Angie Hong of the East Metro Water Education Program led a presentation called “Native Gardens for a Healthy Yard and Watershed” in the B-Side Lounge at Broken Clock Brewing Cooperative on September 4. (Margo Ashmore)
Saying that in the grand scheme of environmental concerns, “this is the one we can fix,” educator Angie Hong took her audience through a packed hour of ways to approach planting pollinator-serving native gardens. 75% of land in Minnesota is privately owned, so “you play an important role.”
The presentation, “Native Gardens for a Healthy Yard and Watershed,” took place at Broken Clock Brewing Cooperative, 1712 Marshall St NE, in their B-Side Lounge. It was a function of Friends of the Mississippi River.
Hong is part of the Oakdale-based East Metro Water Education Program. Attendees came from all over to get landscaping tips — or, as one person put it, to have a professional convince their partner to change how they clean up the yard. Everyone left with at least one free native plant.
“Now is a great time to plant natives,” Hong said, recommending smaller, younger plants that are less expensive and less likely to be pot-bound than larger plants. Within a couple of years, they will flourish. “You can also do dormant seeding even in November-December,” when they won’t be battling larger weeds that got a head start in spring. Hong offered a list of nurseries that grow plants from local stock and do not use neonicotinoid pesticides. (Neonicotinoid pesticides are harmful to pollinators such as bees.)
Pollinator populations have been dwindling as a result of pesticide use and land development destroying their habitats. Hong showed maps of Minnesota’s vegetation conditions in the 1880s compared to now, where only the Anoka sand plain and some areas by rivers remain. Pollinating insects are key to supplying about one-third of the world’s food, and they are food for birds and other animals.
Sarah Olson, left, who lives near Broken Clock and Brianna Westlund from south Minneapolis. “It’s my father’s yard. This is good information to store away,” Olson said. (Margo Ashmore)
While a few of the attendees were into habitat restoration on 20-and-40-acre plots, most were interested in colorful perennial home gardens. On a show of hands, about half had “at least dabbled in native plants.” Hong said, “If gardening with natives, it will look different from one part of the season to another. Most will bloom for two to two-and-a-half weeks and then disappear. The gardens might be very green and white at the beginning and then be yellow later in the season.”
She showed photos of her own gardens, which were patchy and disappointing for the first two-and-a-half to three years but “overly abundant and falling over on the sidewalk and road” in year eight. She started with her boulevards, and recommended people think of the places that are the toughest to maintain, such as near a roadside mailbox. Once the native perennial garden is established with its deep roots it likely won’t require watering.
A tree, or shrubbery, will be the cornerstone of a larger garden. These give form and height; they also support insects and provide stopovers for migrating birds. Native varieties recommended include hawthorn, willow, American basswood, edible serviceberry, Pagoda Dogwood, plum, cherry and apple trees. “Oaks are the granddaddy, but are very slow-growing.” For shrubs, Hong considers blueberry, raspberry, dwarf bush honeysuckle, black chokecherry, elderberry, red twig dogwood, ninebark, buttonbush, cranberry, spirea/meadowsweet and wild currants.
With so many plant species to choose from, think about what attracts your insect species of interest. Always have something in bloom to support the endangered state bee, the Rusty Patched Bumblebee, which nests in tiny holes in the ground, so no landscape fabric! Hong talked about the milkweed, which serves as food for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. “Do not get a tropical milkweed,” Hong said. Adult monarchs also like Prairie Blazing Star, Joe Pye Weed and others.
Most home gardens will be considered “pocket plantings”: small gardens tucked into pre-existing space. “For your pocket plantings, think of fall, too. We’re very ‘Vikings’ around here, a lot of purple and yellow,” with fall asters and goldenrod. She mentioned native grasses — big and little bluestem and prairie dropseed.
Consult the Friends of the Mississippi website for a link to the slides from Hong’s presentation, www.fmr.org.
