Go native in the garden

Most plant nurseries carry a mixed aroma of acrid fertilizer, musty, wet dirt and sweet flowers.

But the Woodbrook Nursery, just outside Gig Harbor, smells like a walk in the woods, and that’s intentional.

Just about every plant on the property is native to the Northwest. Visitors wander amid rows of spirea, red flowering currant, snowberry, salmonberry, oak ferns, sea thrift, Douglas Fir saplings and dozens of other plants that are perfectly adapted to Western Washington’s wet, soggy winters and dry summers.

The nursery even has pots of mountain huckleberry.

“If you put them in the right spots, in reasonably good soil, these plants, once established, don’t need summer watering or fertilizers or pesticides,” said Ingrid Wachtler, nursery owner and passionate native plant advocate. “Native plants are naturally disease-resistant because they’re adapted to this area.”

Wachtler said most of her customers used to be state agencies or companies that specialize in restoring natural areas. But a growing number of home gardeners are discovering the inexpensive beauty of native plants.

One big reason: cost savings. There’s no need for expensive summer watering, fertilizers or pesticides, making native plants a bargain in the short and long terms. That’s a bonus in this rocky economy.

“You can just put it in the ground and let it be,” Wachtler said of a native plant.

Native plants – as seen in the pink and orange daisy-like blossoms of bitterroot – can be just as beautiful as imported flowers, such as tea roses or impatiens, Wachtler said.

NUMEROUS BENEFITS

Native plants can pretty much take care of themselves after the first year. They have other benefits as well, said Anna Thurston, a member of the Washington Native Plant Society.

“For example, vine maple is an excellent shrub with beautiful fall color,” Thurston said. “I don’t have to water or fertilize it, and it also attracts lots of wild birds to the garden.”

The seeds of native plants are a favorite food for wild birds, and a native plant garden is an oasis for wildlife, Thurston said.

Thurston, who lives in Tacoma, mixes native and nonnative plants in her garden.

Native plants need good soil and the right spot to thrive, Thurston said. Soil rich in compost is perfect, and some native plants prefer life in the shade, while others like a mixture of sun and shade. Some native plants even savor life in dry, rocky soil.

Thurston plants bleeding heart, cow parsnip and maidenhair ferns in her garden’s shady spots.

“The bleeding heart is blooming right now, and it looks very nice,” Thurston said.

DANGER AHEAD?

Some native plants are poisonous, although few are dangerous, said Erica Guttman of the Olympia-based Native Plant Salvage Project.

Baneberry, which is native to Puget Sound-area lowlands, is among the few plants that are very poisonous.

Many people think snowberry is dangerous, but it really isn’t, as the berries taste so horrible that most people wouldn’t eat more than one berry, Guttman said.

“There are lots of common plants that have poisonous parts – for instance, the leaves of tomato plants,” Guttman said. “As with anything we do as parents, we just need to teach our kids not to eat plants before checking with us to see if they’re safe.”

LEAVE NATURE ALONE

Convinced of the benefits of native plants, some gardeners might be tempted to head out to a national forest or a state park to gather a few plants for the garden, but that’s a bad idea.

First of all, it’s often illegal to collect native plants on public land, and, in some cases, it might be illegal to collect even seeds from public land.

It’s always illegal to collect native plants from national parks, so doing any digging in the alpine wildflower meadows in Mount Rainier National Park, for example, is a fast way to pay a big fine.

“Public lands are for everyone to enjoy, so if each of us started taking just a little bit of anything, we’d have a devastating impact on those precious spaces and their ecosystems,” Guttman said.

But an increasing number of nurseries grow and sell native plants, and this is the easiest way to find new additions to your garden.

In addition, many native plant groups, such as the Washington Native Plant Society, have annual wild-plant sales, usually in the spring.

Conservation groups, such as the Native Plant Salvage Project, often gather native plants from areas that are about to be developed, and volunteers often get to bring a few plants home, Guttman said.

Many conservation districts across Washington have sales of bare-root plants once a year.

Joining a native plant group is a good first step toward finding friends who will let you take cuttings, divide established plants and even get some seeds from their gardens, Guttman said.

HAVING A PLAN

It’s fun to go to a nursery, a plant sale or a friend’s garden and start bringing home native plants, but that shouldn’t be the first step, Guttman said.

Newbies to native plants should do research – on the Internet or at the local library – and take a class or two on gardening with native plants.

Many conservation districts and native plant groups offer free classes on landscaping with native plants.

Then gardeners should figure out the what kind of native plants would fit best in the shady, sunny, wet, dry or mixed areas of their garden, Guttman said.

Guttman, like Anna Thurston, has a mixture of native and water-wise exotic plants.

“Except for my vegetables, I never have to water,” Guttman said.

Soil quality is important, as many native plants need lots of compost in the dirt to replicate conditions in the wild, Wachtler said.

Gardeners can turn a little plot of the suburbs into a chunk of wild land, as long as they find the right native plant for the right spot.

There’s a good chance that a native plant will thrive in the harshest spot in your garden – even in dry, sandy, sun-blasted corners.

“Coastal strawberries grow wild on Oregon sand dunes,” Wachtler said.

“You just need to put the plant where it gets the right sun, water and soil.”