Four years ago, Congress designated the month of April as Native Plant Month and encouraged us to plan activities in our communities to make a real difference by planting native plants, removing invasive plants, and teaching others about the importance of native plants.
So today, we are focusing on a season that often gets overlooked in pollinator gardens – spring. Many of our garden favorites bloom in summer, late summer, or fall, leaving spring gardens a little bland once the daffodils are finished. This lull in blooms also makes it hard for our early pollinators to find pollen and nectar as they emerge in the spring. Having continuous blooms in our landscapes from early spring to late fall is one of the best ways we can help struggling pollinators, and there are many good native plants we can add to our gardens that will fill the spring void. Here are a few standouts:
Packera aurea, Golden Ragwort – Photo courtesy of Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Packera aurea, Golden Ragwort, is adaptable to many garden conditions and easy to grow. Its cheerful yellow, daisy like flowers will brighten up a spring border and provide for early pollinators while the semi-evergreen heart shaped leaves form a low-growing groundcover that will spread and prevent weeds. Sounds good so far, right?! Packera aurea will grow 2 to 3 feet tall in full sun to dappled shade and prefers moist soil but will tolerate drier conditions if grown in a shadier site. Plant it in either a rain garden or a woodland garden amongst ferns. Pair it with Phlox divaricata, Woodland Phlox, for a pretty blue and yellow spring combination. In your pollinator garden, as taller, later blooming perennials fill in, the basal foliage of the Golden Ragwort will thrive in their shade and help the soil retain moisture and stay cool. Packera aurea is especially valuable for small native bees such as cuckoo bees and sweat bees and is beneficial for many butterfly and moth species. It is also deer resistant.
Zizia aurea, Golden Alexander – Photo courtesy of Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Zizia aurea, Golden Alexander, is also a spring bloomer with yellow flowers and is also adaptable to many garden conditions and easy to grow. It is a short lived perennial, but will happily self-seed. Grow Zizia aurea in full sun to part shade in medium soils. It is not a rain garden candidate like Golden Ragwort but enjoys moist soils and is also drought tolerant. Pair it with Baptisia australis, Blue False Indigo for another pretty blue and yellow spring combination. Zizia aurea is especially valuable to short-tongued insects and is a host plant for Black Swallowtail butterflies. It is also deer resistant.
Phlox divaricata, Woodland Phlox
Phlox divaricata, Woodland Phlox, is a pretty blue flowering perennial that is perfect for a shady spot. It grows close to the ground, only 6 to 12 inches high, and blooms for about a month in spring attracting clearwing moths and butterflies, along with spring emerging native bees. Plant it in dappled sunlight to full shade, and if you don’t like yellow, pair it with wild bleeding hearts for a blue and pink combination. Phlox is also deer resistant.
Bee on Baptisia australis
Baptisia australis, Blue False Indigo, is a fast growing perennial that emerges in the spring to quickly form a bushy, 4 foot tall plant but dies back in the winter. The showy blue flowers bloom along long stems in spring and the foliage is a unique bluish green that compliments later blooming perennials. Baptisia australis grows in medium to wet soils and is drought tolerant due to its long tap root. Be patient if you plant this in your garden – it will spend the first 2 or 3 years growing mostly underground. After that the plant becomes quite showy and makes a strong statement amongst your other plants. It is the host plant for the Frosted Elfin and the Indigo Duskywing butterflies. It is also deer resistant.
Dicentra eximia with Phlox divaricata
Finally, many of you might not be familiar with the native Wild Bleeding Heart, Dicentra eximia, but this one bears heart shaped pink flowers from early spring through summer and even into early fall. Its lacy blue green leaves bring an interesting texture to the garden like a flowering fern. Wild Bleeding Heart grows not quite 2 feet tall, prefers dappled shade and average to moist soil conditions. Once established it will also tolerate drought. Plant it with any of these other spring blooming native plants under the shade of a tree to create a woodland habitat for pollinators.
We encourage you to add a few of these spring blooming native plants to your gardens. If you have the space, plant a tree and place a mix of these spring blooming perennials underneath. This begins to create a habitat that can support pollinators year round in your own landscape. In fact, native spring blooming trees are excellent nectar sources and host many of our butterfly and moth species. Serviceberries and Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) are great smaller choices while Oaks, Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) and Red Maple (Acer rubrum) are good large tree options.
Dicentra eximia, Wild Bleeding Heart, reblooming in the fall in the North Circle Woodland Garden at FT Proctor Park
In FT Proctor Park you can find Dicentra eximia and Phlox divaricata blooming in the North Circle Woodland Garden, Baptisia australis in the Peace Garden on the lower level, and both Dicentra eximia and Zizia aurea growing in the new beds on the Lily Pond plateau. A number of spring blooming trees are growing naturally throughout the wooded areas, and we planted a few Cornus florida in a grove across from the Lily Pond last fall. See you at the park!
*Standard disclaimer: while some plants are considered deer resistant, if the deer population is too high and/or the deer are too hungry, they will eat just about anything, even plants they don’t really like. They will also try just about anything new, so you might find some of your newly planted deer resistant plants nibbled on as well.
