Tag Archives: seeds

Hubbard Fellowship Blog – Planning a Prairie Garden

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A guest post by Anne Stine, one of our Hubbard Fellows:

It just recently turned cold out, which means I’ve started daydreaming about next year’s garden.  I am a native plant enthusiast, and I have decided that I’ll be planting a prairie garden filled with my favorite flowers that I’ve learned with The Nature Conservancy in Nebraska over the past six months.  I’ve poured through the internet searching for propagation information and bloom times.  I want to make sure I have a continuous bloom period, both because it makes for pleasant viewing and because I want to provide native bee habitat across the growing season.  I also need to know which seeds require stratification or scarification. Because I am me, I made a spreadsheet of all this information (at the bottom of this post).

Who wouldn't want flowers like this in a garden? Blue lobelia and cardinal flower in The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies.

Who wouldn’t want flowers like this in a garden? Blue lobelia and cardinal flower in The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies.

Ultimately, I want my garden to be a great pollinator resource filled with unique native plants. If it attracts birds and butterflies too, that’s a huge plus. Lastly, if it’s going to survive my schedule, it needs to be low-maintenance.  I am pleased to note that gardening with native plants can fulfil all these objectives.  My table of appealing native plants, though not comprehensive, will help me design my garden to satisfy these requirements.  I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on favorite native plants and propagation tricks.

Happy plann(t)ing!

Click on the tables below to see a larger/clearer version of them.  Or click HERE to see the same information in a PDF format.

plantlist2

plantlist3

*Information on propagation, soil moisture requirements, and bloom period gathered from the USDA Plants Database, http://www.wildflower.org/plants Native Plant Database, and the Missouri Botanical Garden Plantfinder Database.

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Winter Wildlife Food

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As we continue to transition into winter, many wildlife species are watching food supplies dwindle around them.  Flowers have been done blooming for a long time, and now even their seeds are starting to disappear.  A few hardy insects are still around, but most have either died off or have found a comfortable place to spend the winter.

The seeds on this stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus) seed head are nearly gone. Birds likely got most of them, though wind may have knocked some off as well.

The seeds on this stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus) seed head are nearly gone. Birds likely got most of them, though wind may have knocked some off as well.

Sunflower seeds are a very attractive late fall/winter food source for many wildlife species, including many birds.  During our fall seed harvest each year, we definitely notice the impact of bird foraging – especially if we wait a little too long to gather seeds.  Large flocks of migrant birds can quickly deplete a stand of sunflowers of their seeds.  That can be frustrating for tardy prairie ecologists, but has bigger implications for resident prairie animals that depend upon those seeds for winter survival.

These annual sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) have lost all of their seeds already, though opportunistic scavengers might still find some on the ground beneath the plant.

These annual sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) have already lost all of their seeds, though opportunistic scavengers might still find some on the ground beneath the plant.

Fortunately for resident wildlife, migrant birds don’t get all the sunflower seeds, so at least some are left for winter foragers.  When snow covers the ground, sunflowers and other plants that still hold seeds become particularly important for wildlife.  Some animals have already built up caches of stored seeds to eat when snow covers the ground, but other species – especially birds – have to make do with what’s sticking out above the snow.  It’s easy to see which plants have the best food supply by looking at the tracks in the snow around them!

Both small mammals and birds are foraging around these annual sunflowers in the snow. (2009 photo)

Both small mammals and birds were foraging around these annual sunflowers in the snow.  Birds (and maybe some small mammals?) can get the seeds directly from the top of the plant, but others pick fallen seeds right off the snow. (2009 photo)