HOBBS STATE PARK — Arkansas gardeners tired of shriveled plants and high water bills during this and last year’s summer droughts can take note from an expert: Start choosing native plants and life will be a lot easier.
Not only that, but butterflies, bumblebees, honeybees and other insects will flit about your garden as well as birds, said Sharon Haley, whose thumb has been green with native plants for 31 years.
One of the best things a gardener can do to conserve water is plant as many drought-resistant plants in the garden as possible, Haley, a master gardener, told an audience during a talk Saturday afternoon at Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area.
“Ozark native plants have evolved to survive our unique environmental challenges,” said Haley, a resident of the War Eagle area in Benton County.
Choose them and after they have established themselves in one to three years,“they will live happily on nothing more than the rain that Mother Nature provides,” she said.
That’s not to say they won’t look a little peaked - after all, plants that are drought-resistant are not drought-proof - but their root systems generally survive and they come back once the rain does, Haley said.
Before her talk, Haley pointed out an example of a native plant outside the Hobbs visitor center - a Callicarpa bush that’s likely Callicarpa americana, also knownas the American Beautyberry or French mulberry.
“This is one of the showiest fall blooms,” Haley said as she touched one of the clusters of bright, pinkish-purple berries.
Because the berries are not a favorite food of birds, they tend to pass it over for a while, so the long-lasting fruits are still a food source for them well into the winter months when other seeds and berries are more scarce.
“The fruits of the American beautyberry are an importantfood source for many species of birds, including bobwhite quails, mockingbirds, robins, towhees and brown thrashers,” according to information the Hobbs visitor center offers in its lobby.
Haley was the 1994 Arkansas Master Gardener of the Year, and in 1993, her Rogers garden was among the first certified National Wildlife Habitats in the state.
In her talk, Haley focused her discussion of native plants to those accustomed to Northwest Arkansas, knowing that’s who her audience would be.
Though most of the plants she recommended are native to Northwest Arkansas, she is not a stickler about it, and put a couple of non-native plants on her list. If the plant is native to a very dry prairie or desertlike environment, it also will do well during a drought in the state’s northwest corner as well, she said.
“I really like my natives,” she said. “I’m very, very judicious when I introduce a nonnative.”
Take the Daturia inoxia, or Bush moon flower, a nightblooming variety which attracts hawk moths.
The moths can be quite entertaining to watch.
“They look like little private jets flying in to this plant,” she said. “The fragrance at dusk and for about two hours after dusk is heavenly.”
“This plant has seeded in places that didn’t get a drop of water all summer,” she said.
Her second recommended non-native is the Caryopteris, which she has found will seed in gravel for her.
But the stars of the show were the true Ozark natives.
One of Haley’s favorite plants is a shrub known as Hypericum prolificum, or shrubby St. John’s Wort - which she made a point of stressing is not the same St. John’s Wort used as an antidepressant.
Its shrubby cousin is an excellent source of pollen for bees, she said.
Next were two sumacs, Rhus aromatica, or fragrant sumac, and R. aromatica, or Gro Low that she described as valuable nectar plants for birds. Like the Callicarpa, they are not the favorites of birds, so they hang on into winter when other berries are scarce.
Pointing to a photo on her PowerPoint presentation of a row of Gro Low lining a roundabout on a city street, she said: “I can almost bet you it’s getting no irrigation there.” She added the plant will spread once planted and can grow on ravines that other plants can find challenging.
Another excellent pollen-producer and a lure for winged creatures is the Aster oblongifolius, or aromatic aster, which at her house didn’t get a drop of water all year but is still alive.
Want to attract goldfinches along with bees and butterflies? Haley’s Rx is Echinacea, or coneflower.
Let a few of these plants seed to attract the colorful goldfinch birds, she said. They come in various colors, and her favorites are E. pallida, E. paradoxa and E. purpurea.
Others on her list include Poleonium reptans or Jacob’s Ladder (in Haley’s words, “about the most charming thing in the world”); several varieties each of Salvia, or sage, and Liatris; Solidago, or goldenrod; and Scuttelaria incana, or downy scullcap.
There’s also Yucca arkansana - aka the Arkansas yucca, soap plant or soapweed- which converted Haley from her general position of being no fan of yuccas.
The Arkansas yucca has an exclusive relationship with the yucca moth, she said. Yucca moths feed only on the Arkansas yucca, which in turn is pollinated only by the yucca moth. In her photos, the soapweed looks like the botanical version of exploding fireworks, with or without a conelike bloom that attracts the moths.
“It makes a charming little - poof - of a plant,” Haley said. “Again, not a drop of water.”
Haley had one more suggestions that shows she’s openminded.
“I almost never suggest hybrids,” she said. But the Amelanchier x grandiflora, or autumn brilliance, is an exception.
It is valuable as a food source for birds and mammals and its serviceberries are “primary larval foodplants” for many species of butterflies, she said, showing a picture of the one she planted in all its shrubbery gorgeousness.
“I watered it one time this summer,” she said.
“Once established, drought-resistant plants need little water,” Haley said. If there is no rain for long periods, many of these plants can do with a deep watering every three to four weeks that soaks 4 to 6 inches into the soil. Deep watering is done so the roots don’t try to make their way toward the surface, which is what shallow watering will cause.
One of the most valuable pieces of advice she said she gives gardeners is to start with good soil. When buying it in Northwest Arkansas, she said, make sure you’re getting a “loamy” soil that will hold moisture and nurture roots, and not the dry lifeless stuff that has been exhumed to make way for an incoming subdivision. She is not big on peat moss, she said.
Design considerations are grouping together plants with similar watering needs, knowing which drought-resistant plants prefer sun or shade and “the rule of 3-5-7,” Haley said.
Buying a variety in groups of three, five and seven allows the gardener to make a continuous line of a single species, but also can allow the scattering of the species around the yard to see which spot it will thrive the best.
That leads to Haley’s other rule: “Use what works. And repeat it.”
She’s seen lots of gardeners be seduced by the showiest hybrids in the nursery. Non-hybrids often follow the “weep, creep, leap” adage, meaning they do not so well in the first year but thrive in the third year. For hybrids, she finds they often follow the “leap, creep, weep” path and are no longer in people’s gardens after year three.
Like many of her plants, her Echinacea coneflowers didn’t get a drop of water all summer, until some late rains ushered out the drought, she said.
“They were looking black and sad,” Haley said. “But now they’re green !”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 09/23/2012