Gardening Guides
Native Plants
Why Your Native Plants Might Be Struggling
Some common issues have simple remedies
Many issues can affect the health of your native plants. These include the local climate and even the genetics of the plant itself, but there are a few more general or common issues to explore. Ultimately, even if a plant dies or you need to remove it because it’s not what you imagined, don’t worry. That gaping hole will provide a wonderful new opportunity for you to learn and grow alongside your garden.
Are You Overfertilizing?
Amending soil to a “perfect” condition isn’t always necessary for native plant health and can even lead to poor plant performance, including flopping, hasty growth and a shorter lifespan. For example, if you have clay soil that’s mucky in spring or fall but bone-dry in summer, pick plants adapted to periods of drought and that thrive in clay. If you have a sandy loam, choose plants the evolved to thrive in those conditions.
You could top-dress your soil at planting with a half inch or inch of compost, or try something like leaf mold or even wood chips to improve soil life until the plants take over that job. Many plants lose root systems every year as part of their life process, and these dead roots amend soil naturally while opening up pathways for air and water. Granular fertilizers and foliar sprays aren’t necessary for native plants, either, and may lead to wilting and discolored leaves with nutrient overload.
Work with a landscape designer near you
Amending soil to a “perfect” condition isn’t always necessary for native plant health and can even lead to poor plant performance, including flopping, hasty growth and a shorter lifespan. For example, if you have clay soil that’s mucky in spring or fall but bone-dry in summer, pick plants adapted to periods of drought and that thrive in clay. If you have a sandy loam, choose plants the evolved to thrive in those conditions.
You could top-dress your soil at planting with a half inch or inch of compost, or try something like leaf mold or even wood chips to improve soil life until the plants take over that job. Many plants lose root systems every year as part of their life process, and these dead roots amend soil naturally while opening up pathways for air and water. Granular fertilizers and foliar sprays aren’t necessary for native plants, either, and may lead to wilting and discolored leaves with nutrient overload.
Work with a landscape designer near you
Are Roots Competing at the Same Levels?
Choosing plants doesn’t just mean considering how they grow above the ground. You may have plants that all have similar root systems at the same depths, and so the plants are all competing for the same resources. This can be good if the plants you have are all aggressive — they can control one another by competing at the same level — but if the plants grow by clumping or are slower to spread, you have to be a bit more careful.
Place plants with deep taproots, such as coneflower (Echinacea spp., USDA zones 3 to 9; find your zone), milkweed (Asclepias spp., zones 3 to 9) or baptisia (Baptisia spp.), among plants with shallower fibrous root systems, such as sedges or shortgrasses.
Design a Garden by Looking at Its Roots
Choosing plants doesn’t just mean considering how they grow above the ground. You may have plants that all have similar root systems at the same depths, and so the plants are all competing for the same resources. This can be good if the plants you have are all aggressive — they can control one another by competing at the same level — but if the plants grow by clumping or are slower to spread, you have to be a bit more careful.
Place plants with deep taproots, such as coneflower (Echinacea spp., USDA zones 3 to 9; find your zone), milkweed (Asclepias spp., zones 3 to 9) or baptisia (Baptisia spp.), among plants with shallower fibrous root systems, such as sedges or shortgrasses.
Design a Garden by Looking at Its Roots
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Is There Too Much Mulch?
While wood mulch adds nutrients and regulates soil moisture, too much can keep plants in a sort of permanent establishment phase. Creating a sustainable and lower-maintenance landscape means relying more on plants and less on mulch overall. In many urban landscapes, mulch is used as a core design element, leaving voids of nature. Plants want to touch and mingle and cover the ground, and if they aren’t allowed to do this, they never really get settled in. Rock mulch is especially problematic if it’s not being used in an arid environment. When rock mulch is employed in more temperate climates, it heats the soil and doesn’t add organic material like wood mulch.
Consider creating beds with multiple plant layers: ground covers that roam, short grasses and sedges, midlevel flowers, taller flowers and grasses, shrubs and small trees — all planted no farther than a foot apart (except for shrubs and trees, of course). Let the plants be the living mulch as they help build soil, conserve soil moisture, shade out weeds and grow without the need for constant monitoring or input.
Share in the Comments: What issues have you had with your native plants, and how have you successfully addressed them?
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While wood mulch adds nutrients and regulates soil moisture, too much can keep plants in a sort of permanent establishment phase. Creating a sustainable and lower-maintenance landscape means relying more on plants and less on mulch overall. In many urban landscapes, mulch is used as a core design element, leaving voids of nature. Plants want to touch and mingle and cover the ground, and if they aren’t allowed to do this, they never really get settled in. Rock mulch is especially problematic if it’s not being used in an arid environment. When rock mulch is employed in more temperate climates, it heats the soil and doesn’t add organic material like wood mulch.
Consider creating beds with multiple plant layers: ground covers that roam, short grasses and sedges, midlevel flowers, taller flowers and grasses, shrubs and small trees — all planted no farther than a foot apart (except for shrubs and trees, of course). Let the plants be the living mulch as they help build soil, conserve soil moisture, shade out weeds and grow without the need for constant monitoring or input.
Share in the Comments: What issues have you had with your native plants, and how have you successfully addressed them?
More on Houzz
Read more about earth-friendly design
Work with a drought-tolerant landscape pro near you
Shop for gardening tools
Garden beds, by their nature, are always more pampered than wild areas. The stresses tend to be different from what the plants experience in a meadow, woodland or desert. After plants are established (which is sooner for flowers and grasses than it is for trees and shrubs), it’s often best to let them adjust to their environment on their own, and push them out of the nest, so to speak. It’s in our nature to care for living things, especially those we’ve paid good money for, but sometimes that can mean unnecessary and even detrimental pampering.
If you’ve chosen the right plants for the right place and taken care to nurture them well during their establishment period, you may not even need to add supplemental water unless you’re in a prolonged drought (even then, many prairie plants, for example, simply will go dormant). How you water your garden is highly dependent on where you are, what season it is, what plants you’ve used and when the plants were installed. Your location and weather also will affect the duration of plant establishment.