A Few Less Known Prairie Plants Well Worth Space in Any Garden

Stiff goldenrod

Binoculars! A Helpful Garden Tool!

Do you look at the plants and wildlife in your garden with binoculars?
Or do you think binoculars are for rugged hikers, granola-eating backpackers, and those slightly nerdy bird watching types?  (Oops, I think I'm all three!) Or are binoculars just too expensive?  Do you think that they are a technical thing that you don't know enough about to shop for?  Are they too delicate and breakable? Do you have a big clunky pair that you inherited from someone or got as a gift long ago that are too cumbersome to carry or use?  Or have you just never thought of binoculars as a gardening tool?
Whatever your notions about binoculars and binocular users, I would like to encourage you to get a small pair and keep them in a handy place so that you can watch your gardens from indoors through windows and so that you can take them out with you when you are going to sit and enjoy some time in your garden.
I have a small pair that I bought for travel many years ago.  My sons and I went on lovely little trips for spring break and took them to enhance our chances to see wildlife on hikes.  But they serve me well now for watching the wildlife in my garden.  This morning, I observed several kinds of butterflies on my pale purple coneflowers, including many orange and black checked fritillaries and a pair of flirting monarchs.  On the wild quinine, there are at least a half dozen small gray butterflies.  Yesterday, here were two male goldfinches on my false sunflowers and today a female was picking at the buds of a tall prairie dock stalk that are not open yet.  Last week, I watched a hummingbird dart among the last of the beardtongue flowers.
These were all things that I could not have seen from the house with no magnification and also would not have seen had I just been walking out there.  The goldfinches and hummers leave as soon as I get near, and the while the butterflies are easier to approach, when I go out there, there might only be one or two instead of a half dozen or more.

I have used the binoculars to check whether the birds using the bluebird house are desirable wrens or swallows or undesirable house sparrows.  Native birds are protected while the sparrows are not. I can remove the nests of the sparrows and hope for nicer birds.  I have a hinged roof overhang that I drop if the sparrows have taken possession, which drives them away, and allows other birds to still use it.  It is much easier to patrol the bird box with binoculars!
At my back deck birdfeeders, I can observe feather and marking details that I would not be able to see without the binoculars, and I can follow the birds into the trees and observe their behavior beyond the feeders.  This is especially interesting in the case of the birds that eat insects in the bark, such as nuthatches and the various kinds of woodpeckers.  Last week, I saw a rose-breasted grosbeak taking seeds from the suet feeder to two individual young that were perched on different branches just beyond the feeders.
At the hummingbird feeder, I can see the birds' glorious emerald feathers in much greater detail with the binoculars.
And that's just the wildlife.  I can also see from the house what is in flower, what is in bud so that I know what blooms to anticipate, whether seedpods are ripe, what weeds have snuck their way in and need attention, and just enjoy a fascinating level of detail not normally seen with the unaided eye.  I can find things that pique my interest and that nudges me to get up and get OUT THERE!
And of course, I take the binoculars along to explore areas and nooks and crannies I cannot see from the house!  I can even see things like wasp and mud dauber nests ON the house!
These are the benefits, the things you can see, the results.  Now what do you need to know to acquire your own garden binoculars?
Feel free to research and learn about the details of optics and brands and price points, but if you are inclined to trust me and take a short cut, I will tell you about mine.

They are Nikon Travelite V, and older model that you can still find some places.  They are 10x25 which has something to do with the maginfication (10x) and something to do with the size of the view.  The larger the later number, the more you will see in the little window, but the physical size must also be greater to allow for more lens surface.  I find the 10x25 properties to be just about right.  You can get them 8x25 which is less magnification but a little easier to hold steady and you can get some 12x25, which are about the same size in your hand with greater magnification but also, harder to hold still enough.
These are around $100 in stores and online. The new model, the Travelite VI is shown on the Nikon website:

There are other brands that are good too, but these are what I happened to pick up on a trip to Arizona a few years back and I have been happy with them.  They've been bumped around a bit and have suffered no diminishment of function.  They are small enough to tuck in and I adjust the neck strap to be super long so that it hangs just below my camera when I go for a walk.  That allows me to hand them off to another person for a quick look without taking them off and keeps them from rattling against the camera as I walk.
I prefer shopping locally, so I went to my nearby hardware store to get another pair to have in the car.  They stocked the Sportstar line, also by Nikon, for watching outdoor athletic events and for hiking and hunting and fishing, and it appears a little more compact than the Travelite tho maybe not quite as bright in lower light such as at dawn and dusk and in the rain, but I have been very happy with them too.  They are so small that I have tucked them into my purse at the last minute on visits to the zoo and to public gardens so I have been pleased to have them in the car.  Mostly though, I keep a pair in the car because I am much inclined to pull over (carefully and with the flashers on) to sit and observe a hawk or a deer or a pair of cranes or a flock of wild turkeys or some other interesting bit of nature as I am driving about.
This is the model that I purchased at the local hardware store.  I think they were around $80.

If you take the time to look, I think you will be surprised at the local stores that carry them.  Hardware stores that have sporting goods often have them in a case and you can try out different brands and magnifications and sizes.  You can get them at some department stores and at a great many places online.




Happy garden watching!  Let me know what details your binoculars help you observe!

Landscape Design by PlannedScapes

 
Karma Grotelueschen
Warrenville IL and Mineral Point WI
630-728-9998
plannedscapes @ aol.com (remove the spaces)

Full residential and commercial landscape design services with a primary goal of creating functional and beautiful outdoor living spaces, using plants of the prairie and woodland. 
Complete landscape plans, single area plans, quick sketches that the property owner details with plant lists, or consultation.
Plans for entire properties that coordinate function and aesthetics to single area plans.
Serving the western suburbs of the Chicago area and the Madison, WI and Mineral Point, WI areas.

Careful Use of Non-natives in the Prairie Garden

This planting of Asiatic lilies serves to attract attention to the prairie garden from the roadside and is a softer version of the yellow color that is a repeated element in this garden.


Opinions range widely on the use of non-native plants in the prairie garden.  For the most part, non-native plants will not serve as habitat elements in the same way that native plants will. For example, they will not be a place that butterflies can lay eggs or that larva can feed, perhaps.  But most pollinators are not fussy what sorts of flowers provide their nectar, so the adult forms of the flying insects will still benefit.
One of the most critical aspects of this decision is that non-native plants can become invasive pests that reproduce to the point that they crowd out all other plants.  If this happens, a native ecosystem can be diminished or even destroyed. So it will remain a responsibility of the gardener to check first that any non-native plant they are considering using not be among those already known to be problematic.  Many states have their own invasive plant lists and watch lists, so a first step would be to make sure the plant you are considering is not on such a list.  There are other more general lists published by nature organizations such as The Wild Ones, and these should be consulted as well, because if a plant is a problem in any area, you do not want to be the one to introduce it to your area!
One reason to use a non-native plant might be to introduce flowers into the garden in a gap in the natural flowering sequence of your prairie plants, to add a different texture or color than is available in prairie plants, or simply because you have a fondness for a certain plant, or perhaps have heirloom plants that you are trying to perpetuate.  Another good reason is to add a touch of 'tameness' and familiarity to your 'wild' prairie garden to enhance its acceptance by your community.  A familiar plant such as a lily or daylily or peony or poppy to the garden can make people see it as less threatening and as just another perennial garden, and they may begin to ask about the other plants there, the beautiful native plants, that they will then incorporate into their own gardens!
Of course, the use of non-native plants carries with it some responsibilities.  First, one must keep an eye on those watch lists and be willing to remove the plant from the garden if it appears there.  Second, one must keep an eye on their own plantings, and if the non-native show signs of spreading aggressively, it should be removed and destroyed.  If you are not willing to keep that watch and take that action, you should probably not include non-natives from the start.
It can also be beneficial to prevent non-native plants from going to seed.  Deadheading right after flowering is one way to do this, and cutting off all the seadheads before they fully mature is another.  They should be disposed of in a way that will not allow them to germinate, such as in a hot compost pile.

A Tiny Urban Prairie Garden

 
This tiny urban prairie garden consists of a small bed at the left that is approximately 5' x 6' and a planter that is approximately 2' x 10'.  The planter has the very fine texture of prairie dropseed grass flowing over the edge, a tall fluffy fine textured lead plant about two thirds of the way down the planter, and coarser textured plants like spiderwort, several kinds of prairie onion, prairie coreopsis, and cream wild indigo.  Shown in October, when nearly all flowering is done, the textures still make a showing.
At left, the small bed is filled with yellow coneflower, swamp milkweed, and prairie dock.  The dock has huge green oval shaped leaves from spring through late fall, and over them, slender graceful flower stalks sway, topped by bold round buds, brilliant yellow flowers, and later, round seed heads that attract goldfinches, for second show of yellow flash!

Layers and Repetitions

 Although selecting plants from an exclusively prairie palette limits the range of colors available, the use of design is still an important tool available to the prairie gardener.  This garden features layering of plants in horizontal bands from various points from which the garden is typically viewed.  Using plants in long narrow bands perpendicular to the line of observation is a way to maximize the visual depth of the space.  This fairly small prairie front yard looks deeper than it is due to such layers.













There are two repeated elements that further organize the aesthetics of this garden.

One is the repeated use of the tall yellow coneflower. The heights of the plants serves as a background layer that also hides pockets of the garden from view, so that they can be revealed as the observer moves around the space.  The repeated use of this yellow color as well as others that flower earlier and later provide a constant against which other colors wax and wane.  During some parts of the season, there is more pink, during others, more white, and various purple flowering plants come and go, but yellow is always there.













Another repeated element that is present even before flowers appear and long after flowering is completed is prairie dock.  The large bold leaves stand in contrast to the finer foliage of most other prairie grasses and forbs, and remains into the winter as large dried curled structural elements.  The garden has lines of compass plant that organize it into shapes and in other places, large clumps that move the eye from point to point around the garden space.

Urban Leadplant Attracts Urban Pollinators

Fine textured leadplant shares a long planter on a city street with courser textured leaves of compass plant and even finer textured prairie dropseed grass.  Even in this downtown business district, the native prairie plants attract pollinators.  This bumblebee is filling the pollen sacs on its legs with the leadplant pollen which is much more orange colored than the usual yellow pollen of most plants.

Pollinators in the Prairie

On this day in early August, the layers of flowering prairie plants are not only beautiful, but the many species of pollinators present on one single day show that this front yard prairie garden is also serving as habitat.  The Monarch butterflies can be seen from the street on the white rattlesnake master flowers at left center.  But closer inspection reveals many more insect pollinators are present. Shown are several kinds of butterflies, an abundance of wasps, a few bees, and these are only the ones that are still enough for me to photograph.  I failed to capture the abundance of tiny fast flying native wasps and a couple other butterflies that are more skittish.  In autumn, when the flowers have gone to seed, there will be birds out there pecking at the seeds, which will occur all winter as various kinds of seeds soften from their seed heads and become attractive as food sources.

 

 

 

 

  

Summer at the Lake House Prairie, Year Four

 The lake house garden in July of 2013, when the plants have filled out, meshed together, but diagonal lines and repeats of colors are still very much evident.  The designed shapes will soften as plants interseed, or it can be maintained with some thinning out and transplanting, as desired.  In general, the whites are expressed first, then various purples and yellows come into to and go out of flower as the summer goes on.  Always, the prairie dock serves as a bold structural element with its huge bright green leaves and tall thing flower stalks.