Native plants can play bigger role in lawn and garden

Milkweeds only continue to increase in demand at the FloraKansas native plant sale, which is next week at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston.

People’s interest in feeding pollinators, especially monarch butterflies, as well as saving on water, drives them to buy the native and native-behaving plants that the arboretum sells over a long weekend in the fall and in the spring.

The arboretum didn’t have enough milkweeds to meet the demand at the spring sale, said Scott Vogt, the arboretum’s director.

“I’m kind of floored at how this monarch thing has kind of taken off,” he said. “I grew up on a farm, and milkweeds were the bane of all farmers, and my father just kind of rolls his eyes when I talk about milkweed. But it’s important for the life-cycles of the monarchs. People are interested in doing their part.”

For the fall FloraKansas, there will be more milkweeds, in these varieties: butterfly, common, green antelopehorn, whorled, showy and swamp.

In his job, Vogt gets questions about native alternatives to the traditional lawn, and he tells people that such plants won’t bring a bold color to the yard but will add texture. Instead of planting hostas under a shady tree where grass doesn’t do well, for example, options that may need less water include wild geranium, woodland phlox, wild ginger, white woodland aster and Solomon’s seal.

Grasses that can supplement turf include sedges such as native Appalachian sedge, the bristleleaf sedge Carex eburnea, and Pennsylvania sedge. “It spreads, but it’s not aggressive and forms kind of a nice mat,” Vogt said.

“There are some native grasses that do well, like river oats, that are attractive and have an interesting seedhead. It gets 2 or 3 feet tall. You can kind of put that in the back of maybe a shadier area, but it does spread. You could use that as a filler plant in an area where it can naturalize on its own, a less formal area.”

Horticulturists will be on hand during the sale to help people select the right plants for their yard. Plants that will be available will include perennials, grasses, shrubs, vines and trees. People are also interested in ornamental grasses because they’re drought tolerant, adding texture and movement to the yard, Vogt said. A couple in particular that are hot: the switchgrass Northwind panicum and Blonde Ambition blue grama.

“There’s also an interest in natives that require less water and attract a lot of pollinators to the garden,” Vogt said. “We also see people placing natives in close proximity to their food gardens so they’re attracting pollinators that in turn help in the pollination of their food crops.”

The arboretum is also directing people toward including plants that bloom at different times for year-round interest in the garden. Here is a sampler from Vogt:

Spring-blooming

Penstemon digitalis (smooth penstemon)

Baptisia australis var. minor (wild indigo)

Echinacea pallida, paradoxa (coneflower)

Amsonia hubrichtii (bluestar)

Oenothera macrocarpa (evening primrose)

Summer-blooming

Asclepias tuberosa (butterflyweed)

Dalea purpurea (purple prairie clover)

Liatris pycnostachya (Kansas Gayfeather)

Rudbeckia missouriensis (Missouri black-eyed Susan)

Monarda fistulosa (bee balm)

Agastache varieties (hummingbird mints)

Fall-blooming

Aster oblongifolius “October Skies” (aromatic aster)

Aster novae-angliae (New England aster)

Solidago species (goldenrod)

Vernonia lettermannii “Iron Butterfly” (Letterman’s ironplant)

Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed).

This story was originally published September 3, 2015 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Native plants can play bigger role in lawn and garden."