well-drained site that I like to put dry, root-loving plants in. It's a mix of dwarfy kinds of stock in terms of shrub material, and then I've put a whole bunch of native plants tucked in along with things like sedums and creeping tines and all other sorts of rocky, gardeny kinds of things. So it's been a fun little project. I'd say it's about 60 feet by 20-25 feet. And so here's kind of planting day. You see I've, at this point, put the shrubs in, or about to put the shrubs in in some cases, and then you see the other plant material that's going to line up. So, again, this is 2006. This is 2008. So you see even in just two years it's starting to fill in a little bit. 

The mulch looks still pretty good. When I was putting this in people said the weeding aspect of things was something I should maybe look out for, but this mulch does a pretty good job. I think, also, the dryness helps, but I don't do a ton of weeding because my physique works against me in that way. [LAUGHTER] But you see in 2002 it was looking pretty cool. One of the joys of my life was I actually grew cacti from seed, and these are some of those Opuntias, both the fragilis and the humifusa I got to grow from seed and planted those as part of the mix in this rock garden. And then you just see there are kind of different natives sprinkled in with things like the -- pine or all sorts of different plant material. It's been a fun project. I have to tell you, though, one of the mistakes I made recently is I put some sweet grass in right around here. If anyone knows that one of our native grasses is sweet grass. It's kind of aggressive. 

And I learned that lesson the hard way. I don't have a 2012 picture of this bed. If I did, it would be sweet grass all the way through here. [LAUGHTER] So know that in 2013 I have a little project ahead. Hopefully I can find a youngster or something to do it. [LAUGHTER] We'll talk a little later about putting the right plant in the right place, and I blew it on that one. But it's still fun and a great plant, but put it where you want it. Here's another kind of picture of the rock garden. This is, I think, 2010. So you can see it's filling in even a little more. 

Starting to, this plant here is zigzag goldenrod, great fall plant. One of the things I try to accomplish through the beds is to have that parade of bloom times over the course of the growing season, and that's always something I'm fighting against to keep interesting things coming up. So know that that's an ongoing thing. Sorry about that. But you see there's some showy beardtongue. That's the purple guy. Bearberry mixed in there. Great dry condition kind of plant. Rattlesnake master, that deer plant we talked about. Oh, purple clematis. 

That's one of my favorites. If you're not using this plant, I strongly recommend it. It's one or our native plants. Beautiful pink flowers. Early in April is its bloom time. At least up by me it's blooming around then, early April, I'm sorry, late April, early May where I'm at. But great native plant. Here's one last picture. This is 2011. You're just starting to see, to the right here, my sweet grass situation. 

So if anyone wants some sweet grass, I know where you can get some. [LAUGHTER] You see the other native clematis there, the white one on that tree thing. That's my garden landscaping design. I'm really good at that, aren't I? [LAUGHTER] Once in a while I try. Okay, moving on. I had a little go at a wetland bed. So I'm up in the middle of dry jack pine country, but I thought I fell in love with wetlands in the southern part of the state working as a young ecologist down here. So I really wanted to bring some of those suite of plants into the mix. So what I did is I built a raised bed, and then I just lined it with six millimeter black plastic and put two layers of that down into it. The other thing Bob Freckmann told me to do was make sure there was a little flow to the bed. 

So instead of it being completely flat, try to create a situation where one end of the bed is a little higher than the other. And the reason for that is then the water flows through it ever so slightly, and that's where you'll be able to get some of the wetland plants like marsh marigold to stick around and still do their thing because they like that slow moving water situation. So a little tip if you do the wetland bed, make sure you make one side a little taller so you have that flow through piece. So you see some of the lobelias popping in the middle of this. It's a mix of lots of sedges in there. Native grasses that like wet feed like -- are in there. Down on the bottom there, one of my favorite plants out there. This is Lilium philidelphicum, one of the lilies that can be grown in this kind of situation. That's the white gentian, one of the rarer plants, but again, you can buy this kind of stock from our native plants nursery. It's pretty incredible. 

Sweet gal, beautiful smelling shrub. This is kind of in the corners here. It's not very grown at this point. And then another shrub that's in there that can deal with wet feet, just a beautiful plant, marsh rose. If you don't know Rosa palustris, get some. Great essence of rose it can create and just tons of flowers on the blooms on that plant. Tough as nails. Great, great native plant to be working with. Oops, wrong clicker. Sorry. 

Here's kind of another shot, and you see some of the other stuff going on here. Here's a golden glow. That might be in a flat though. This is the bog goldenrod. We have some mountain mint in there, Joe Pye. Down here, these are the seed heads for the Hypericum, the great St John's wort, a great wetland plant. You see sedges mixed into the mix. Here's that sweet gal. So, it's not a huge bed, maybe 20 feet by eight feet, yet I bet there's 50-60 species I've been able to tuck in there, some of them boggy too, and it's just a fun way to have some of these wetland plants that are around. So, try a wetland bed. 

Then, these are the raised beds. What I do here, I kind of got this idea from working at native plant nurseries as a young person because a lot of what these nurseries do is they have an area where they put beds in, like this, and put their native, and they usually put only one species in each bed, I'm doing it a little differently, but then they have seed stock then to put out into the nursery and create larger beds. So I kind of used this idea to the extent that I have about nine of these native plant beds. My buddy called them, the first time he saw them, it looks like Henry V's wives all lined up dead there. [LAUGHTER] I just kind of turned to my wife and I said, hmm, pay attention. [LAUGHTER] So, wife number one is right over here. [LAUGHTER] Just kidding. As you can tell, she's a very patient and lovely woman, my wife. [LAUGHTER] So these native plant beds, instead of having one species in them, I can't help it, I've got probably 20-25 species in each one. And then I use that seed, I collect that seed every year and use it then to seed my meadow prairie which we'll get to in a little bit. 

So I had that native plant seed source and I can go play around with it and I'm saving a little money in doing so. And so, this is the year I put them all in, and you see they're pretty low at this point. Hold on, though. Careful what you wish for. Right now it all looks pretty nice and tame and mellow, right? Well, that was last year [LAUGHTER] So, some people, like my dad, think landscaping, I was telling folks before, I think his idea of landscaping is white rock around the radiator. [LAUGHTER] Versus this kind of a look is one that some people might have trouble with. So you've got to understand what kind of aesthetic you're able to digest and what you're attracted to and garden with that in mind when you approach native plants. To me, I just love this. I leave this stuff up then all winter so I have winter interest The birds are using it all year round to pick at seeds, to grab stuff. And then in spring I go and get those beds tidied up and cleaned out such that the new plant growth can come on. 

But it's quite a bit of plant material that those birds can chuck away at all winter long. Frankly, it's just a little more interesting. So, try the raised bed thing. Couple things also about it, they warm up a little quicker, they get a little sooner going in terms of growing season, and maybe that gives them a leg up growing up in the Northwoods. I don't know. And there here's kind of my last project. I don't know what to call it because we don't really have prairie up in my neck of the woods. Although, we have barren communities with some of the prairie species as part of those communities. Spread Eagle Barrens just down the road, for example. But some of prairies obviously dropped out mid-state and they don't make it up to my part of the world. 

However, with climate change, who knows. So, I'm kind of creating a meadow in my backyard with this beautiful pallet of native plants. And the way I've gone about it is kind of the Wasowski method if you know Andy and Sally. They talk about cool season forbs, cool season grasses and warm season forbs, warm season grasses. And having that balanced approach to when you're installing you meadow or prairie to make sure that every few feet you're putting those four different kind of groups of plants in place such that you have that bloom interest over the course of the year, you have that matrix and look of what a meadow or a wild situation looks like. And a deer goes to eat this and really doesn't enjoy it because, I heard Larry Weaver talking about this, a landscape architect, he talks about it from the sense of, think about it from a deer's point of view. They put their head down, they go for a bite, and six plants come into their mouth at once. And one of those might be a mint, and they hate the mint. And so it's not like when they come and cherry pick you garden area where it's one plant at a time and I'm just going to kind of chew myself some beautiful Helleborus or whatever it is down on the ground and that kind of thing. So that's part of why these native plantings of meadows is that matrix of plants all coming in one bite seems to deter the deer browse. 

We'll talk more about getting to where you have that density in terms of insulation here as we move forward. So you see some of the species listed up there. Here's another picture. Another part of the prairie. I had two approaches to this prairie. At first I was kind of going with the HC Greene method of all plugs. I wasn't going to put any seed in. I was just going to put it all in with my bare back. Well, I got about two seasons into that and thought this is going a little slow. I even got some Outward Bound kids there to put 6,000 plants in one day. 

It was a great day. Although, I'll to you, it was the funniest thing. The guys were all running around puff chested and trying to help the girls, and the girls all had on their dress jeans and were covering their butts with one hand and trying to plant with the other because their hip-hugger jeans weren't quite getting it done. [LAUGHTER] So it was quite an interesting day, but we got 6,000 plants in the ground. [LAUGHTER] Love the program and thank those kids for coming by. But you see what I mean by the matrix here a little bit in terms of the plants kind of all intermixed there and just a little more of an aesthetic-like wild ecosystem. And then here, some future goals. We have about three acres back there that I can play with, and I'm probably about an acre into it. So I still have some opportunities ahead in terms of putting the prairie project in. And here's kind of how I started. 

I just put the black plastic down, forget about it for a year. The other thing that works really well are old rugs. So if you know anyone taking a floor out, boy, those things last forever and they kill grass. One of the things I have a challenge with is Bromus inermis, if you know that invasive plant, as well as knapweed, you see some right there, and other things. It's a struggle. What's nice about the black plastic is I don't have to buy phosphate, I don't have to hit the whole thing, I can just go back then and spot treatment and hopefully not hurt the soil as much in terms of the critters in there using the chemicals. So, that's my approach in terms of preparation. Give you a nod to growing some of the rarer species out there. The plant stock is out there, folks. Up there in the far left, one of the most beautiful plants out there. 

That's wild petunia, Ruellia humilis. Beautiful, beautiful wildflower. Available, a lot of seed out there for that. I'm not sure what the common name is for this: Pimpernel. I couldn't remember the common name for it, but a delicate umbel, yellow umbel flower. Just a beautiful plant. This is wild quinine, one of our prairie plants, deep-rooted prairie plant. Beautiful white flower. This is one of our rare asters. This is aster furcatus. 

And this is a plant rescue I did in the Manistique area a while back when they were putting some condos in. That is a federally listed species. Don't tell anyone. That is dwarf lake iris. And I'm of the ilk that the more we can get these populations of rare species growing and keeping those genetics and that diversity moving along the better. So that's where I stand on this, and I like to see people growing these rare things because they're beautiful plants and the plant material is out there. And just make sure it's coming from a reputable vendor. We don't want people taking plants out of the wild. We want them propagating the stuff and working through it that way. So make sure you're working with a good vendor. 

The other thing I would suggest is pushing these zone four and five guys. These are some of the ones that I'm growing up by my place. Just some spectacular plants. This is called west Indian psychic. Don't know much about this plant. I think it's a Missouri area plant, but just a beautiful little delicate white flower with that red tint to it. It does really well. I've had it for years up in my spot, and it's doing great. Here's another one. This is a bunch flower, Melanthium virginicum. 

Again, just a beautiful showy flower. Why would you not want that in your garden? Glade --, it's one of our wetland plants from the southern part of the state. Does real well up by me. And then these two, these are just big, gorgeous plants. I was out in Cape Cod this summer, and they've got hibiscus in every yard out there, and they're all flowering and doing well in those maritime climates. So here's my answer to those guys. I grow a couple of my own. The beautiful, the is the militaris up on top and I think that's -- on the bottom there. Beautiful rose mallows. This guy over here is another mallow. 

I think it's an Indian tribe down in Kansas where that plant comes from. It's been doing well. I've got about five seasons into it, and it's doing great in the Northwoods. This guy here, that's American Burnet, kind of a unique prairie plant. I could go collect seed from this stuff today. It pretty much is the last plant to flower, end of October, deer hunting season, somewhere in there, it's still out there flowering away in the snow. Doing fine. So, I encourage you to jump in and try some of these zone four and fives in the Northwoods too. Okay, so let's go through some resources to help you get started. That's kind of the beds that I have in my area, and I just want to get you in tune with some of the resources out there. 

Highly recommend Trees and Shrubs in Minnesota in terms of the native plants of the Midwest. Certainly from a horticulture point of view you can't do wrong with Dirr's but this is kind of the native equivalent of that. Some other books here, my other kind of go-to books. This is kind of how I learned my botany was the Weeds and Wildflowers book because of those beautiful little color photographs. This is kind of the current rewrite of that edition to Merel Black and Emmet's book. Great little book. If you're looking for one field guide to help you with native plants, that would be my recommendation. In the world of water, great new book out by Paul Skawinski, great prairie book if you're down in the part of the world in terms of the prairie plants. So lots of good tools in terms of plant identification help. Then, a lot of these vendors are here at this event. 

There is a wealth of information in these beautiful catalogs that our native plant vendors across the state are producing. Get a hold of them. Read through them. They're chalk full of information. You'll learn a lot and can really get off and running in terms of the world of native plants. Gardening with Native Plants, in general, that's the Wesolowski book there that I mentioned earlier. Some good background information. Some other tomes there that you might be interested in checking out. If you're interested particularly the landscaping piece of things, there's different books out there. One that we work quite a bit with in the lake role is The Landscaping for Wildlife and Water Quality, but know that there's material out there in this regard. 

Design, my Achilles' heal. I even own books on design and can't pull it off. [LAUGHTER] But certainly there's a lot of information out there, and some good people to look at here so check those out. But certainly good folks out there. You might jot Larry's website down there. Just type in Larry Weaner, I said Weaver before, it's Weaner, and check out his website. He's done a lot of outreach when it comes to this, and he has a little PDF document on that website. And, again, Larry Weaner. Just Google that and you'll find him. And related to that, so we can think about ways of approaching our landscape to make things gentler on the eyes. 

So S curves around flower banks or putting in some rock work to make things a little more interesting. So if you're of that aesthetic that needs that more neatness and the white rock that my dad loves so much, go that way, and just understand that these cues of care that I like to call them can be implemented along with your native plant gardening. Native plant community restoration. A lot of this work is kind of in its infancy. Even though the Arboretum has been doing it since the 1930s, in terms of some other ecosystems, it's a newer approach. We're learning every day about this stuff, but there's been some great new books about how to go about the idea of restoring native plant communities or ecological health on our land. And Sara Stein books are a great nod to this in terms of how we as backyard gardeners and people who own a small parcel of land, how can we contribute to this effort of restoring landscapes and plant communities out there. So take a look at some of these resources. They can help you. Invasives, be in tune with this because one of the challenges even working with native plants is the invasives are probably still going to find their way and fight you with trying to get those invasives in the ground. 

The other thing I'd point out to you is there's some great books out there that give you choices about how to not work with the invasive plant species but to work with the native plant species. So these books outline what some of the historical plant choices have been. So things like the non-native honeysuckles or barberries or the like, and giving you what would be a native plant that would give you the same kinds of landscape services that you're looking for or other attributes that you're looking for. So these books really outline some great strategies of how to go about that. Germination and propagation. Probably the easiest tome is this guy here. Harold Rock put together way back in '71 or '72. Great nuts and bolts kind of information about how to go about propagation. Some great resources through the Native Plant Journal, now housed in the university system down here in Madison, but know there's some great resources out there to help you with that. Again, just shoot me an email if you want to get in tune with any of this stuff. 

Then the other question I get a lot is, where can I go see these native plants in situ? What do these plant communities look like? Well, one of the best tomes to do that is Randy Hoffman's guide here to Wisconsin native plant communities. Randy's one of our preeminent plant biologist in the state, and he's been in a lot of these ecosystems over time. So he put a book together to tell you where these areas are with maps of where to go and look at this plant material. So I suggest you take advantage of going to those areas. The other thing is, for wetlands they've done the same thing in terms of their wetlands gems book. They put together some great help there. And vegetation in Wisconsin certainly is a classic example of an examination of plant communities across the state. I just wanted to share this tip with you. So next we're going to just go through some installation tips, I believe, after a few more resources. This is a thing we used once in shoreline restoration. 

You see how it just scalps off the sod and, boom, you're in. You don't disturb the soil underneath and the critters underneath, and you can get right to planting without that competition with the sod grass that was there before. So know that you can rent a machine like that and put in you butterfly garden lickety-split if you've got a back like mine and don't like it. We'll come to questions in a little while, sir. The other suggestion I'd have is to get out to our scientific natural area. So right here there's a field guide that's available on the DNR's website to go out and get into these scientific natural areas and see these plant communities. The other thing is all our arboretum and botanical gardens. They've created a lot of these ecosystems in these places. Go check them out. They can be great ways to get in tune with this stuff. 

Conservation groups as well. People like Wild Ones, Botany Club of Wisconsin, Master Gardeners, whoever it is, get in tune with these folks who are out there and be a part of some of these conservation groups that are helping with native plants. Medicinal uses, just some quick resources for you that are out there. Probably the -- book is the closest one in terms of the Midwest. Here's my little attempt at it, my herb garden. All of us have those doomsdayer people in our family. So my whole doomsdayer thing is I got a whole bunch of medicinal plants and I'm going to become the new CVC when doomsday comes. [LAUGHTER] So come up to Phelps if you need some medicine into the future. [LAUGHTER] Choosing plants, the right plants, I'm just going to move through a couple things. I wanted to get you in tune with this. 

And that is our herbarium website. So what you're able to do there is to go and pull up a species, in this case we did skunk cabbage, and you see these little maps, and the green is there for some counties and not in others? What that is signifying is if it's green that means there's a herbarium specimen on record for that species and that county. And so if you're trying to understand, does that species show up where I live or not, go to the herbarium website and look it up on the species and look at the map. If you see your county's white, well then it maybe hasn't shown up in your area yet. Versus if it's green, someone's collected that species within your county, and chances are it's a species that might be appropriate for you. A lot of times when you get a species that's between north and south, you'll see the tension line break here and it's all green down here and all white up here kind of thing. So you can really see those plants jump out. But the herbarium websites are wonderful resources to get in tune with which plants might be appropriate for your area. Site preparation. We talked about the black plastic, that's how I roll. 

There's another way of doing it. This is, my wife collects old newspapers and just puts down about six layers of newspaper down and then wets them and leaves this on and plants right into that. She might throw wood chips on top of that. And, again, you're just kind of knocking that sod back without using chemicals. Plants material, lots of places to get the plant material. I really like Bare Root and have been using that more than ever. But, certainly, you can go with seed, you can go with burlap, whatever works for you. But Bare Root can be a little cheaper, about a third of the cost, and the plants do wonderfully. So look for that kind of plant material as well. And look for plant material containers that have pushed the roots down. 

That's the whole idea. You don't want roots getting caught up in that plant. You want those roots growing downward. So, when you're buying a plant, make sure you're buying pots that have that kind of orientation to them. Some maintenance things there. I mentioned it's not completely maintenance free, whether it's pruning or mulching or that invasive control that might happen. Caging or fencing with the deer browse up north. I spray once in a while with one of the repellents. The other tip I'd give you is to switch them once in a while such that you're keeping, used the garlic-based one once, and then use the blood one next just to keep those critters thinking. So, products like that work or a big dog like -- shepherd of old. 

She did the trick too. And draw up a plan. Have a plan of attack and write down some ideas and work through what your system might be. You have a little template there for working through a bird or butterfly garden. So if you haven't jumped into the world of native plants, you have a way to start. And with that, I thank you very much for attending today, and I hope you jump into the world of native plants. [APPLAUSE]