Debby Luquette
Adams County Master Gardener
(8/1) I decided to have my morning coffee outside yesterday, and approaching one of my favorite sitting rocks, I noticed some blades of grass the mower missed. I reached down to pull them out, but noticed a lady bug. A closer look revealed what caught the interest of the ladybug - several aphids on one of the grass stems! There was an ant busily
tending its herd of aphids while a spider lurked nearby. WOW! This drama may not be ready for prime time, but it was interesting to see the microcosm of activity in the food web that is in my backyard.
Why would a gardener be interested in all this animal activity? One of the last things a gardener might want to find near her garden is a congregation of aphids. Worse, the ants are practicing their version of animal husbandry, increasing the aphid herd size and encouraging feeding, so they can collect the sweet secretions, called honey dew,
excreted by the aphids. Well, the lady bug that caught my attention was probably evaluating this as a potential meal, or a potential spot to lay her eggs. Ladybug larvae hatch from the eggs with a voracious appetite; we sometimes call the larvae aphid lions. And the spider? That was another hungry predator.
There was once a day when I thought that the precious time I did have for gardening would be better spent on plants I use for food. As I got older and slowed down a bit, I found watching insects was a good excuse for a few minutes rest. That garden was near a protected woodland, so we had lots of native plants nearby to harbor native insect life.
It was then I began to realize that flowers, especially insect-feeding flowers, were good companions for vegetables. And after moving to Adams County I began to see how native plants in the landscape could make lovely - and useful - additions to my landscape.
Walking through the woods or viewing the roadsides, we view the garden that nature and chance throw together. It looks messy and is often loaded with invasive plants we don't want within miles of our yards. But how about deliberately building an 'ecosystem' in your yard? Let's start by understanding that an ecosystem is a situation in which a plant
and animal community interacts with its physical environment.
The physical environment is something we have little control over. We can amend the soil by adjusting pH and adding organic matter and we supplement the rain with a garden hose, but we have to work within the constraints of climate and soil type when choosing our plants to build our community. And here we can have the freedom to be creative in
color, shape, texture . . .
The plant community which will be the most resilient and most attractive to the animals - pollinators, pest predators, etc. - will include native plants with a variety of flower shapes and sizes. Choose some flowers in the mint family (examples, bee balm & mountain mint) and the daisy family (example, Echinacea & Coreopsis). Include others, too,
like butterfly weed and greater lobelia. Be sure that blooms span the season from early spring to late fall. Golden Alexanders and Green-and-Gold start the gardening season, with New England Asters and Goldenrods bringing it to a close.
Don't neglect shrubs! Some interesting flowers are found at the end of woody stems. The viburnums are a large group of flowering shrubs with berries that help the birds fuel up for migration and provide food for the ones that stay all winter. Others include elderberry, service berry and chokecherry.
Perhaps you aren't sure how some of these native plants will fit into the landscape of your own yard and neighborhood. It's never a bad idea to see how these plants actually look in a garden setting and imagine how they can fit your situation. One place to observe a variety of native plants is in Gettysburg at the Extension Service Building on
Harrisburg Road. The foundation plantings around the building are natives chosen to give the public a variety of native plants to think about, but there are so many good plants we couldn't possibly fit them all! Come and visit as part of the Garden Chat tour, or at your convenience.
. . . And if you come by when the dedicated crew of volunteers is working, by all means stop and say hello.
Read other articles on ecological gardening & native plants
Read other articles by Debby Luquette
