I’m Mike. I live in Windfall, Indiana. I asked last night if this was a good place to get advice on managing the plants on my property, and was told it would be fine. The long term goal is to get more native plants, remove non native stuff, and just generally be responsible with what I’m doing. I’ve posted lots of pictures on the app. I’ll be using that to try to identify what is already here. I don’t intend to remove anything without replacing it with something else, so I’m not taking away food sources or shelter for wildlife. I appreciate any advice. Keep in mind that for me this will be long term, so I might not work on planting or removing right away, depending on time, budget, ect. Thanks for reading.
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Welcome to the forum! For our small native planting section of our upper Midwestern USA yard, the few concerns we have after several years are:
- Continuing to try to plant a variety of species that bloom at different times so that something is always in bloom because we want to attract a variety of winged creatures and enjoy consistent blooms. We especially enjoy maintaining late-season blooms (asters and goldenrods), which seem to attract a high quantity.
- Spacing the plantings by height with larger plants in back and smaller plants up front on south facing space has not worked as intended. The tall plants lean forward and take the sunlight. For our south-facing section, planting short plants exclusively in an entire area was more effective than trying to put them in front of tall plants.
- We left non-native plants intact that attracted winged creatures. Catnip, in particular, attracts a variety of bees that we enjoy. We removed some aggressive non-natives and noticed that common lambsquarters did not return but Creeping bellflower did return. Digging up roots has some success in removing creeping bellflower. Removing them earlier in the season helped the Native plants get taller and block regrowth for that season.
- As soon as we notice new patches of desired growth outside our exclosure (small fencing to deter rabbits), we put up new exclosures of rabbits tend to eat them. For example, we noticed a patch of common Milkweed volunteering and obtained a free portable dog fence to keep rabbits out. What initially looked like a few Milkweed has become about 25 plants in about 30 square feet! Same thing with false sunflowers: we put exclosure around them as they volunteer or rabbits decimate them. Rabbits are not eating new white vervain or new groundcherries that volunteer.
- The planting that has proven most attractive to the widest variety of insects where we live is wild bergamot. It is starting to spread, which we are encouraging.
We are not highly knowledgeable about anything and just experiment, learn, and try to enjoy. It’s the first rainy year and the gray headed coneflowers are taller than any person in our home!
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So far I’ve planted American Basswood trees, Black Chokeberry, American Hazlenut, Allegheny Serviceberries, and some blueberries.Two of each. I’m not sure about the blueberries though. They were from Lowes, before I started thinking about planting native. Same with a few other things, and what was already here. I’m sure a few things are imports, but they haven’t spread in the over 20 years I’ve lived here.
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Some pictures of what I’m working with.
This is the back yard.
Picture 1. Facing East, with a bush and two Walnut trees on the left.
Picture 2. Also facing East. Taken from the North side of the bush from the first picture. Two Black Chokeberries in front of the brush pile.
Picture 3. Taken from the East end of my property, facing South. Brush pile on the right, American Basswood in some chicken wire. The two large bushes are actually old concrete stands for a large fuel or lp tank, I think fuel for the rail line that ran through here. The one on the right is mostly Trumpet Vines. The one on the left is Blackberries and two trees.
Picture 4. Taken from the South East property line, Facing West. Another small American Basswood, and pear tree on the left. Two small Blueberry bushes past the pear.
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This is the front yard. There’s not as much to see as the back.
Picture 1. Taken from the West end, facing East. Two Allegheny Serviceberries in a line, then two American Hazlenuts making a T with the Serviceberries. A Concord grape vine at the posts on the right. I plan to get rid of that next year, and replace it with something else. Half of it died out anyway. Also two large Lilac bushes to the right of the driveway.
Picture 2. Showing what is behind the truck in the first. Just some grass and a flower bush by the porch. The house is a bit of a work in progress.
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I’ll update the mystery plants once I get them identified on the app. I was thinking of planting some milkweed and purple passion flower around the brush pile. I was thinking thw passion flower would grow over the brush and might look nice. I also thought some blue Bottle Gentian at the end of the concrete with the Trumpet Vine. You can barely see some straw covering there, it’s my dog’s grave. I thought some flowers there would be nice. I started those three as seeds in cups in the house, but only have one sprout so far. I think it’s the passion flower, but I foegot to lable them. I also started whatever tree makes the helicopter seeds, it’s doing well.
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Another great vine you might consider is Virgin’s Bower (Clematis virginiana). (Just be sure not to get the non-native Autumn Clematis - Clematis terniflora). It’s gorgeous and absolutely vibrates with pollinators. It’s also incredibly aggressive, which is perfect if you have an area you want covered. However, it doesn’t get woody, or have thorns, etc, so if it goes some place you don’t want it, it’s very easy to remove. It completely smothered out a big patch of mile-a-minute-weed on our property.
We have better luck with Elderberries than Serviceberries at our place (Pennsylvania), and both make for great bird food. Oh, and paw paw trees. I planted one scruffy little tree and a few years later had a glorious grove. Definitely check those out!
I could go on for hours, but it sounds to me like you’re doing everything right!
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Well that’s good to hear. I use the Indiana Native Plant Society website when I’m looking for ideas, and Prarie Nursery is where I bought from. Prarie Nursery has filters for state and a range map for everything. Beyond that, I’m guessing what will work in my yard and benefit wildlife. They seemed pretty pricey, but I don’t know what’s normal for the industry. My neighbor has tried Paw Paws and couldn’t get them to grow. I’m definitely willing to try though.
I hadn’t really thought of that. I don’t know what the bloom and fruiting seasons are for the new stuff.
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That flower bush is a Hydrangea. The genus is native to your area, although I don’t know if that specimen is a native species. If it is a cultivar, it may be no particular species.
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So if it’s one of the Asian species, should I put it on the removal list? It’s been that size for 20 years or more, but that doesn’t mean it’s not spreading elsewhere, right?
I would keep the Hydrangea as shrubby shelter for birds … until your new plants have a chance to shrub up. Look back in 3 years time and your garden will be a different place.
https://eefalsebay.blogspot.com/2018/04/false-bay-garden-and-water-in-april.html
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Seconded on keeping the Hydrangea, at least for the time being. They really are great bird shelters, summer and winter. That’s why I’m replacing the one that came with our house, which was killed by an invasion of Common Buckthorn (a.k.a. Hostileberry).
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I’ll definitely keep the hydrangea for now. I don’t intend to remove anything without having a replacement planted and grown. The birds seem to prefer the Spirea (google lens result for the id), but the walnut trees are killing that. I think it’s non native anyway, so I’ll need to plant something else that can tolerate the chemical that walnuts put out. Assuming the walnuts aren’t also non native.
I take it there is a time limit for editing posts. I was going to update the pics with some id’d stuff. Anyway, so far I have Hydrangeas at the front porch, non native lilles at the back porch, a Silver Maple, and the Spiraea is showing up as Meadowsweet in the app. I was told that the blueberries could pretty much be anything, so I’ll probably remove them. They haven’t born fruit yet, or even flowers, so nothing depends on it for food. Since I can’t determine what non natives will be benign or invasive, I think I should err on the side of caution.
Are there known invasive blueberries in your area? Blueberries have been cultivated long enough that this should have manifested by now if it is going to. It seems like a shame to pull out something so potentially valuable just because of a “natives only” ideology.
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I have no idea. I do also have a blackberry patch, and have planted chokeberries and serviceberries, so there are other food sources. So in this case would the non native varieties of blueberries be a big deal? Since there are native varieties, would any be close enough to not become a problem later on? A good example would be my grape vine. Somehow a seed started where the blackberries and ash trees are growing. A few years ago, it had grown up into one of the trees so extensively that it was killing the tree. So we pulled it out, doing some more damage in the process. I recently noticed it had grown back into the other ash tree to almost the same extent, and cut it out again with minimal damage to the tree. I’m trying to avoid causing problems like that if seeds start where I can’t control them.
Is there anything I can plant to replace the Spiraea that will tolerate the walnut trees?
Greetings fellow Hoosier ! I live at the same latitude as you, but west. From my personal experience I can highly recommend replacing some of your lawn with tall grass prairie.
In 2009 we stopped mowing the 1/5 acre strip of lawn under the power line right of way at the edge of our property. We brush-hog it once a year. Every summer and fall, during my daily exercise walks, or on local pleasure hikes, I collect sandwich bags of seeds from various prairie restorations and stick them in the freezer. In winter (ideally late in the season and right before a snow storm to protect them from birds) I spread the seed by hand. After friends and family found out about my projects they would often give me gift certificates for native seed catalogues, or native plants for Christmas or birthday gifts. An amazing number of species have shown up spontaneously from local sources without any effort on my part, and some must have been in the soil seed bank because I have no idea where they come from. Other than every few years cutting and painting trees and bushes that rebound from the bush-hogging and start to overtop the 8 foot tall prairie plants, I haven’t done any weeding: those prairie plants seem to outcompete everything else.
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Have you made an iNat project for your prairie - your list of sp would be interesting?
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No iNat Project. It would be hard to sort out wild vs cultivated since my prairie long predates my involvement with iNat. But now you are giving me an excuse to brag: I do have a compendium of all the taxa I have IDed on my property, which is 5 acres, including woods, ditch, garden, chicken yard etc, in addition to the prairie. The prairie has 49 species of plants. The entire property has 1857 taxa, including 186 fungi and 1145 invertebrates :)
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