Planting and Growing Native Plants: Balancing Vigor and Control

Planting Native Plants: From Simple to Ambitious

Incorporating native plants can be simple or ambitious—sowing a cornfield, planting a woodland, hedgerow, or wildflower meadow. Maintenance differs: no spray guns for pests or weeds. Natives are adapted to local soil and climate, often more vigorous than garden plants, so strict control may be needed to prevent takeover.

Many natives are annuals (cornfield annuals) adapted to the plough-sow-harvest cycle—germinating, flowering, setting seed, then shed as harvest occurs. Weedkillers have decimated them in farms, but gardeners can recreate a mini cornfield yearly.

Invasive Plants: What to Exclude

Some natives are too vigorous. Most thistles spread seeds prolifically, annoying neighbors—though milk thistle (Silybum marianum) and cotton thistle (Onopordum acanthium) are less aggressive. Exclude creeping buttercup and bindweed—already major weeds in many gardens.

Possible Problem Plants: Confine to Appropriate Areas

Yarrow, lesser celandine, toadflax have creeping rootstocks—nuisance in borders but excellent in meadows. Dandelion, curled dock, plantain seed readily—confine to meadows. Brambles and stinging nettles are indispensable for wildlife but must be restricted to remote garden corners; ruthlessly eliminate shoots beyond defined boundaries.

Key to control: check every autumn for vigorous spread and remove trespassing plants.