Green City Design

🌿✨ Stunning lineup as always, @your.gardening.girl — you make gardening look effortless and beautiful! 💚 🌱✨ The ultimate low-maintenance garden lineup If you want a garden that survives on a little neglect and still thrives, these are your 10 ride-or-dies: 1️⃣ Echinacea – Blooms for months, bees love it 2️⃣ Russian Sage – Wispy, silver, and heavenly scented 3️⃣ Summer Allium – Cute purple globes, no fuss 4️⃣ Salvia – Long spikes, nonstop color 5️⃣ Lamb’s Ear – Fuzzy silver leaves, drought-proof 6️⃣ Stachys ‘Hummelo’ – Upright, bold, never wilts 7️⃣ Sedum – Succulent powerhouse with late-season blooms 8️⃣ Coreopsis – Bright, cheerful, tough as nails 9️⃣ Calamintha nepeta – Tiny white flowers, pollinator gold 🔟 Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ – Soft blue haze, blooms forever 💡 The best part? Once their roots are established, these plants can go weeks without water and still look gorgeous. Which one’s your favorite garden warrior? 🌸💪 Drop it below ⬇️

It’s magnolia time in Georgia! There are 3 species of native magnolia blooming right now. We’ll feature them over the next 3 days. The first one is the bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla). It is one of several deciduous magnolias, but this one is the biggest of all. This species has the largest single leaf of any native plant in North America – up to 36 inches long (there is another plant with larger compound leaves).

This species is native to scattered counties in Georgia and makes a fine specimen tree in part shade. It is naturally an understory tree within a canopy of oaks, beeches and tuliptrees. The flowers are large and fragrant, one of several characteristics that distinguishes it from the similar looking umbrella magnolia (M. tripetala) whose range overlaps with it.

IT"S TIME TO PLANT FOR POLLINATORS!

Native Gardens.

# greencitydesign1

Incorporating Native Plants in Your Garden – Thinking Ahead by EMG Jenn

Is your garden planning in full swing? I know mine is, and I’m in the process of starting seeds! As you make plans for this spring and summer, it would be great to find ways to include some native plants (see my hashtag below for all of the plants I have written about since June 2020). Could you plant something for specialist bees, for example? See https://vnps.org/specialist-bees-need-special-plants/. Or include some keystone plants? See https://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/keystone-plants-by-ecoregion.

But in addition to your planting, there are other ways you can make a difference on your property for the wildlife there and the ecosystem that supports them (and us). Dr. Doug Tallamy spoke two years ago for the Sag Moraine Native Plant Community, and he gave us a list of nine things homeowners can do to help. For more about Tallamy’s work and his Homegrown National Park project, see https://homegrownnationalpark.org/. One point he made was about lessening the amount of our lawns. I have seen lawns described by many speakers as pollinator deserts. There is nothing there for them, unless you let the dandelions bloom (and do! They are an important early spring nectar source for bees!).

Tallamy suggests reducing our lawns by half. That may sound like a lot to you…but you don’t have to do it all at once! Could you enlarge a perimeter or island bed and chip away at the lawn acreage? Could you start a new flower bed in the center of your lawn? The picture this week (taken in June) is from my sun garden, which is in the middle of the lawn in my backyard. Every year I increase its size a little. I think it’s OK to have some lawn, especially if you have dogs and kids, but if most of your property is lawn, maybe you could consider alternatives. If you don’t want high-maintenance beds, consider a native groundcover, especially under trees, to support native caterpillars. (https://www.plantnovanatives.org/groundcovers) These caterpillars are tremendously important for birds rearing chicks, and the caterpillars that survive become the beautiful butterflies and moths we enjoy in our gardens!

Photo by EMG Jenn.

See previous posts at