Avoiding Common Gardening Mistakes

Years ago when I moved to North Carolina after thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, I knew I wanted to start a pollinator garden. I knew I wanted to plant milkweed for the monarchs. A green lawn didn’t interest me. I knew I wanted flowers that were not only pretty, but also offered something to wildlife. Other than that, I didn’t know a lot about gardening, and especially, about gardening with wildlife in mind. 

I’ve come a long way since then! Here are a few things I know now that I didn’t know then:

+ Just because a plant is in your plant hardiness zone, or sold at your local nursery, doesn’t mean you should put it in your yard. One of the first things every gardener must know is what hardiness zone you are in. This isn’t hard to figure out as all you have to do is know your zip code and then plug it into the United States Department of Agriculture website. This just tells you where the plant is most likely to thrive. It is based on the temperatures of a particular geographical location. There will be many, many plants that can thrive in your zone.  

When I go to my nursery, or even buy plants online, there are many plants in my zone that I would never want to grow in my yard because they are INVASIVE. A plant that is invasive could be native, or non-native. These terms refer to where the plant originated. For instance, Chinese wisteria originated in China and is now sold here at many places in the US. It might grow in my zone but that doesn’t mean I should put it in my yard.

If a plant is invasive, I give it a huge pass because I don’t want to add to the problem.

Invasive plants can quickly overtake native plants and out-compete them for available resources, eventually killing or weakening native plants that have evolved side by side with insects and other wildlife over thousands of years. 

+Just because the birds eat it doesn’t mean it’s good for them. When I first moved to the house I live in now, the yard was full of exotic plants, most of which I couldn’t identify. Pretty much everything planted was invasive! There were several gorgeous shrubby plants in the front yard that were chock full of red berries, adding a nice spot of color to the fall forest. Curious about this plant I looked it up to discover it was called Nandina, or Heavenly Bamboo, Sacred Bamboo, Nandina domestica.

This plant is sold at all of my local nurseries and garden centers despite the fact that its berries are TOXIC–and can actually KILL birds who eat it! 

According to Audubon,”Nandina berries contain cyanide and other alkaloids that produce highly toxic hydrogen cyanide (HCN) which is extremely poisonous to all animals. Sudden death may be the only sign of cyanide poisoning and death usually comes in minutes to an hour.”

In 2009 many cedar waxwings were found dead in Thomas County, Georgia. When they looked in their stomachs, they found that the birds had ingested berries from Nandina. (Read the report here.) Birds in other parts of the county have also died from eating these berries. As anyone who has watched a flock of cedar waxwings descend upon their serviceberry knows, these birds eat and eat and eat until all the berries are gone. When they do this at Nandina, the results can be fatal. 

So yes, it may have attractive berries that seem like a great way to HELP the birds, but please, please, please, give this plant a pass. It is invasive, non-native, AND can kill birds. 

+  Being pretty isn’t a good enough reason to put it in your yard. If I had a quarter for all the times people have said this to me when I’ve mentioned the bad qualities of a particular plant, I would be a rich woman.

Sure, burning bush has gorgeous red leaves in the fall. Yes, the blooms of Bradford pears are pretty in the otherwise drab landscape of early spring. Yes, the purple flowers of paulownia or empress tree are beautiful. And sure butterfly bush has pretty profuse blooms that seem like a good thing to the butterflies that visit. And Japanese spiria, autumn olive, Chinese wisteria, Japanese wisteria, and on. 

There are MANY, MANY, MANY trees and plants that my local nursery sells that are pretty at some point in their lifecycle, but since I care about “my woods,” and the health of the ecosystem, I give a hard pass to all of those plants that cause a really, really lot of trouble when they invade spaces where they weren’t meant to be. 

People argue about why it’s okay to put these plants in their yards, saying, “well I should be able to do whatever I want in my own yard,” or “I’m just putting it in a few spots in my yard, how can that possibly affect the forest, or other yards around me?!” 

It’s impossible for homeowners who choose these plants to stop the birds from pooping the berries elsewhere, or the wind from blowing the seeds out of your yard.

What people sometimes fail to understand is that these pretty plants are impossible to keep only in one spot because Mother Nature designed them to spread. For instance, a mature Paulownia/Tree of Heaven can produce 325,000 seeds! Imagine how easily that Paulownia tree will take over an area. 

My husband and I pulled out many of the invasive plants in our yard more than 10 years ago, but yet continue to battle these plants all of these years later. I just pulled out a burning bush this morning that I noticed while walking down my driveway! 

Being pretty isn’t a good enough reason to put it in my yard. Many stores and nurseries that sell these plants are in the business of making money, not being good stewards of the land.  But homeowners like you and me CAN and should be good stewards of the land. (If we don’t care, who will?) Being a good steward of the land doesn’t involve putting plants in the landscape that easily spread into the nearby forest or neighboring yards, and steadily outcompetes native plants, eventually wiping them out and sometimes even creating a monoculture– like kudzu, or English ivy- covered landscapes that we’ve all seen. There’s a reason why kudzu has the nickname of the “vine that ate the south.”

+And lastly, Just because it’s attractive to caterpillars doesn’t mean you should avoid it. 

Most gardeners who find one or even many, caterpillars nibbling on the leaves of their ___ plant are not likely to be thrilled, and many will kill those caterpillars. Hey, I was there too, years ago and get how finding a handful of fat caterpillars eating your echinacea can cause such a reaction and make you want to kill them as quick as possible. It’s a natural reaction– you want your garden to look good, right, and having a bunch of plants with leaves nibbled to bits is not something you embrace. But perhaps you can join me in looking at things a little differently.

Do you like birds? According to Wild Birds Unlimited Americans spend $5 billion dollars a year on bird seed and wildlife food. Many, many people enjoy watching birds. And must then like them. Well guess what? 95% of our beloved songbirds REQUIRE insects, and especially, caterpillars to feed to their growing babies. We cannot have birds without caterpillars. Doug Tallamy, Entomologist and Author tells us in Nature’s Best Hope, that one chickadee family needs between 5000-7000 caterpillars to raise ONE BROOD! Multiply that number by the number of birds in your yard, the number of broods they have in one summer, and you can quickly realize it takes a lot of caterpillars to maintain a bird population. 

So maybe it’s possible that we can find a compromise where we as gardeners, and home owners, actually plant HOST plants for some of these moths and butterflies to encourage them to not just visit our yards, but to STAY, and raise the next generation. If we only focus on pretty flowers that adult butterflies and moths can nectar at, we miss a great opportunity. We can make these same insects STAY in our yards by planting host plants, and then allowing their caterpillars to eat our leaves! Instead of being mad an insect is feasting on our plants, we can embrace the difference we can make in the bigger picture. And what a great learning opportunity for our kids! They can watch as these caterpillars molt and then, sometimes, if we’re lucky, even transform into the winged adults we all know and love. 

Check here to see whether a plant you have in your yard is on the invasive species list.