1st in a New Plant Series, Jewelweed

101 Native Plants

For Your Garden

Looking for a new plant for your garden? More than 3,000 native plants—both herbaceous and woody–call Maryland home. It can be challenging to choose one that you like and that will like your garden.

This series explores well known favorites as well as some lesser-known ones. The full spectrum of plants will be examined: annuals, perennials, sedges, rushes, grasses, ferns, shrubs, and trees. Some will be discussed in detail while other, less common ones, have limited dossiers.  

Spotted Touch-me-not or Jewelweed

The annual Impatiens capensis likes full- to part-shade and wet soil but can do well in damp or moist soil as well.

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A Beautiful Disturbance Comes to Philadelphia

A wildflower-filled lot beckons visitors at this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show. The unconventional garden, filled with native plants and long-time residents like Queen Ann’s lace, reflects the design concepts of Kelly D. Norris of Des Moines, IA. He follows an ecological planting approach to design for his residential clients in Des Moines and the upper mid-West. This was the firm’s first display at the Flower Show. I spoke with Kelly Norris at the show.

Laura O’Callaghan: Is your garden all natives?

Kelly Norris: It is not, the concept about the exhibit is to create the artifice of urban and abandoned spaces. And, in some ways, to explore and celebrate the conflict of plant origins that occur in a place where disturbance is the principal…

There are species of plants that would be native here in Philadelphia and the Eastern seaboard but also examples of plants that aren’t.

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Pleasing the Pollinators in Your Garden

Snowy cold winter days offer gardeners the perfect time to consider additions to their yards from the comfort of an easy chair and a warm fire.

Whether you plan to add tasty highbush blueberries, elegant dwarf crested irises, cheery coreopsis, or something else, you might want to consider the preferences of pollinators.

Native bees prefer purple, yellow, blue, violet, and white flowers. The most important of all pollinators, about 400 species of bees call Maryland home.

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Native Plants