My recent post about my serviceberry trees on a thread made me think about native plants I’ve been trying to incorporate more into my garden. Which are your favourites, and what are the stories behind your choices?

For me, the one which comes to the top of my mind is Asarum Canadense - Canadian wild ginger. The why goes something like this. As a new homeowner and newbie gardener, I wanted to plants lots of pretty flowers in the back garden. For me, that meant tulips and all those spring bulbs. I have one side garden that is mostly shade, but I kept trying as I thought I had a small window of opportunity there before trees leafed out…to no avail, I’d just get foliage, no blooms. I thought I would be relegated to the typical ivy/periwinkle/pachysandra of most shade gardens, which I already had a lot of (and even as a new gardener I found boring as everyone was gardening from that same ‘shade gardening 101’ book).

Anyway, I saw asarum featured in one of my gardening magazines, and I thought this looked cool, and supposedly it would be a better choice. Couldn’t find it at any of the nurseries, but it was during horticultural plant sale season, and I remember one specific sale, they had a few large trays which someone had dug up. They were selling them CHEAP and in those days the native trend wasn’t a thing, so they were sitting off with no interest. So I bought all that they had, and thought here’s where I start. I separated them in clumps and put them all in that side bed, and forgot about them. Well, the next year they came up so strongly, so lushly, so perfect…it was like “welcome home”! Over the years from those initial few small trays, I’ve been able to take large clumps and spread in new groundcover areas - I’ve heard that it likes disturbance (harvesting?), so it’s actually good to do this on a regular basis. I also appreciate its strange flowers, and the fact that it isn’t pollinated by the sexy pollinators, such as butterflies, but by other pollinators like ants and beetles, that need some love too!