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| Front yard view |
This is one of my most favorite times of the year because its when the natives plants begin to show off their stuff and begin blooming. While not true of all non-native plant times, most bloom earlier in the season and are done blooming by now. Some may even look fairly ratty, native plants are warm season perennials, which means they are slower to come up in spring and like to grow in hot weather. While the slower grower is a bit of a negative, the blooms pop right in the middle of the heat of summer leaving a garden full of blooms while other are back to green.
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| Great Black Wasp 7/19/20 |
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| Compass Plant w/ Bee 7/19/20 |
I designed my gardens with native plants in mind, and made sure that at least
90% of the plant material that was going in was native to Iowa, while the above reason with the color they provide was certainty an important factor when it was decided to use them, the main and real reason for going "native" was for nature and pollinators in general. There are numerous studies that show bees, butterflies prefer native plants and I can say there has been a huge increase of visiting insects to the yard since the gardens were added. Moving into my house nearly 3 years ago when there was not a single plant in the yard there was no visiting insects to speak of. Now that the plants have been added there is a surprising amount that have come in from everywhere! I've seen 6 or 7 different species of bees and 3 or 4 different butterflies. As they're discovered, trying to learn about them. One of My favorites is the great black wasp, while their large size makes them kinda scary to look at they are gentle pollinators and NOT aggressive because they don't live in a colony or hive they are solitary and each female takes care of their own young.
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| Greayhead Coneflower |
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| Ironweed 7/19/20 |
To add even more of a reason to add native plants, not only are they beautiful and help the pollinators out, they are extremely tolerant of many things, poor soils, drought and changing weather conditions! Here are couple of my best native plants, Ironweed with its rich purple flowers and Greyheaded Coneflower, a nice yellow sunflowers shaped like little shooting stars.
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| Prairie Garden 7/19/20 |
The prairie garden which is exclusively all natives is getting quite tall these days. It looks really nice against this otherwise boring fence. Soon the tall coreopsis will bloom and it be very nice shades of yellow. When planting natives I am always careful not to get all flowers and plenty of the natives grasses are also added here in this bed is, Big Bluestem, Indiangrass, Little Bluestem and Sideoats to name some.
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| Side View |
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| Front Yard View |
Ending this post with a couple views of the front and side of my house. There is an air conditioner on the side photos but its covered in this view by the tall native plants. The south ( front ) of my house gets a fair amount of sun but its mostly after 12pm due to a large tree on the east side of the house. The west side receives the most sun and the plants do quite well even though its a very hot side. Booming in yellow are Tall Black Eye Susan, Regular Black Eye Susan and Compass plant The Compass plant was a very long wait to experience its flowers, took 3 years to establish. The leaves are very unique making the wait easier. Grasses here are Switch Grass and Big Bluestem. I have varieties bluestem and strait bluestem and the strait always grows taller and earlier in the season. I hope this post encourages you to plant natives in your own garden, every yard makes a difference, even one!
