As a two-person operation, our approach to garden creation is a collaborative one in which we will work closely with you to create and install a garden that fits your needs and desires. We will provide you with the information that you will need to maintain your homegrown habitat so that humans and wildlife can enjoy the space year after year.
We want you to enjoy and engage with the garden that you create; taking time to observe your garden in its seasonal stages of growth will open your eyes to the positive impact that your garden will have on the ecology of your outdoor space.
To have a garden that fulfills your needs and the needs of wildlife for years and decades to come requires careful consideration in the planning stage. Addressing each of the points below during and after a site visit will help us understand the type of garden you want and determine what the options are to make that a reality.
Garden Location: What are the dimensions of the space, the sun/shade conditions, and the soil type? During heavy rainfall, how quickly does water drain from the site? How has the area been used on the property (a turf lawn that has been used as a parking area will likely be heavily compacted compared to other lighter-use areas)?
Garden Use and Style: Consider the desired uses of the space, which could be multi-faceted. For example, the garden could serve as a privacy screen to create a place to sit and relax in the summer with plants that attract pollinators and birds. Our goal is to help you garden with native plants, whether you are new to gardening or are looking to add natives to an existing garden. Native plants might conjure an image of a natural-style or cottage-style garden, but they can be suitable for any garden style that appeals to you. The garden style, whether formal or more natural, will dictate the amount of maintenance that is required to maintain the visual look of a garden. Less maintenance is required in a more natural garden style where plants are grown closely together, crowding out weeds and supporting each other. We can help you incorporate native plants into your space to fit your desired style.
Plant Preferences: Are there particular plants or types of plants (herbaceous perennials, shrubs, trees) that you would like to see in your garden? Deer pressure is an important consideration when selecting plants in our area. Our designs focus on seasonal interest as a key factor to engage human visitors and provide year-round habitats and food sources for wildlife in the garden.
Budget: Gardening doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and we will share with you our tips and methods for creating productive garden spaces. Our favorite method of planting is to use plugs, which are both affordable and easy to install. Starting with plug plants, or even young shrubs and trees, can result in a resilient garden that with a little patience will grow and provide benefits for a lifetime.
Site Preparation and Timeline: If you are looking to add native plants to an established garden, site preparation will most likely be minimal. Creating new garden beds takes more preparation, but there are several methods that can be used to prepare the space, including smothering/solarizing with plastic for several months during the growing season, sod removal (manual or mechanical), or our preferred method of layering newspaper or cardboard and covering with leaf compost. Your desired timeline (and your budget) for the garden transformation will be an important part of determining the appropriate site preparation method.
Maintenance: We will partner with you to create a garden design that will fulfill your needs and keep you engaged through the seasons. Gardening is a learning process, and there is no better way to learn than to be in your garden observing and enjoying its seasonal transitions. When you embrace ecological gardening, maintenance becomes a pleasure rather than a chore — an excuse to play in the garden! Maintenance is an important consideration during the garden design process, and maintenance requirements vary by garden style and plant selection.
Design and Plant Selection
Our designs provide a proposed layout for the plants, based on their mature sizes, as well as information about each individual species. The design and plant selection will vary based on what you are looking for in your garden, and it is a collaborative process.
Depending on the space, we will try to work in multiple layers with a groundcover, herbaceous layer, shrubs, and trees. This maximizes wildlife habitat while also crowding out weeds, making it less work to maintain over time.
Collaborative Design: Your enjoyment of the garden is a critical component in creating a space that you will want to engage with from season to season and year to year. We will draft an initial design, walk you through it and our reasons for that approach, and integrate your feedback; ultimately, this is your garden, and we want to help you create the garden that you seek. We will work with you during the design process to ensure that you can experience the garden both up close and at a distance. On rainy or wintery days, it is nice to be able to see the garden from indoors; sight lines from multiple vantage points are another consideration in determining how to situate and organize the garden. Incorporating a bench or other place to pause and observe the garden will heighten your enjoyment and ensure a lasting connection to the garden and the life within.
Maximize Habitat through Plant Selection: Our garden designs prioritize native plants that have the highest wildlife value for your site conditions and your plant preferences. This is largely driven by the research of Dr. Doug Tallamy, who has collected information about how many types of butterfly and moth species use various plants as hosts for their caterpillars; oaks top the woody plant list at over 500 species of lepidoptera supported, while goldenrod (Solidago spp.) tops the herbaceous list with over 100 species of lepidoptera supported. A healthy ecosystem requires biodiversity, and this can be encouraged by planting a variety of plants (herbaceous perennials, shrubs, trees) that serve a variety of purposes for wildlife (flowers that provide nectar and pollen, shrubs and trees that produce berries or nuts, foliage to support the larval stages of butterflies and moths). Newer research shows that many native bee species require pollen from specific plants to raise the next generation. If you have specific wildlife you want to attract to the garden, we will help select appropriate plants to achieve that goal.
Site Preparation and Planting
Preparation is the key to a successful, low-maintenance native plant garden.
Site Preparation Options and Timelines: If you are simply looking to add native plants to an existing garden bed, little preparation is necessary. For new garden spaces, particularly ones that are replacing an area with existing turfgrass, advance planning to create bare garden space will avoid headaches down the road. Based on your site and desired planting timeline, we will recommend options for preparing the space. Some options are quicker but also more destructive to the existing soil structure (for example, removing turfgrass by sod ripping) while others require a few months to be effective (for example, covering turfgrass with newspaper or cardboard and leaf compost). Depending on which method you choose, we will help you with the site preparation or, if the site preparation requires heavy equipment or is otherwise beyond our ability, we will refer you to a landscape contractor who can help with that part of the project.
Garden Edging Options: If your garden abuts turfgrass, garden edging can help to keep the turfgrass rhizomes from creeping into the garden. There are many options available to create an edge around a garden, and we will review these with you based on your site conditions and maintenance preferences. Although we do not install edging, various options can be installed DIY or we can refer you to a landscape contractor for installation.
Plan Before You Dig: Before beginning any digging project on your property, it is important to know the locations of all below-ground utilities. A free service is available by calling 811 to have buried utilities marked with paint or flags, and this step is legally required before doing any digging. This service will not mark non-utilities such as buried gutter pipes or sprinkler systems, so be sure you know what is buried and where it is.
Planting Process: Grab your garden gloves — your effort is an essential ingredient in the planting process; being involved during this step will help acquaint you with your new garden. We will advise you on the best practices for planting herbaceous and woody plants to ensure that they have the best possible start in your garden. Small garden spaces can typically be planted in a day, and we will ideally have all of the plants ready and available to plant on a single day. However, depending on plant availability and shipping dates, the planting process may be spread out over the span of a few days or potentially weeks.
Maintenance
Allow nature to work for you. Native plant gardening capitalizes on nature’s ability to thrive with minimal human intervention, leaving you with more time to enjoy the garden and its wildlife visitors.
One of the main benefits of gardening with native plants is the reduced maintenance requirements compared to gardening with exotics. Native plants are particularly suited to the soil type and growing conditions and coevolved with the native fauna. These relationships between soil, plants, and wildlife result in a garden that nearly takes care of itself once it is established. We say nearly because all gardens require some amount of effort each year to prevent them from crossing the threshold into completely wild spaces. The level of maintenance is dependent upon the garden style that appeals to you; a more formal garden style requires more frequent attention than a more natural style garden.
How to Establish Plants: Planting during the cooler spring and fall months rather than during the summer is, in general, easiest on the gardener and on the plants. Plants require less watering to become established during cooler seasons, and as a bonus, gardens created in the spring often offer a surprisingly lush show by late summer of their first year. While watering needs will vary depending on the plant, the soil conditions, and the weather, a general rule of thumb is that herbaceous plants need 1 inch of water per week in the summer, and trees need 5 gallons per week. We will provide you with instructions specific to your garden design and plant selections to help you get your plants established. Once they are established, which takes only a year for herbaceous plants and two years for woody plants, they should not require any supplemental watering.
Plant Protection Options: While deer and rabbits are simply a fact of life in many parts of the Mid-Atlantic region, careful plant selection is the first step in creating a garden that can withstand browse by your garden’s wildlife visitors. Deer pressure can be a particular challenge, especially with young shrubs and trees that can be over browsed or damaged by buck rub in the fall. In areas with high deer or rabbit pressure, it is important to consider plant protection options while your garden is getting established. We can suggest options for your space and particular plants so that your newly created garden can become established and flourish as quickly as possible.
Plant ID Tags: Upon request, we can provide weatherproof plant identification tags for your garden. These tags are a helpful way to remember which plant is where, especially for herbaceous plants that die back to the ground in winter.
Annual Maintenance Instructions: At the conclusion of your garden project, we will provide you with an instruction sheet for annual maintenance to help you care for your new plants. With a little effort, you will reap endless rewards in your native plant habitat garden. Instructions will include pruning guidelines for shrubs and trees and key spring and fall tasks (fewer than you might think!).
Enjoyment
If you plant it, they will come! Wildlife in the garden provides natural entertainment through the seasons. A garden rich in native plants becomes a habitat that can support the full life cycles of insects and other wildlife.
Wildlife Appeal: Watching wildlife arrive in your garden is one of the most exciting aspects of gardening with native plants. Adding even a few native plants will bring more bees and butterflies into your yard, and the more native plants you add, the more biodiversity you will enjoy. If you look carefully, you will be able to observe the roles that native plants play in allowing garden visitors and inhabitants to complete their full life cycles. Many pollinators are able to gather nectar and pollen in their adult forms (like butterflies) from non-native exotic plants that are found in many gardens, but exotic plants often fail to support those same insects in their earlier life stages. Many insects are specialists, with mouthparts and digestive systems that are compatible with only certain types of native plants. When you introduce native plants into your garden, you can feel good about creating an ecological space for beneficial creatures to thrive.
Year-Round Interest: Our garden designs focus on multi-season interest with flowers blooming from early spring through fall to support pollinators, and in the colder months, berries and seeds provide visual interest for the garden’s human visitors and sustenance for its wildlife inhabitants. One of the key ideas behind habitat creation is also a time-saving feature for you: in autumn, follow nature’s guidance and allow fallen leaves to remain in your garden as mulch and let plant stems and seed heads remain in the garden. In addition to providing protection for overwintering insects and sustenance for winter birds, your garden will retain structural elements that are enhanced by a dusting of snow.
