Spring Garden Care for Native Plant Lovers
- Michelle
- Apr 22
- 8 min read
Happy Earth Day! As Spring finally sets in, I have been getting the usual calls and emails about "how to clean up" the new native plant beds (yay!) that were installed this past year. There seems to be a deep drive to "do" something with our gardens to get ready for spring, when really the best thing to do may be nothing at all. The 1950's-style flower bed, with non-native specimen plants tucked into soil "treated" with potions procured from the local hardware store, which is then covered with bag after bag of dyed mulch, certainly requires a lot of maintenance (and money). But when you are gardening with native plants and keeping the needs of wildlife in mind, spring maintenance can look a little different. Let this be your mantra this spring:
Keep it Minimal, Keep it Tall, Keep it On-site
Keep it Minimal: Clean-up, that is. Tradition garden "clean up" has a scorched-earth mentality. "Rip out old annual plants by the roots; cut last year's stems to the ground; rake or blow away any leaf or twig that remains". What is left is an ecological void. You have just snipped, raked, mulched, or blasted with a leaf-blower many of the bee larvae, butterfly caterpillars, and firefly larvae that you were so proud to welcome last year. Natural garden care starts by taking a step back, and appreciating and keeping what nature provides.
Keep the Dry Plants
Last-year's top growth and leaves are dry and brown, but don't call them dead. Dry stems and leaves are not devoid of life. They are not worthless. They are not trash to be burned or discarded at the curb. They are your beloved plants in a dry form, and they have as much ecological value dry as they did perky and green. Read on to find out why, but the take-away is to keep the dry stems, twigs, branches, leaves, and tree trunks in place as much as your situation allows, not just until the air temperatures warm, or until No Mow May is done, but all year. This is what nature wants and needs. Stripping our habitat bare of all things "dead" is unnatural and deprives thousands of insects, birds, amphibians, and other critters of the resources they need. Here is what to do instead:
Leave the Leaves
If you didn't get to removing all your leaves last fall, I wish you a rich congratulations for still having one of your most valuable resources! Keep those leaves (and pine straw) on your property. They are ecological gold, full of nutrients for your soil and the larvae of last year's pollinators, and definitely should not be blasted to the curb to be sucked up by the city. If you absolutely must move leaves off your front yard, then keep them on the edges, or shuffle them to the back yard, or blanket your flower beds with them. Leaving them on your front yard is just fine too. You need those leaves, all year, and your critters do too. The list of animals, birds, and insects that benefit from leaving your leaves is massive. Check out this article by Nancy Lawson for more reading, but here are some of my local favorites:
Maple Leafroller Moths spend the winter rolled up tight in a maple leaf on the ground under their trees. In spring they hatch and fill the woods and neighborhoods with moths that both pollinate and serve as food for migrating birds and awakening bats. Healthy maple trees will not be harmed; they are well able to support caterpillar browse and Maple Leafrollers are a normal part of the maple ecosystem.
Fritillary Butterfly Caterpillars eat violets and only violets. The caterpillars sleep through the winter near the violets beneath the snow and awaken in spring at the same time as violets. When they have eaten their fill, the caterpillars turn into a summer crop of big golden butterflies. Spring raking or leaf blowing can move the dormant caterpillars away from their spring food, wiping out a generation of butterflies. (If you don't have violets in your lawn or gardens yet, find some Here.)
Firefly larvae overwinter in the soil or leaf layer, emerging as adults to put on their classic show of sparkles in summer. Firefly larvae and their prey need the leaves to keep their habitat moist and insulated against our cold spring nights and dry summer sun.
Bumblebee queens, like many native pollinators, overwinter buried shallowly in the soil and need the protective leaf litter for concealment and insulation. You may have heard the trope "wait until it is 50 degrees before you clean up your garden." But not everything follows a human calendar. Some bees, moths, and butterflies time their life-cycle to hatch out just when their summer or fall flowers are blooming. Emptying your garden of last year's plant material means the summer pollinators may never hatch.
Many other species hide caterpillars or pupae in leaf litter, including our much-beloved luna moths, woolybear caterpillars, and swallowtail butterflies. They are deliberately hard to see, camouflaged to look like leaves or curled up small to avoid predation. Every time someone rakes or leaf-blows, some of these favorite critters are swept away.
Keep it Tall
Leave those stems standing. Cutting "dead" stems to the ground is one of the most deeply ingrained garden clean-up mistakes. Generations of gardeners have been trained that this is an essential spring task. Why? What is so horrific about a stem turned dry and brown? Flower and grass stems are not trash just because they are no longer topped with a colorful flower:
Flower and grass stems are nature's bird feeders. They supported seeds above the snow all winter and many of those seeds remain for spring migrants. Leave last year's stems standing, and avoid dead-heading your flowers later in the summer in order to give the seeds time to fully ripen.
Even if there are no seeds left, standing dry stems provide structure in the landscape:
Structure for spring spider webs,
Perches for butterflies,
Perches for birds to survey feeding areas and hunt bugs,
Support and concealment for butterfly and moth chrysalises and cocoons,
Reinforcement for tender spring growth trying to grow straight and tall, and
Protection for new growth from deer and other herbivores. Plants left with stiff dry stems are going to make a less appealing mouthful than an exposed clump of fresh spring leaves.
Did you know? Some butterflies use chemicals in dry native plant stems and leaves. Butterflies will "spit" on the stem/leaf and dissolve it a bit, then slurp up the chemicals needed either to protect from predators, reproduce, or create pheromones that help the butterflies find each other in the first place. Monarchs are one of a variety of butterflies that need your dry stems to stay standing so they can make their own "medicine". You can read a fascinating story at the Humane Gardener website of author Nancy Lawson. One of the ideas in her article is that this butterfly behavior is so rarely observed precisely because we militantly cut down all damaged or dry vegetation. Her article is here: https://www.humanegardener.com/monarch-rx-calling-all-butterfly-watchers/
Many native bees also use dry flower or grass stems, especially those with a pithy or hollow center, to make tunnels that hold a string of nest chambers, each provisioned with a ball of pollen from their special native plants. If you cut and discard the stems, you are discarding the resources for a generation of pollinators.
If you absolutely must trim the stems, stagger your cuts and leave 12 to 24 inches standing. This will retain some stems for our tiny native solitary bees and supporting new plant growth, while appeasing whoever is pressuring you to hide evidence of last year's bounty. If you do have to cut the stems, find a place on your site to stash the cuttings. There is little point in sending last year's bee and butterfly larvae to be bulldozed into a city compost heap.
Want to learn more about our native bees? Check out the work by Heather Holm, a pollinator conservationist and award-winning author of several books. This is her info-graphic on how flower stems relate to native bee life cycles. Learn more here: https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com
Keep it Minimal
We have talked about leaving the leaves and stems and other dry material. I am sure you have realized that this approach will save you a great deal of time and effort. There is one other benefit to native plant gardens: they don't need mulch. A shallow, one-inch, layer of untreated wood mulch is recommended when you first plant your garden to retain moisture when the plants are small and have short roots, but mulch in native plant gardens is a one-and-done situation. You do not need or want to apply mulch every year.
Your plants don't need wood mulch. Wood mulch is not natural, it is a byproduct of the lumber industry that has been marketed to homeowners as a garden essential. Leaves, fallen stems, and layers of vegetation are the natural way to insulate your soil and retain moisture. If you need to move some leaves, go ahead and slip them into your flower bed to decompose, preferably intact and unchopped to preserve the critters sheltering within. Better yet, if your plants are still small, slip some short-lived, short-stature native plants like Rock Harlequin, Wild Strawberry, or Black-eyed Susans in between. These plants will hold space, add color, and shade the soil, but will be crowded out when your planting matures. But, leaving the soil bare is just fine too.
Bare soil gives solitary and non-aggressive bees, beneficial solitary wasps, ants that have close relationships with native plants, and interesting insects like burrowing spiders a place to live. Bare soil gives birds a place to take dust baths (or ant baths) and butterflies a place to "puddle' and gather some of those essential chemicals after a rain. Bare soil allows short-lived native plants a place to reseed, like Lobelia inflata, Cardinal Flower, Black-eyed Susan, and Rock Harlequin, and allows the runners of Wild Strawberry to root, increasing your planting (and harvest. yum!)
Keep the Faith
One more note on spring native plant garden maintenance: have faith in your plants. Your milkweed is almost certainly not dead. Yes, I know everything else is sprouted and there is still nothing visible by your milkweed tag, but milkweeds take approximately forever to sprout after the snow melts. No one is more anxious than me, as plant sale deadlines loom, watching for last-year's milkweeds to show signs of life. They will. Milkweeds put a lot of effort into their roots, their top growth will come on when they are good and ready. Wild Petunia is also a slow starter, though it can be forgiven since it is a down-state plant and is probably leery of our winters.
Keep Going with Native Plants
So if you are not raking, pruning, bagging, and mulching, what do you do in the spring? Most of us want to get out there and get our hands dirty after a long winter. Here are a few ideas:
Learn the shape of your plants' spring growth. If you can recognize the sprouts, you can tell your native plants from non-native invaders or self-seeding annuals that blew in and make a determination about what to keep. You may need to do some weeding, removing invasive species and turf grass trying to reclaim the space.
Edit your plants. Some native plants reseed well or spread by rhizome. How much they spread often has to do with your specific habitat - the amount of light, moisture, and soil type in a particular bed, in addition to the vigor or lack thereof of neighboring plants. If something was being particularly enthusiastic last year, spring is a great time to thin it, relocate it, or surround it with other vigorous plants.
Transplant seedlings. If native seedlings pop up in places you don't want, you can move them to other areas or give them away. Don't be afraid to stick them in a ditch or field and let them test out a new habitat. These plants were meant to grow wild and often appreciate some space to do so. You can even set them loose to take on your invasive non-native plants and see how they do.
Fill in gaps. You may want to add some plants, either to add another layer of vegetation or to replace something that didn't come back (but save room for your late-sprouting milkweeds).
Kill some lawn. Bust out the cardboard or your chosen method of lawn removal. Native plants are fun, valuable habitat. Lawn is... not. Pick the spot for your next planting and get it started.
I hope you had a wonderful Earth Day and that you find these native plant spring maintenance tips helpful. Our culture so often pushes us to constant mindless labor. Native plants embody the message that it is okay to take a step back and let nature take its course. Happy spring! And thank you for planting native plants.
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