Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia
Over 40 Years of Growing Gardens and Gardeners
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Although Hairy Alumroot’s native habitat in Virginia is mostly in the southwestern mountains (it is not native to NoVA), its five-inch wide, semi-evergreen leaves and late-season flower plumes make it a species worthy of consideration for a woodland garden.
Featured Glossary word: Villous
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Anise Hyssop inhabits widely scattered areas in the northern United States and Canada. Though indigenous to only a few Pennsylvania counties, in the Mid-Atlantic it grows easily in well-drained soil. Its pretty flower spikes, which attract myriad pollinators [WATCH A NEW VIDEO] all summer, add a vertical layer to the garden; its leaves and seeds add an anise flavor to teas, salads and baked goods.
Featured Glossary word: Verticillaster
The Glencarlyn Library Community Garden coordinators have recently created a new series of short videos highlighting the beauty of native plants. We will be sharing these videos on our website every month as well as glossary words that go along with each month's topic. This month's focus is on ferns, sedges, and grasses.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Eastern Prickly-pear cactus is found scattered from Massachusetts south to Florida and west to Montana and New Mexico. Like many of its desert relatives, it is edible, but handle with care!
Featured Glossary words: Glochid, Spine New in 2022!
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This shorter Joe-pye-weed has beautiful pink-headed stems that wave in the summer breeze and provide landing platforms attractive to butterflies and other insect pollinators.
Featured Glossary word: Pappus
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Black Cherry, the largest of our native cherry trees, grows in a variety of habitats through much of the Mid-Atlantic Region and is noted for its exceptional support of wildlife.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This prized garden plant with attractive gray-green foliage produces beautiful racemes of indigo blue flowers followed by blue-black seed pods (legumes).
Featured Glossary word: Dehisce
New in 2022!
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Despite being one of the hardest of native* woods, Hop-hornbeam is undesirable in commercial forests. It provides interest as an ornamental though, with fluted trunk, exfoliating bark, and drooping clusters of sac- like pods that resemble the fruit of hops, hence its common name.
Featured Glossary word: Strobilus
The Glencarlyn Library Community Garden coordinators have recently created a new series of short videos highlighting the beauty of native plants. We will be sharing these videos on our website every month as well as glossary words that go along with each month's topic. This month's focus is on native shrubs with outstanding flowers.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
The flowers of this native may be unassuming, but their nectar enticed the greatest number and diversity of pollinators out of 86 native species and nativars monitored by Penn State Extension and Master Gardeners over a 3-year period. Showy, silvery bracts accent the flower clusters and the foliage exudes a strong minty aroma when crushed.
Featured Glossary word: Canescent
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Found naturally in meadows, floodplains, and swamps (and sometimes called swamp vervain), this native blooms throughout the summer and into autumn, longer than most other perennials. Historically thought to be a cure for many ailments, it is still used for medicinal purposes today.
Featured Glossary word: Perennial
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
The wild native wisteria is a climbing vine with chains of richly colored, sweetly fragrant flowers, although not as dramatic or as rampant as its Asian cousins. This member of the Pea family is native to wet forests and stream banks of the southeastern United States.
Featured Glossary word: Twine
June is all about pollinators and how gardeners like you can help revive their declining populations. Three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35% of the world’s food crops depend on pollinators to reproduce. 96% of North American land birds rely on butterfly and moth caterpillars to rear their youn
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Tall and upright, Gayfeather provides nice vertical form in a garden. Its purplish, feathery flower spikes contrast well with yellow-flowered, mound-forming plants. Natural populations are widely scattered in the Mid-Atlantic Region.
Featured Glossary word: Sessile New in 2022!
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This lovely ground cover, the most widespread native member of the Sedum family in eastern North America, favors rocky banks, cliffs, and woods. Its tiny white star-like flowers with five pointed petals rise in showy clusters above succulent foliage in the spring.
Featured Glossary word: Node New in 2022!
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
One of North America’s largest native ferns is frequent to common in moist woods through much of the Mid-Atlantic Region. Previously known as Osmunda regalis (as well as Osmunda regalis L. var. spectabilis), its unique fronds are cut into rounded leaflets. Another common name “flowering fern” refers to its tassel-like fertile clusters.
Featured Glossary word: Sporangium
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
In the Mid-Atlantic Region, this attractive wildflower is most common in Pennsylvania. In Virginia its occurrence is spotty, although it is native to Fairfax County. At home in moist woods and along stream banks, this Phlox family member features leaflets arranged like rungs on a ladder (the ladder dreamt of by Jacob in the Bible story), thus the common name.
Featured Glossary word: Pedicel
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Indigenous to wooded slopes and floodplain forests, this diminutive iris forms a lovely carpet in various shades of purple when it flowers in spring. Its colorful blooms and easy culture make it a valuable addition to a woodland garden.
Featured Glossary word: Crest
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Native to rocky or open woods, stream banks, and fields and favoring dappled sun, this Aster family member delights with charming composite flowers for three weeks from April to early May. It can naturalize to create colonies where its villous basal rosettes form a dense, year-round carpet in naturalistic gardens, flower borders, or rock gardens.
Featured Glossary word: Rosette
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Commonly found in the forest understory or as a landscape ornamental, this high wildlife value native with four-season interest is far from ordinary. This beauty serves as North Carolina state flower and Missouri state tree. In Virginia, it is both official floral and arboreal emblems. The Virginia Native Plant Society honored Flowering Dogwood as Wildflower of the Year in 2018.
Featured Glossary word: Petaloid bract
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Wild Azalea is native to moist woods, swamp margins, and stream banks throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region where it thrives in dappled sunlight or high open shade. This shrub’s showy flowers, which bloom just before or as the leaves emerge, make it a great substitute for overused non-native and hybrid azaleas or other traditional spring-flowering species.
Featured Glossary word: Anther
Two years in as Master Gardeners, we are happy to report that the Small Trees Make Big Canopies Program has also successfully transitioned to a permanent program of VCE/Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Moist woods and stream banks are home to this charming wildflower that is less common to absent in the eastern portions of the Mid-Atlantic Region and is indigenous in NoVA only in Fairfax County. It looks as wonderful as a ground cover in shady locations as it does in a container on a patio or balcony.
Featured Glossary word: Stamen
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
The most ornamental of the woodland sedges, this species, sometimes referred to as Seersucker Sedge, is generally found in rich mountain woodlands. In the garden it can fill many roles, substituting for popular non-native plants and even tolerating difficult dry shaded sites.
Featured Glossary word: Spike
