Red Trillium Restoration
Landscaping With Native Plants
There are many benefits to planting native plants including building pollinator resilience, creating drought tolerant ecosystems, and their low maintenance qualities once established.
It wont take long for these benefits to take effect. As these plants are perennial they will come back each year often growing stronger each growing season. In the first year after planting the plants are establishing roots and making connections with the mycorrhizal fungi native to your soil. These ancient symbiotic connections allow carbon to be stored underground where it feeds subterranean life helping to recycle nutrients which are then available for the plant anew.
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The second year the plants begin to spread through the soil. Roots spread, seeds are dispersed by the wind and birds. Native plants have a wonderful trait that the help the lives of those that help them. The bees benefit from the surplus of flower species and pollen quality, this creates the seeds that the birds depend on in winter, stratified seeds then regrow in the spring to cycle through again.
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By as soon as the third year the plants have established themselves into guilds, community's of plants interwoven and strong. Their biological diversity creating a resilient ecosystem. Plants flower throughout each season at the phonologically critical time for native species. Queen bees emerging in cool spring find the pollen required to survive, monarch butterflies are greeted with lush milkweed leaves. The timing of interconnected events has established over long evolutionary timespans.
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By choosing to create a native plant landscape you are facilitating these connections. Insects and birds will be quickly attracted and supported by the plants you chose for your garden.
Full Sun Meadow Style Garden
The plants chosen for meadows are adapted to full sun conditions. Many of the meadow adapted plants are drought tolerant. There are also species better adapted to the wet meadow. These perennial species establish quickly and can quickly become biodiversity hotspots supporting many species of bees and birds.
The Forest Edge
Naturally a forest's edge gets a partial or scattered light. Species that grow here need shade tolerance and are often adapted to moister richer soils. The edge ecosystem can contain some species of both meadow and forest.
Deep Shade
Species that survive naturally on the forest floor have adapted shade tolerance and also phenological growth habitats. A trillium in spring grows leaves quickly, capturing light before the overarching trees have grown their leaves. Many shade tolerant species are spring ephemerals going into dormancy throughout the summer. Our designs are thoughtful about how flowers and plants replace each other throughout the growing season.
