Incorporating Native Plants in your Yard and Garden: Why do it and how to get started

Native plants play a vital role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, especially when it comes to stormwater uptake, flood resilience, and providing habitat for wildlife including pollinators such as bumble bees and swallowtail butterflies. Residents in the Lake Champlain Basin can plant natives in their gardens and yards to realize these benefits at the household and community scale. Lake Champlain Sea Grant (LCSG) has developed two new plant lists featuring Northeast natives that will thrive in saturated soil and tolerate road salt. Each property is different, so these lists help residents determine which plants are right for them based on their site and goals. If you would like to build a colorful pollinator garden along an urban road, consider blue false indigo (Baptisia australis), black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), or mountain mint (Pycnanthemum incanum) from the Salt Tolerant plant list. If you would like to soak up a wet spot in a backyard and create a food forest, try aronia (Aronia melanocarpa), elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), and highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) from the Water Loving Clay Tolerant plant list.  

Through the BLUE Stormwater Program, LCSG staff evaluate properties with unique challenges, such as urban lawns with higher salinity due to road salts, or properties with dense clay soils that may experience pooling after rains. LCSG created these plant lists for homeowners who want to build habitat or stormwater resiliency on their property, but aren’t sure where to start. Brian, a resident of Williston Vermont, lives on a property with poorly draining soils, high clay content, and shallow depth to groundwater. To help combat excess saturation, Brian has allowed native trees, grasses, and perennials to thrive as these plants help intercept, slow, filter, infiltrate, and transpire stormwater. Explore Brian’s property through this interactive story map.

Unlike lawn grasses, which have short roots—only around 2–3 inches deep, native perennials like New England aster (Aster novae-angliae) and wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) have root systems stretching down two feet into the soil. Native grasses like prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) have even deeper roots reaching eight feet down. Deeper roots stabilize soil and provide pathways for water to infiltrate. Once taken up by the plant, water can evaporate back into the atmosphere through the leaves. Along streambanks and rivers, the deep and adapted root systems of trees like black willow (Salix nigra), river birch (Betula nigra), and sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) help absorb rainwater efficiently, reduce runoff, filter pollution, protect aquatic habitat, prevent bank erosion, and reduce flood severity. 

Flood control and stormwater filtration aren’t the only benefits of planting native. Native plants provide better habitat for wildlife and some are edible or have medicinal properties.

• The purplish-blue berries that form in June on the branches of a serviceberry tree (Amelanchier canadensis), edible to both humans and birds, contain more antioxidants than blueberries—and are delicious!
• Bright purple wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) blooms provide important summer pollen for bumble bees, mason bees, and leaf-cutter bees. Bergamot leaves can also be brewed in teas to soothe a sore throat.
• The dark berries from an elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) bush can be concentrated into a sweet syrup with medicinal properties.
• The red spring blooms of cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) provide nectar for the Ruby-throated hummingbird.
• Rubbery leaves of a common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) are the sole food source of monarch caterpillars, making the plant essential in the life cycle of monarch butterflies.
• The multi-stemmed understory tree, witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) attracts birds from 10 different families including cardinals, chickadees, finches, nuthatches, sparrows, warblers, and wrens listed in Audubon’s Native Plant Database. 

To learn more about native plants in the Lake Champlain Basin, explore the Grow Wild website, which provides science-based educational resources and plant finder tools. If you would like to source native plants, contact your local conservation district to ask which nurseries are recommended for your area or check out Horsford Gardens and Nursery in Charlotte, Intervale Conservation Nursery in Burlington, Full Circle Gardens in Essex, or the Ausable Conservation Nursery in Lake Placid.