Wild Spirit Native Plants

06/15/2024

Some tough news to share… I’m closing the nursery. It was a tough decision to make but it’s been on my mind for months now. This is a passion for me and I feel that growing and expanding access to native plants is a very important job. However, I am overwhelmed and burnt out. I work full time, am a single parent, and spend the majority of my evenings and weekends from March to November doing something nursery-related: watering, potting plants up, collecting, cleaning and sowing seeds, making plant tags, updating the website, preparing for and attending sales, meeting customers for pickups, filing sales tax, bookkeeping, renewing licenses, etc. It’s too much and it’s taking too much time from my kiddo. She has had a lot of fun learning about the plants, helping to grow them, and earning some of her own money attending sales with me, but she doesn’t want to do this every weekend. And I agree, there are other projects and adventures we both want to do.

I’m going to continue this page to share information about natives, including how to grow them from seed. Running the nursery may be too time consuming but I think it’s important to continue working with native plants outside of my own gardens. The best way I can do that moving forward is to help you all learn to grow them! I’d like to see it become a local community of native plant enthusiasts who work together to grow and share native plants. It would be so awesome if lots of people grow a couple species each, using the super easy winter-sowing method, and then share them with each other, for FREE!

Until I really get this native plant growing and sharing thing started, here are my recommendations for the best nurseries and why:

1. Earth Sangha. All local ecotype. Yes, they are in northern Virginia but northern VA ecotype is a way better option than something sourced from the Midwest. Non-profit. They do great things with their money. They grow a huge variety of plants, shrubs, and trees.

2. Chesapeake Natives. Also all local ecotype in southern MD. Same thing, southern MD ecotype is much closer than anything else you can get at nurseries closer to our area. Also a non-profit that does a lot of good work.

3. Wood Thrush Native Nursery in Floyd VA. Far away but does mail order. Attends native plant sales in Maryland and DC area. Ecotypes are listed on website, a lot are Virginia, West Virginia. Offers a lot of hard-to-find natives but check the MD plant atlas to confirm nativity in MD. I’ve ordered by mail and all the plants have done well.

I have a lot of complicated emotions about this announcement but I also think that being a resource for others to learn about growing native plants is going to be a really great thing, too. Maybe even better than the nursery. Hopefully instead of just me growing these plants, I can inspire a lot of people to grow them and that will get even more natives out into gardens!

Thank you to everyone who has supported the nursery along the way! I hope you’ll follow along on this next project! 💜

06/13/2024

This is the way to garden with natives. Very good advice! We list the recommended plant spacings because most people expect them, but honestly we don’t follow them in our gardens. Our plants are growing close together, just like they do in nature. We only mulch a small area around new plants until they get established. The plants spread and cover the majority of bare soil, no mulch needed. Too much mulch will also hinder your plants from spreading and self-seeding. Planting closely helps keep tall plants from flopping over and hides things like brown lower leaves on plants like asters.

If you need an excuse to buy more plants, here it is:

Look carefully at nature and you will notice that bare ground doesn’t last very long before something starts to grow there. At construction sites, vacant lots, or areas burned by wildfire, it typically takes only a matter of weeks before plants colonize these sites.

The same laws apply to your garden, which is part of nature too.

Yet, all too often, plants are spaced out by a couple feet of wood mulch or, worse, bare soil! If you don’t cover bare ground (mulch counts as bare ground to nature) with a plant, nature will do it for you, and more often than not, this will be done by a weedy non-native, or invasive, species.

Mulch can work temporarily (such as during the first-year establishment phase of a garden), but long-term, it requires yearly maintenance, disrupts wildlife habitat (especially for ground-nesting bees), and will eventually be covered in weeds as it decomposes.

Plus, who wants to look at a sea of brown (or worse, red or black) wood mulch? Shouldn’t a garden be visually dominated by plants rather than mulch and bare soil?

Stop fighting nature and start learning from it—cover your soil!

Natural garden designers seek to occupy every growing space before the weeds do by planting with density and diversity. Ideally, you will want to install one plant per square foot (ignore traditional plant spacing recommendations) and choose plants with varying characteristics and growth habits. From groundcovers to mid-height perennials to taller structural plants and even fast-growing biennials, you want to ensure every growing niche is covered with a desirable plant before an undesirable plant takes hold.

A dense planting approach also solves other problems in the garden by ensuring that your garden will look lush and full faster, cram more wildlife value and beauty into the same space, and be more resilient to disturbances like plant deaths or your dog digging a hole in your beds.

It is worth spending more money and time buying or growing more plants upfront to plant densely otherwise you WILL be spending more time, money, and labor later on fighting the endless battle of weeding.

If budgeting for more plants is an issue then plant one small area at a time, purchase smaller sized plants or learn to winter sow.

Boost your native plant gardening knowledge by joining our monthly newsletter: https://inournature.myflodesk.com/emailsignup

06/03/2024

‼️End of Spring Sale‼️

All remaining gallon pots are marked down from $12 to $9! See the list of available plants and send us a message to place an order and arrange pickup.

We are starting to pot up plants that we sowed this winter and we need more room! A lot of seeds had high germination rates, which is really awesome, but we need to make some space for them. For example, we ended up with 141 baby Northern Spicebushes! They are local ecotype - Frederick and Carroll County ecotypes available. We’ll offer these for sale in the next couple weeks. They’ll still be pretty small and in a quart pot for $8. A good deal if you’re willing to baby them until they are larger! The longer a nursery grows them, the more they will cost.

06/01/2024

Spotted at a local garden center… save the pollinators with invasive butterfly bush?! 🤦🏻‍♀️

This is why it’s so important to keep learning! As natives become more popular traditional nurseries and garden centers are going to catch on. But they won’t spend the time to learn about them, they’re just worried about the money to be made. Even some native nurseries aren’t selling the best options (cultivars, natives that aren’t actually native to our area, and plants sourced from who-knows-where).

Keep learning and you’ll find that seed-grown, straight species and local ecotypes are the best option.

05/29/2024

05/27/2024

Rare plants keep getting rarer, and some are going extinct. With all the threats they’re facing, shouldn’t we be growing and planting them in the wild? This question comes up often, especially from customers at our Garden Shops. Though simply planting more rare plants to increase their numbers seems like common sense, our botanists say that would actually create more risks for rare plants.

Risks include choosing unsuitable habitat for the reintroduced plants, genetic mixing among the introduced and wild populations that potentially weakens one or both, the introduction of disease, and the possibility that even a native rare species may become invasive in its new location. And the success rate for reintroducing rare plants is low, as many rare species got this way because they cannot adapt quickly to new environments. Bottom line: It's better to conserve existing populations than to attempt creating new ones.

Photo: Plymouth rose-gentian (Sabatia kennedyana), © Bruce Patterson. This plant is at risk throughout its range.

05/26/2024

In Maryland the Plantain-leaved Sedge (Carex plantaginea) is a rare plant that is found on the Allegheny Plateau (Garrett and Allegany Counties). The Natural Heritage Program gives it an S1? rank, stating that more surveys need to be done to know its true status. There are wild populations in Montgomery County, but these occurrences are considered non-native by the Natural Heritage Program.

Plantain-leaved Sedge has broad leaves that can be up to 25mm wide, but the clinching characteristic is that the leaves appear pleated. No other wide-leaved sedge has "pleated" leaves in Maryland. The MUCH MORE COMMON Broad-leaved Sedge (Carex platyphylla), which is found across the western shore, has wide leaves, but they are never pleated. Carex platyphylla often has a glaucous sheen that Plantain-leaved Sedge lacks.

We don't typically talk about cultivated material, but both of these broad-leaved sedges are available from a large variety of nurseries. If you live east of the Allegheny Plateau and you are considering using these plants in cultivation, Carex platyphylla is your best choice if you going planting native.

Photo of Plantain-leaved Sedge by Boyer & McDowell: Garrett County, MD.

05/25/2024

We’re all set up at the Thurmont Farmer’s Market! Come see us, we’re here until 12!

Thurmont Community Park
19 Frederick Rd Thurmont

05/20/2024

🐝 It’s World Bee Day! 🐝

Check the comments for a link to learn more about native bees and another for a field guide to Maryland’s bees!

05/20/2024

How is climate change affecting native plants? Some plant species will adapt to climate change and some plant populations will migrate to new areas by seed dispersal. Some species may go locally extinct. Here we explore the possible changes to plant populations as the climate warms.