Melinda Chamberlain Dietrich says she started planting native plants for a simple reason: They were pretty.
This is an excerpt from the Wild Ones Journal
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“While I was raising two sons in an old farmhouse with a barn in Lexington, Massachusetts, I began to grow native ephemerals along an old stone wall in the shade of a large sycamore tree,” she says. “It was back in 1980, and I knew nothing about the advantages of native plants.”
But she did know about plants. Growing up in Connecticut, Chamberlain Dietrich’s mother had been president of a garden club and they had a lot of plants from England like dahlias in their yard. “But I wanted something different,” she says. “ I loved hiking in the mountains, being outside where it was wild. I wanted that more old original feeling of our environment.”
In her retirement, then living in a suburb of Cincinnati, Chamberlain Dietrich looked for something to do with her free time. “I decided I wanted to learn more about plants,” she says. So she became a Master Gardener and shortly after discovered the local Wild Ones chapter and volunteered to be treasurer. She remains a chapter member.
For about 12 years, she moved back and forth between Ohio and Massachusetts, finally moving permanently to Massachusetts about two years ago. She brought along plants from Cincinnati to her new home, and reports that all the plants are doing well. She attributes that to climate change, which is altering hardiness zones.
Today, her home is sited along one side of a half-acre parcel in a residential neighborhood near the Concord River. The border along the back of the property is lined with 60-year-old white pine trees. A second border runs along a dead-end street lined with a sandy glacial bank in full south-facing sun. The front border faces the road, which curves downhill toward the hot western sun.
During her Master Gardening training, she had researched the landscape designs of Gertrude Jekyll, an artist, horticulturist and landscape designer known for her planting in drifts of color. That appealed to Chamberlain Dietrich, who as an artist with degrees in painting and graphic design, set out to learn more about native plants, including how to grow them and group them.
“I was always interested in looking at things from an architectural viewpoint,” she says. “I draw everything on paper so I have some idea of what the landscape will look like when finished. I try to be aware of how plants grow and how they look in different seasons.”
Growing up in New England, Chamberlain Dietrich says she loved hiking in the White Mountains, a section of the Appalachian Mountains. “The experiences of following a trail, seeing a new vista open up at a bend, and the surprise of a small wildflower blooming were things I wanted to bring into the landscape.”
She began to incorporate shrubs into her yard, placing them at turns that hid the view of a new habitat around the corner. “I designed drifts of layers of plants from small perennials like wild ginger (Asarum canadense) to native great rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) and red maple (Acer rubrum), which were chosen to thrive naturally in an existing micro-habitat,” she says.
She also credits Doug Tallamy, and says his ideas inspired ideas for her to maintain her gardens and landscaping, from ground covers, to layering and diverse plant combinations that provide food and habitat for birds.
But she admits that over the years there was a lot of trial and error in her yard as she perfected her native gardens. With the help of her son, they planted natives for sun and shade, for bloom and various flowering time, for attraction of pollinators, birds, wildlife and more. But her goal was always the same: to make her yard more sustainable. “I desire to combat climate change, and attract insects, wildlife, reptiles and amphibians,” she says. “In the last two years, we installed a small pond where I am now learning about native wetland plants, which help provide habitat for dragonflies that are endangered in Massachusetts, and Leopard frogs, which are declining.”
Some of her favorite plants are those that attract monarchs. She has three varieties of milkweed in her yard, and during the summer, the monarchs fly around the house into and out of the gardens checking out the native plants like blazing star (Liatris ligulistylis). The south facing “prairie garden” includes wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), Bush’s poppy mallow (Callirhoe bushii), queen of the prairie (Filipendula rubra), bigleaf aster (Aster macrophyllus), cutleaf coneflower, (Rudbeckia laciniata) and winterberry (Ilex verticillata) shrubs.
Her “woodland path” garden is designed around a small group of pre-existing pink lady slipper orchids with many added ephemerals like trillium, bloodroot, mayapple and Solomon’s seal, which bloom in early June. The “endangered natives walk” is bordered by stiff goldenrod (Oligoneu ronrigidum), hairy beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus), pasture rose (Rosa caroliniana) and Virginia rose, wild senna (Cassia hebecarpa) and smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens), which blooms in mid-summer. In the sloping shade of an old red maple tree, a number of medicinals thrive such as elderberry, black cohosh, goat’s beard and goldenseal.
Her advice to those new to native landscaping is to purchase plugs or small plants, rather than starting from seed, and stay away from nativars and cultivars. Also, be sure to find a nursery that deals in and is knowledgeable about native plants.
But she also says you need to pay attention to the plant’s requirements. “If the plant needs full sun, it won’t survive in the shade,” she says. ”Survey your landscape for what kind of habitat you have, and then pick the plants that will do well in that habitat. Know what’s going on throughout your yard all through the day.”
Due to global warming, longterm issues of sustainability and changing hardiness zones, Chamberlain Dietrich says she has about 100 different species in her yard that are native to the United States (outside of New England), including Liatris ligulistylis and Callirhoe bushii. She keeps a record of how the plants do. To her, it’s all about plant diversity and habitat supporting the food chain.
“If you do have a range of native plants, you might have a butterfly show up that you’ve never seen before,” she says.
Chamberlain Dietrich says she has a special section of sandy, bare ground that is used by solitary native bees. “We protect these bees, never planting anything in this area,” she says, noting that many other bees and insects, including dragonflies, damselflies, ants, butterflies and moths, prefer the sandy, meadow banking along the road where they grow milkweeds, little bluestem, big bluestem, Indian grass, prickly pear cactus, wild lupine and more.
Also coming to her yard are a wide variety of birds including barred owls, and wild turkeys, deer, coywolves, woodchucks, rabbits, frogs, snakes and more. “There are so many birds eating insects — we never use herbicides or pesticides,” she says.
Chamberlain Dietrich says it has been very rewarding to see all these species in her yard. “It’s made my life 100 times healthier, and my son depends on it for his health,” she says, noting that when he comes home from work in the city that he often goes out to the garden to work. “Spending time in nature makes you relate to the natural world in a way that is very fulfilling.”
About the Yard
- Melinda Chamberlain Dietrich’s home is located in Brookline, Massachusetts, a short drive from the Atlantic Ocean. The land along the Concord River was created by glacier melt, which dropped sand in esker formations as it ran to the Merrimack River. This provides excellent natural drainage for many native plants.
- According to her research online at Go Botany: Native Plant Trust, 246 out of her 500 total plants on her half-acre parcel, or almost 50%, are native to Massachusetts. A total of 53% are native to the New England states, 6% are either endangered or threatened in New England, 20% are native to the United States, and 365 plants, or 73%, are native to North America.
- Chamberlain Dietrich says it is difficult for her to say what her favorite native plants are. “I’m more interested in a community of plants that share some important functions to survive and thrive together,” she says. But she admits she loves milkweed and Liatris, which both attract monarchs.
- Her gardens are currently laid out along curving grassy pathways that highlight the experience of different eco-environments with each turn. The flowering plants bloom throughout the seasons from early spring to late fall. This year she focused on ways to enhance that experience by pruning, transplanting and selectively adding varieties.