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A butterfly garden grows up

Landscape Challenge's first native plant landscape is shaping up beautifully

By RENEE JEAN
Daily Journal Assistant Managing Editor

Friday, October 10, 2008

A butterfly garden is taking shape at the home of Faye Worley, but like the butterflies it is meant to attract, first there was a cocoon and only the hidden potential for beauty.

Worley’s garden was planted in September. She had feared a little for her new native plants as the cold winter came along. When spring arrived, her plants seemed slow to wake. At first.

Now, however, the garden is busting with blooms. And Worley with smiles.

Bright blue asters peep like eyes from amid blazing yellow coreopsis. Bee balm is buzzing with the many friendly pollinators who visit velvety pink blossoms. Purple poppy mallow is just starting to break out with candy red blossoms and the serrated leaves of the Compass plant are cutting wide paths to the sky. They’ll grow quite tall eventually, and the striking leaves will align directionally — hence it’s name.

There is still a lot of space left to fill in the butterfly lawn garden clubs and the MAC Horticulture Department helped install last year, but the shape of things to come appears to be heading somewhere quite beautiful.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like when these plants finally leap,” Worley said with a smile. She was looking at the wedge of coreopsis that seemed to have skipped its sleeping and creeping stages.

Typically, native plants will sleep the first year they are planted, explains Barbara Fairchild, with the Grow Native! program on the Missouri Department of Conservation side. The plants are growing sturdy root systems below the ground to support the plant’s vigorous growth in subsequent years. After that they will creep, and then leap.

Fairchild awarded the Daily Journal a $1,000 matching grant for an Earth Day project last year. The money was used to buy native plants for an Earth Day lawn makeover.

Worley was selected for the grant by a committee of area gardeners and environmental groups. Two professionally trained landscapers with the MAC Horticulture program designed a butterfly lawn to augment her nearby vegetable garden and bring in pollinators.

The project has been successful enough that the Daily Journal was awarded another grant this year.

As before, the winner of the 2008 Grow Native Landscape Challenge will get a $1,000 matching grant for native plants as well as a professional landscape design just for their home. A native plant guide and a season pass to Shaw Nature Reserve will also be given to the winner.

Linda Resinger, who is in charge of the more than 4,000 plants that are grown annually in the MAC greenhouse, will design the landscape. She’ll be assisted by native plant expert Jan Dellamano, a private land conservationist with Missouri Department of Conservation.

The Challenge is open to residences, businesses and non-profit organizations in St. Francois County. Contestants must have at least a 12 x 12 area for the do-over and must agree to maintain the plot. They must also agree to allow media coverage.

For those who might want to design a little something on their own, a workshop is planned June 17. And we have extended our Grow Native Landscape Challenge to June 24 to accommodate the workshop.

The free program begins at 6 p.m. in Room 114 of the Fine Arts Building at MAC. Bring dimensions and lighting conditions of the area you want to design. Fairchild will have design tools at the workshop to assist your project. She’ll also present an overview of the design possibilities native plants offer.

Worley said she is glad she participated in the Landscape Challenge. Given the environmental issues at stake, she believes it is time to bring back more native plants to the landscape, and that more people will want to be part of that once they see how beautiful and useful native plants can be.

Native plants have had thousands of years to adapt to the unique geology and weather of Missouri and that gives them a hardiness many imports can’t match. That often means less maintenance and expense for the homeowner.

Of course, some imports like conditions here a little too well. They have no natural predators or pests to keep them in check and begin to take over. An example of such invasive species are bush honeysuckle and kudzu.

They are choking out other plants wildlife need to survive, reducing the available habitat and food for some species.

Dozens of insects depend upon certain native plants, and dozens of birds upon those insects. It is all part of the web of life that begins with the tiniest of creatures and spins out to the largest, including mankind.

By planting native plants, you can help strengthen that web that sustains us all in a lovely and eye-catching way.

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