By Teri Silver

Fall is a good time for planting flowers and greenery because native perennials develop stronger root structures as the weather gets colder. Fortunately, Kentucky is home to many native trees, flowers, herbs, and grasses, that you can add to your garden in the fall. There’s nothing like enjoying nature in the bluegrass state.

When choosing native plants for your landscape or garden, implement integrated pest management strategies to keep your yard and garden from being chewed up by bugs. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an eco-friendly approach to preventing pests in the garden with as little pesticide as possible.  

Kentucky’s native plants include trees, shrubs, and groundcovers, but native perennial flowers do more to add color to your homestead. Here are a few to consider when planting this fall. The following natives, planted in fall, are a great way to add specific colors and more natives to your flower beds.   

White Flowers

• Snowbank (Boltonia asteroides), also known as white doll’s daisy has stems with masses of white daisy-like flowers that bloom in late summer to early fall. They make great floral borders for beds and gardens. Also called false aster, these flowers prefer full sunlight.
• Wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) or Virginia strawberry has small white flowers that bloom in spring. Their small red fruit, which resemble strawberries attract birds and small mammals. This native wildflower spreads by runners and makes nice groundcover.
• Hardy hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos) is also called rose or swamp mallow because some blooms come out pink. The 5-inch blooms open from July to September. As you might guess, they like moist soil.     
• Crested Iris (Iris cristata) is also known as Tennessee white. It has white blooms with yellow accents and fans of green leaves. Crested Iris spreads nicely for shaded groundcover.

Go Red!

• Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) produces spikes of red flowers that hummingbirds love!  Blooms begin in mid-summer and often persist into early fall. Although they’re usually red, you might see flowers of rose, pink, or white.
• Bee balm (Monarda didyma) grows on tall, narrow stems in red showy floral bracts. Its earthy scent foliage gives birds a steady landing place. This flower prefers full sunlight to partial shade and requires good ventilation to avoid mildew.  
• Little redhead (Spigelia marilandica), sometimes called woodland pinkroot sprouts dark red tubular blooms with light yellow insides. Glossy green stalks highlight the colors that attract hummingbirds.
• Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) produces clusters of red trumpet-shaped flowers that begin blooming in mid-spring. This semi-evergreen plant attracts bumble bees, hummingbirds, and songbirds who chomp on the blooms and red berries. There’s also a yellow variety. When purchasing, be sure to get the native species and not one of the invasive alternatives, bush and Japanese honeysuckle, often sold in nurseries.

Pink and Purple

• Pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida) features soft purple-pink petals shooting through green cones. It thrives in full sun to partial shade. Flowers bloom in June and July. This naturalized species isn’t a true native to Kentucky, but you will find it in many gardens and natural settings.   
• Pink turtlehead (Chelone obliqua) has hot pink floral spikes that bloom from mid to late summer. Dark green glossy leaves set off these snapdragon-like flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds.
• Fall phlox (Phlox paniculata) has small pink flowers that bloom in large numbers. Phlox resists mildew and attracts butterflies and hummingbirds. 
• Obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) is easy to care for, but often aggressive, so give it plenty of room. This sweet-smelling perennial has glossy green leaves and spires of light pink-rose blooms.

Orange and Yellow

• Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) has the perfect name,with bright orange blooms that attract bees, birds, and butterflies. Butterfly milkweed grows up to three feet tall, once well established, blooms from June to August, and prefers full sunlight.
• Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) is a standard Kentucky prairie flower growing cultivated and wild in summer landscapes. Bright yellow daisy-like blooms have black or brown seedhead centers that attract pollinating butterflies, bees, and birds. Black-eyed Susans bloom from June to September.
• Golden aster (Chrysopsis mariana) is a yellow daisy-like flower with yellow seedhead centers, that’s also known as Maryland aster. Pollinators love them and they provide fall nutrition from August to October.
• Sundrop (Oenothera fruticosa) are pale or bright yellow four-petal blooms on hairy stems. Pollinators and hummingbirds flock to this spreading perennial, which prefers full sunlight and well-draining soil.  

Fall plantings

The Kentucky Native Plant Society promotes conservation and education about native plants growing in various state ecosystems. And because winter will be here before you know it, it’s time to get started on your fall planting. Native perennials should be in the ground about six weeks before the first possible frost.

Teri Silver is a journalist and outdoor enthusiast. She and her husband live on five acres with a vast lawn, three gardens, a farm, a pond, many trees, and a lot of yard work! The best parts of the year are summer and fall when home-grown veggies are on the dinner table.

By Julian Campbell

Conservation is a primary interest of KNPS, as stated in the mission statement and elsewhere, but what are its precise goals for “education, preservation, and protection of Kentucky’s native plants and ecological systems”? Are we just going to accept goals developed by government, or will we seek a more cooperative discussion? Without clear goals, how can we assess progress?

Natural Heritage Programs were developed for each state government about 50 years ago through partnerships with The Nature Conservancy. There is a need to revive this system through stronger grass-roots interactions, inviting all people committed to our native flora and fauna. There is now greater potential for more effective flow of new information through networks of observers. The NHP (as managed by Nature Preserves in Kentucky) was initially envisaged as an integrated system of databases, linking records at whole site level (prioritized lands and waters for conservation), habitat level (including degraded types for restoration), and species level (especially those rare natives deserving recovery). There was also an elaborate system for maintaining stewardship records, but never widely adopted. Priorities for action have become relatively clear at site and species levels in most of our 120 counties. However, the habitat level generally needs a lot more work to define types in an understandable manner, to design restoration of degraded types, and to keep track of progress.

KNPS could become the botanical glue that builds (or mends) the network we need in Kentucky. It is particularly important to seek more interaction among the few scattered professional botanists, restorationists and horticulturalists interested in promoting natives. There has not been enough bonding between such varied groups of ‘plants-people’ in the state. It is of course difficult for KNPS to work across the whole state, but we could start at more amenable regional or local scales.

I have become increasingly interested in the potential for county-based efforts in conservation planning. KNPS and Nature Preserves could play a central role. In brief, I envisage that we—with partners—would focus on a few counties at first, perhaps starting with Fayette as a model. We could begin this winter. We would host a one-day meeting for each county, developing clear goals for conservation and assessing progress with following agenda.

1. Invite all professional and amateur people interested in direct action, aiming to get 10-100 key people. I would contribute $500 for refreshments and supplies. I am sure we could get more donations to cover short-term expenses, and grants for subsequent follow-up.

2. There would be a tabling room for informal standing conversations, and there would be another room for more formal presentations and seated discussions among participants.

3. Each relevant organization (or significant individual) would get 5 minutes for introductory remarks, focusing initially on suggestions for a collaborative map to show priorities for design and care of more natural areas in the county. We would indicate the range of potential wildness, from strict preserves to strips of riparian or roadside corridor with varied types of plantings.

4. We would allow a few hours in middle of the meeting for presentations and discussions of how to define natural habitats in most need of restoration, and how to manage them. Issues would be at least outlined if not resolved—these include difficult matters concerning areas set aside for old growth forest (ideally with removal of aliens), streams or wetlands (with or without beaver), and grassland or shrubland or open woodland (with browsing, burning or mowing at best season).

5. We would finish by reviewing less common native species that deserve recovery and more invasive aliens that deserve reduction. In addition to background with lists of species, which would be presented in the tabling room, there would be brief presentations on case studies.

In subsequent follow-up and field trips, we would continue to refine this material. We would develop an educational booklet (and website) on “Natural History and Conservation Planning in ___ County”. Such booklets would be produced and revised in partnership with Nature Preserves staff, linked to databases as much as possible. They would become an essential resource!

If you are interested in working with Julian Campbell on this concept or if you have any questions or ideas of your own, you can email him at julian.campbell@twc.com or call him at (859) 229-7711.

Julian Campbell is a botanist, a founding member of the Kentucky Native Plant Society, and creator of the Kentucky Plant Atlas.