Now that spring has finally arrived, it may be tempting to trundle off to the nursery and load your car up with pots of black eyed susans, bee balm, and echinacea to beautify your garden and create a happy home for your local pollinators. But you will be much more successful if you consider the area surrounding your yard first and make decisions that enhance the health of the local whole ecosystem.
“In creating a new garden, we want to try to heal the whole microclimate, not just add the pollinator-friendly species,” says John Messerschmidt, owner of Hudson Valley Native Landscaping, whose company specializes in designing beautiful, native gardens that contribute to your local ecology.
In starting any landscape design project, his team first considers the context of your yard. A design for a suburban yard, for example, is approached differently from an exurban yard surrounded by woods, where the yard should be treated as an extension of the woods rather than the other way around.
In a suburban neighborhood where everyone has dogwoods, serviceberry or eastern redbud provides biological diversity, flowers for pollinators, and contrasting visual interest. If you live on a property that used to be farmland, you’ll likely be missing mature trees and the team will aim to fill that need.
In areas surrounded by woodland, they remove invasive species, such as barberry, multiflora rose, and Asian honeysuckle, that threaten the health of the native trees and bushes. They also remove any diseased, bent or dying trees or those that are growing in the root system of another, all which take up the nutrients and water and compete with healthier trees.
With the healthy trees ready to thrive, the team is now ready to add new native plantings that are better able to reestablish beneficial relationships with other local plants, animals, and the all-important insect population, which provides food for baby birds. In considering new plantings, they also consider how to blend the entire landscape together visually, with emphasis on creating a natural transition between the gorgeous new native plantings next to your home and the now-healthy woodland beyond.
They plant understory trees like sweetbay magnolia to soften the transition from taller trees to a yard. If an area is lacking in berries, they’ll plant shrubs or trees that bear fruit, such as serviceberry, elderberry, or viburnum. If a property is mostly dry but has a wet area, they can dig a swale and plant water-loving plants, such as pussy willow or clethra alnifolia to provide diversity. Or they can incorporate a woodland trail for you to wander while you admire all the beauty and good work your new gardens are finally able to do.
To learn more about Hudson Valley Native Landscaping, visit Hudsonvalleynative.com.
