Want to learn more about native plants? Listen to these episodes of the House of Lou podcast:
- Lessons from the garden with Marcella Hawley
- Digging into native plants and gardens with local plant experts
- Tree expert Mike Sestric of Trees, Forests, and Landscapes
THE GOLDEN BLOOM of the forsythia is a glowing harbinger of spring. But the plant’s brilliant flowers disguise a hard truth: Forsythia doesn’t belong here.It’s one of the many showy backyard favorites that are popular among homeowners in St. Louis, but it’s not indigenous to the region. The good news is that scores of native plants can provide the same look as many of the classic non-native species that are so desired by area gardeners. Erin Goss, the native plant initiative coordinator at Shaw Nature Reserve, and Besa Schweitzer, a local horticulturist and author of The Wildflower Garden Planner, offer advice on which naturally occurring plants to introduce to your garden this year.
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The flowers of the golden raintree may be beautiful, but the tree is invasive. The fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus) offers a similarly vivid pop of blooms but won’t destroy natural areas. “They both have soft-looking flowers that you’d want to touch,” Schweitzer says. “Fringe trees are a graceful tree. They’re also fragrant.”
A groundcover such as English ivy isn’t entirely problematic when it stays horizontal. However, it tends to spread vertically. “It can kill a large oak,” Goss says. Roundleaf groundsel (Packera obovata) is much kinder to its natural neighbors, she notes: “It’s one of the few natives that will stay green year-round.”
The blue, purple, and pink blooms of the bigleaf hydrangea are hard to replicate, but the white blossoms of our native smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens) are impressive. What it might lack in color, the smooth hydrangea makes up for in resilience. It’s highly adaptable to soils in the region and doesn’t require fertilizer.
Although you won’t find a deep-color bloom in the aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium), you do get a more manageable plant that offers benefits to the surrounding environment. The perennial comes to life with a purplish-blue bloom, providing nectar to late-season pollinators.
Like its interloping doppelgänger, the golden currant (Ribes aureum) is a yellow-flowered shrub with arching branches. But the scent of the native golden currant sets it apart from the invasive species. “I have one in my backyard,” Schweitzer says. “It smells wonderful. Insects know it, too. In the summer, it buzzes.”
As its name implies, the butterfly bush attracts those famous fluttering insects. But its beauty comes at a cost: It’s a semi-invasive species that doesn’t provide adequate nutrition for late-summer pollinators. Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) also attracts butterflies, feeds their entire life cycle, and presents a brilliant white bloom.
