Misteaks In The Wildlife Garden!

I have made so many, I hardly know where to begin.  But, I suppose knowing what you have planted Where is one of my chief faults.

Ideally, if I were an organized person I would keep meticulous notes and have maintained templates of Spring, Summer and Fall gardens.  Perhaps I would not have planted so many things right on top of each other.  So that, say a Christmas fern emerges within a small daffodil garden.  How could I correct this ?    Proper labeling might work. Those plastic things that state what is what on the new plant is not going to over-winter, so it will have to be more substantial.  I have seen stakes made from small sticks cut on the diagonal with enough open pulp to write information on.  This is a lovely idea, simpatico with the idea of a Native Garden, but I just do not see me whittling away and then writing out what I have planted with indelible ink.  Nope, nor will I succed with that half-baked attempt to use those really neat metal markers I purchased to hold Id info, because,  I have misplaced them. 

The template Idea is a very good one.  Essentially, you sketch out the bare bones of your garden space with those things that do not move from season to season (like a tree or a shrub or a fence.. you get the idea) and then you use a transparent sheet that you can write on and you methodically mark all that you have planted each season, before it disappears.  Using the colors of bloom would also be useful.  And if you are more old fashioned, or not able to find this cellophane stuff, onion skin or tracing paper will do the trick.  With crayons.  If, you are organized.  

There are also templates that can be done online, but I find that I spend a bit too much time online as it is (and I do not even use Facebook).  I do not need another reason to learn a program and then play with it.  Unless it is the middle of Winter and I am pining for some soil under my fingernails, maybe. 

I think the best solution is to try to at least take one digital photo of the garden glory with the plants in place.  This would be especially useful if you use many perennials and they emerge at different times. 

Example ?  One year, I was absolutely certain that these mint family plants coming in were dead nettle.  There might have been one or two of those, but what I ended up doing is pulling out 90 % of my beautiful monarda.  Those glorious red soldiers of Summer. (Back this year, as pictured.)

Another year, I planted a tickseed  I got at the end of the season, in the only naked part of my front garden.   Now, tickseeds love sun, which it might have gotten if it had not been dwarfed and sheltered by all those higher plants.   This speaks to the concept that one should plant in height succession.  This is another thing I seem to forget.  I have Virginia spiderworts sitting within a copse of fleabanes.   Small surrounded by tall.  I am not sure if this would happen in nature, and I do not know if it benefits the plants and wildlife I am trying to encourage.  I justify this by thinking “well, whatever is growing low in there has great protection.”  

Fleabanes are considered weeds by many, and to be honest, the ones I have growing here were yanked from an area of my yard where they just showed up.  I have found them to be drought resistant and open to haircuts of half their height.  But I really should thin them out a bit.   

Another plant in the “more is not always better” category is pokeweed.  I have had old school gardeners tell me it is poisonous.  Yet, it actually is a food stuff in the South: Poke Sally.  The plants become huge, and they attract many pollinators, and then their berries are eaten by all manner of wildlife.  But really ?  I should only have one.  One pokeweed that I prune before it gets taller than me.  This requires being really really observant when the plant starts to send up seedlings.  Really observant.  

Just because it grows here does not mean it belongs here is another mistake I have made.  We allowed our yard to go feral for a few years after a massive building project adjacent to us basically uprooted or killed off a fair number of our plants.  I do not recommend this now; especially as the Town has passed a blight law.   But the attitude then was, if it grows it is good enough for us.   Actually, it might have helped encourage our wildlife visitors.. but it is not Ecoscaping.

I was lucky enough to have a really kind Cornell Cooperative Expert come in and help me  identify and tag the plants and trees that had to come down or out.  I was horrified to find that I had been bestowing blessings on an invasive garden; except for those fleabanes and pokeweeds. (Much more on this in the future.)

A few other things that come to mind... 

Soaker hoses are great. (Though the ones made out of recycled tires are kind of hard to work with.)  Just remember to shut them off before you have a soaked foundation sweating into the basement.  And speaking of foundations...  avoid plants that send out deep taproot, like a yucca, or  have a very expansive root system, like a native honeysuckle or a cotoneaster.  I have nightmares about the latter, which I planted near our outgoing waste pipe when we first moved here.  It was so lush where it’s sister, on the other side of the back stairs.. was hardly alive.   When it occurred to me why, both plants were ripped out.  

I have other foibles to relate, I just cannot remember them all right now.  However,  I do know this... not every hole in the ground is from a cicada.  Approach them with caution.  Especially if you are allergic to bees as I am.  And, though you might be enamored of a butterfly house or hibernation hut;  butterflies are not going to live in them. Bees might. The only houses that work are bat houses and Owl nesting boxes. A better home for overwintering butterflies, in whatever form, is to leave leaf litter where it is, and to refrain from cutting back your hydrangeas, despite what the experts say.  I abolished Swallowtails from my yard one year following that advice.

THINGS YOU CANNOT CONTROL 

There are going to be times in your life on Long Island, when the inevitable home improvement or worse, new developments will go in.  These are things that you cannot change, despite the fact that they will impact your life permanently.

For instance, our neighbors who decided to become Mansion builders, promised me a new tree, when one of my maples died mysteriously.  What did I get ?  A huge LIPA Poll, that does not even serve my ‘little red house’ as it was called by LIPA Corporate.  There had not Ever been a LIPA pole on this side of our street.  Now there is, and if LIPA needs to work on it, they have the right to encroach on my property without my permission.  How to cope ?  Well, visualize a really huge vine growing on it. 

Also, that privacy screen that we were promised is evergreens of varying types.  The needles drop on our side of the yard, and as they do, they change the acidity of the soil.  I fear some of my trees, such as a weeping cherry we planted after the Oklahoma City Explosion, ultimately will not survive.  Our lilac is already showing stress.  And overnight, this Spring, my jack in the pulpits just laid down and died.  Mysteries.

If you are going to be subjected to this.  A calm mind and digital photographs will be your best friend.  Also, do go and look at the plans that are on file in the Planning Office. If they are not in the least like what you were told (it happened) try to revoke your name on any petition in support of the project.  People will lie.

Changes in your yard’s sun and fertility can be impacted by other things too.  A boxed out second story on your neighbors home ?  Expect any shrubs or trees that are shadowed to die.  It can take up to five years.  And it is going to be very difficult to get officials in charge of these things to take you seriously.  Unless you document it.

Even a two-foot higher fence can stress a plant and kill it.  I have this occurring on the west side of my house.   Where the butterfly bush is going in.  I have taken advantage of the full sun that was afforded by the new homeowners removing a maple by adding the elderberrys.  The pokeweeds just showed up, as they will.  I shall wait till next Spring probably to decide what to do with the dead shrubs on the property line.  And as I type, the driveway is being expanded, so I will be monitoring the health of my living maple for any damage that might have occurred to the roots.

As a Member of http://www.wildones.org/, I have learned to garden within my new yard conditions.
I have also learned that the best way to move forward is through cooperation and sharing of green spaces between yards.  This may not be happening in my part of town, I wish it for your Patch though.