The Rant
How to Plant Native Plants in Natural Layers
Submitted by Navarro » Mon 21-Nov-2022, 02:04Subject Area: Testing | 2 member ratings |
 |
Utilizing native plants to enhance your garden at home
The plants that grow together in nature will eventually establish themselves in the environment they prefer. Implementing the same concept of layering your identify plant use of native plants suitable to your locality can give gardeners an expectation of what plants can do in the garden over the long term. Kelly D. Norris is the author of the newest book New Naturalism: Designing and planting a resilient ecologically vibrant home Garden (Cool Springs Press).
When you lay out a plant to be planted, spread the plants out in patches of scattered colonies made up of several different plants. Kelly Norris' 3,200-square foot meadow in the 5th zone of Central Iowa is home to over 140 varieties of plants. He recommends plant in abundance (he planted plugs, which are much less expensive and less laborious to establish than larger ones). In large-scale planting, you will need more effort at the beginning however, it will pay dividends as your garden transforms into an interworking plant system instead of just a collection of plants.
How do you create natural layers
Kelly likes to arrange wild plant communities into three main layers:
Matrix plant species that cover ground and are that are used for green mulch
Architecture: trees with a structure, perennials or architectural plants.
Vignettes Plants with clearly defined seasons of interest
Native plant samples
A look at a 5'x5' garden plan reveals how the designer combines these plants into layers. In this design the matrix is made up of oak sedge, and little bluestem. The structure is created by aromatic asters and the vignette plant includes the whorled milkweed, blazing stars Penstemon, Purple Conflower Culver's root and golden Alexander, as well as mountain mint.
2 Comments
