The leaves are starting to turn colour, the air is getting cooler, and there are lots of gardening articles being written about what to do with your Canna Lilies and rose bushes and dahlias for the winter. But what about those of us who grow native plants? Do we have to do anything to prepare our plants and flower beds for winter? After all, Mother Nature has been looking after herself for millennia. 

How much fall prep you do will depend primarily on WHY you grow native plants.  

Leave the Plant Stalks 

When I started growing natives, I came from a background of conventional gardening, and the easiest way to put my native plant gardens to bed for the winter was to simply set my mulching mower as high as it would go and mow everything down. The result was a tidy looking flower bed that was ready to emerge in the spring.  

Unfortunately, I also removed important habitat for bees and other insects. 

As my understanding grew of the importance of leaving stems for leaf cutter and wool carder bees and for small carpenter bees and others, I had to change my mind set. I started to leave a few of the pithy stems of Monarda (Bee Balm and Wild Bergamot) but I still “cleaned up” the rest of the flower beds by cutting down the asters, Joe Pye weed, coneflowers, etc. and hauling the debris to the municipal yard for composting.  

Leaving those stems was really hard to do – at first. It offended my sensibilities as to what a neat and tidy garden should look like for the winter. But whether it was my imagination or reality, I thought I detected more bees the next year, and more species of bees as well. So when fall rolled around again I compromised – I cut down most of the plants to about 18”, and rather than hauling the debris away, I cut it into 1-2’ lengths and left it on the ground.

Because my gardens are very densely planted, and some with very tall plants, I would have had a foot of cuttings if I dropped them all in the garden, so I kept it to a minimum by leaving one thin layer in the flowerbed, and placing the remaining stems in an out of the way corner of the yard. 

Surprisingly, it was my mindset that had the greatest change as a result of this new strategy. I no longer saw a “mess” in the flowerbed in the fall. Instead, I saw potential habitat. I saw that I was giving Mother Nature a helping hand. It’s one thing to provide native plants for bees, butterflies and caterpillars to feed on during the summer, but if you don’t provide them with a place to overwinter, then you are really only helping those species that migrate. 

Leaving the flower stalks has, in addition to the wildlife benefit, the added beauty of great structure in the winter garden. 

But is leaving the stems the only thing we can do?  

Leave the Leaves 

Leaving the leaves on our lawns is just about as difficult to do as leaving plant stems in the gardens for the winter for most of us. But it is just as important. I do rake my lawn in the fall, but I have much less area of lawn than I do of flowerbeds, so the leaves get raked onto the beds. They provide mulch to keep annual weeds down in the spring, and fertilizer as the leaves decay. And depending on the bed, I may put just a thin layer (on the beds of prairie species, for example) or a layer at least 6” thick under the sugar maples where Trilliums, Jack in the Pulpit, and other spring ephemerals need the organic matter and moisture retaining quality of the decaying leaves.  

I actually have so many trees in my yard now that I now create piles of the excess leaves in the fall to be spread over the shade garden in mid-May when most of the leaves there have been consumed by insects, worms and microbes.  

But why is it important to leave the leaves, other than for mulch and natural fertilizer? 

For starters, many of our butterflies and some of our more spectacular moths overwinter in the leafy debris. 

According to the Royal Ontario Museum’s book Butterflies of Ontario, of the 127 species of butterflies in this province, 110 overwinter here.  

• 6 overwinter as adults 
• 12 overwinter as eggs 

• 30 overwinter as a chrysalis 
• 60 overwinter as a caterpillar, and  
• 2 overwinter as either a caterpillar or a chrysalis. 

Many of these hide either in the leaf litter or in the ground (where the leaf litter helps to keep them warm). 

Many of our moths do the same. The ones we tend to get excited about – the large, showy ones – are no different. For instance, the beautiful green Luna Moth overwinters by using its silk to bind dead leaves around its cocoon. The Virgin Tiger Moth overwinters as a caterpillar, hiding in the leaf litter. And as for everyone’s favourite – the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth – the fully-grown caterpillars burrow in the leaf litter to pupate, emerging soon after and overwintering as an adult, or waiting in the cocoon until the following spring to emerge.  

So the less we can disturb the leaf litter, the better, as far as I am concerned.  

Do it for the Bees, Too 

We also have a number of ground nesting bees that greatly benefit from a quilt of leaves to help maintain a comfortable temperature all winter long. The leaves have the added benefit of slowing down the heating of the soil in a January thaw that might cause the bees to emerge too early before any food sources are available. 

As you start thinking about preparing your garden for its long winter rest, think of the insects that need the stems and leaves to survive till spring. Leave some stems, and leave the leaves. 

This spring, I wrote an article about spring ephemerals – those woodland species that flower early in the spring and then, for the most part, disappear till the following year. Summer has arrived and we have a number of shade tolerant plants for your woodland gardens that bloom through the summer and into the fall. In today’s article, I’ll talk about some of these and share some images from my shadier gardens. 

Plants that grow under the tree canopy of a forest have to be tough. Not only do they need to compete with tree roots for moisture, they need to be able to collect light that filters through often dense canopies of leaves. Many of these plants collect as much energy from the sun as possible before the trees leaf out, then “coast” on that stored energy for the rest of the summer. But a few plants buck the trend and manage to grow, produce flowers and set seed under shady conditions that few others could tolerate.   

One thing I have observed that almost all these plants have in common is large leaves. They require maximum leaf area to absorb the few photons of light that filter through the trees, with their leaves designed to work at maximum efficiency. (Compare, for instance, the leaf of shade tolerant Asclepias exaltata – Poke Milkweed – to those of the sunny, open prairie species Asclepias verticillata – Whorled Milkweed or of the shade tolerant Lobelia inflata – Indian Tobacco – with the sun-loving Lobelia spicata – Pale Spiked Lobelia). 

Another thing I have noticed these plants tend to have in common is that their flowers are mostly white, green, pale blue or pale yellow (at least until the fall, when a few brighter colours – mostly yellows – appear). Whether this has to do with the plants requiring more energy to produce colourful flowers (speculation on my part) or because in shady areas these colours show up more for the pollinators to find, I have no idea. Two exceptions are the brilliant reds of Monarda didyma (Beebalm) – not normally associated with shade gardens, but it thrives in moist dappled shade in my garden – and Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal Flower). 

It is the end of July as I write this, and a few late-spring/early-summer shade tolerant plants have now finished blooming and are setting seed. These include Thalictrum pubescens (Tall Meadowrue), T. dasycarpum (Purple Meadowrue), T. revolutum (Waxy Meadowrue) and Asclepias exaltata (Poke Milkweed). 

Monarda didyma (Beebalm) and Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal Flower) are both in full flower right now in full light shade where they brighten dark corners with a brilliant flash of colour, and attract hummingbirds and butterflies. And new to my shade garden this year, but doing nicely, is the porcelain blue Campanulastrum americanum (American Bellflower). Lobelia inflata (Indian Tobacco, aka Puke Weed) is also flowering now in full (but relatively light), moist shade with delicate, pale bluish flowers. 

Just starting to bloom in my shade gardens are Eurybia macrophylla (Large-leaf Aster), Eurybia schreberi (Schreber’s Aster), Aralia racemosa (American Spikenard), Ageratina altissima (White Snakeroot), Actaea racemosa (Black Cohosh), Scrophularia marilandica (Late Figwort) and Circaea lutetiana (Enchanter’s Nightshade). These are joined by a large patch of Impatiens pallida (Yellow Jewelweed). Even some Veronicastrum virginicum (Culver’s Root), another plant like Beebalm that isn’t normally thought of as a shade tolerant plant, is doing great under the dappled shade of Gymnocladus dioicus (Kentucky Coffeetree). 

We also have some lovely plants suitable for part shade. These would normally be found at the edges of forests, and can tolerate quite a bit of shade. However, many of them tend to flower more prolifically with the benefit of more sunlight. Most books suggest that Solidago juncea (Early Goldenrod) requires full sun, but it is doing well under a large sugar maple in my yard where it gets only a half hour or so of direct, late afternoon sun. As its common name suggests, it is one of the earliest goldenrods to flower and starts flowering in my southwestern Ontario garden around the third week of July.  

A number of other shade plants – mostly asters and goldenrods, but also some interesting woodland species – will start to bloom in the next few weeks but I’ll leave those for a later article. We also have lots of shade-loving ferns, grasses and sedges, and a few great shrubs for shade, but those, too, will have to wait. 

Note that none of the plants listed above will thrive in deep shade such as that often found under Norway Maple, evergreens (like spruce or cedar) or close to the north side of a building, but they will all do very well in dappled shade (from less dense canopies such as under Kentucky Coffeetree) or if planted near the edge of the shade where they can get sun for at least part of the day.  If you do have deep shade, you may want to consider some of our spring ephemerals mixed with ferns, for now. 

Happy native plant gardening. 

A growing gardening trend is to plant pollinator gardens, often using native plants, to attract and feed bees and butterflies. This is occurring as a response to the news that our bees and butterflies are quickly disappearing. This realization likely started because honey bee farmers were faced with major financial losses as a result of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) starting in the early 2000s. Around the same time, folks began noticing that Monarch butterflies were in trouble. It wasn’t long till we also began to realize that our native bees were disappearing, too.  

Honey bees are native to Europe and are really just another form of agricultural livestock, like cattle or hogs or poultry. Their loss, though economically difficult for honey producers, would not have the same ecological impact as the loss of our native bee species. After all, we likely have as many as 4,000 species of bees native to North America and these insects are critical for the successful pollination of most of our flowering plants – including much of our food. Many of our native bees are specialists, relying on one or a very few different kinds of plants. (Honey bees, on the other hand, are generalists – they will collect pollen from just about any plant.)  

So to “save the bees” people have started growing native flowers, and creating pollinator gardens. These can be small backyard oases, restored farm fields, or educational gardens in parks, commercial areas or in school yards. However, a concern that often pops up – especially in school yards – is that with all those flowers, children are going to get stung. 

People have a natural aversion to bee stings. And for good reason – they hurt. Some folks are severely allergic and must carry an epi-pen when they go outdoors.  

When I was about 4 years old, my parents rented a farmhouse out in the country. At the end of a very long laneway (exceptionally long for a four-year-old) were two old, old apple trees. I saw what I thought were yellow “manure-flies” (at four I wasn’t very discerning). They were swarming between the two trees and I thought it would be fund to run through them and scatter them. My little four-year-old legs could not carry me up the long hill to the house fast enough and I got many nasty stings. Fortunately I don’t seem to be overly allergic. 

Fast forward 15 years, and I am a counselor at a summer camp and am tasked with removing the bumble bee nest under the front step of one of the cabins. As I bent over to observe the results of my destruction, a bumble bee found my backside. I literally could not sit on that cheek for a week.  

Fast forward another 50 years and I had to remove a homemade compost bin (made from old pallets) so an arborist could take down a couple of large mulberry trees. Halfway through the pile I discovered that 3 different species of flying insect had taken up residence in the pile – one looked like some form of bee, but the other two were obviously wasps (I didn’t stick around long enough to make a proper ID). My old 65-year-old legs could not carry me up the hill in my yard to the house fast enough to avoid getting a number of stings.  

These three incidents are probably the most memorable of my encounters with bees and wasps, but by no means are they the only times I’ve been stung. And yet I plant lots of pollinator gardens in my yard and even though I get up very close and personal while I’m photographing the bees, I have never been stung or even threatened while around the flowers. (The one exception was when I inadvertently rested my weight on my hand on top of a ground nesting bee trying to exit its home – however, the sting was no worse than a fly bite and never even swelled up. I took it as simply a warning to “get off me”.) 

So what is the real risk of getting stung around a pollinator garden? I would contend that it is exceedingly low. You are probably more likely to get stung walking down the sidewalk or opening your garden shed door. This is for a number of reasons.  

First of all, most of our native bees are solitary. Many don’t even have stingers. And when they’re busy foraging amongst the flowers, they are not paying any mind to the large mammal (the human) that is nearby. This holds true even for the bees with stingers, such as honey bees and bumble bees (only the females of these species sting, by the way). Bees normally only sting if they feel threatened or if they are accidentally (or deliberately) molested or provoked. 

Several wasps and hornets, on the other hand, live in colonies and are very territorial. They will sometimes sting if you simply get too close to their nest. (The yellow “manure flies” and the insects in my compost pile that stung me were all almost certainly wasps of some type and were simply protecting their colony.) Paper wasps, mud wasps, etc. like to build their nests in human-made structures – like your garden shed, or your garden-hose hanger, or even on your garage eaves. This is where you’ll most likely encounter these territorial insects, and where you’re most likely to get stung. 

Another reason you’re unlikely to be stung around pollinator gardens is that bees and most wasps have very different diets. Many wasps are carnivores, filling their need for protein from insects (or in the fall, your picnic dinner). So the critters that are apt to sting you just for getting too close are not the ones that are going to be busy around your pollinator garden. (Some wasps DO hang around flowerbeds, drinking the nectar, but I have never found any of these to be the least bit aggressive.) 

So, if your child’s school, or your employer, or your neighbour, decides to put in a pollinator garden to help stem the decline of these extremely important insects, you needn’t worry about getting stung. A little bit of care and some education can make this a win-win scenario. And if you or your child is highly allergic – just remember to carry your epi-pen. And keep in mind that the pollinator garden is a very unlikely source of bee stings. 

Happy Native Plant Gardening.