Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia
Over 40 Years of Growing Gardens and Gardeners
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This attractive native is often found in bogs, swamps, and moist thickets. Although edible, the fruits’ acerbic taste often causes choking—hence the common name. However, its red coloring and healthy nutrients make it useful in food processing.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Delicate, arching, semi-evergreen leaves define this native sedge found in much of the Mid-Atlantic Region. In dry shade where lawn maintenance is a challenge, this substitute never needs mowing.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Common in woodlands throughout the Mid-Atlantic, this native provides seasonal interest from early spring blossoms through vivid fall color. Edible fruit is ready for picking early summer, but there will be competition with 58 wildlife and 35 bird species that use this tree.
Tried and True Native Plant Selection for the Mid-Atlantic
Southern Lady Fern typically grows in wooded ravines, moist woods, and floodplains from southern New England to the southern United States. This native is common throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region, except for northern/northeastern Pennsylvania. Delicate and graceful, feathery fronds give rise to its name.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
The creeping habit of Moss Phlox can form a flower carpet as breathtaking in a residential rock garden or sprawling over rock walls as on the mountain slopes and open woodlands of its natural Mid-Atlantic habitat. (In NoVA, it's native to Fairfax County.)
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Nothing sings spring like drifts of pink and blue Mertensia virginica carpeting the woodlands. Buds, coiled like scorpions' tails, open into nodding, bell-shaped flowers. Enjoy these ephemerals, which the Virginia Native Plant Society named Wildflower of the Year in 1989, before they fade away.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This ornamental shrub, which is common throughout most of the Mid-Atlantic Region, produces small, fragrant yellow flowers that cluster at the nodes of bare stems before leaves appear in early spring. The Virginia Native Plant Society named Spicebush as Wildflower of the Year in 2006.
Tried and True Native Plant Selection for the Mid-Atlantic
Native mostly in the northern Mid-Atlantic Region, Ostrich Fern is indigenous in only four areas in Virginia, including along the Potomac River in Arlington and Fairfax counties. It requires a large landscape to show off its long, finely dissected fronds, suggestive of ostrich plumes.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This beautiful, tall woodland grass grows in upright clumps and produces bamboo-like leaves that are held perpendicular at intervals on smooth, round culms (stems). Panicles stand above the foliage with drooping, eye-catching, oat-like spikelets that rustle and shimmer in the breeze.
Tried and True Native Plant Selection for the Mid-Atlantic
Sensitive fern, with deeply lobed, chartreuse sterile fronds, is an excellent ground cover for low moist garden areas. It grows best sheltered from prevailing winds in soil that does not dry out. Fertile fronds are bead-like, hence its other common name.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Noted for beautiful, exfoliating bark and multiple trunks, River Birch is an excellent food source for wildlife, supporting hundreds of species of lepidopterans and songbirds. It is commonly found in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain of the Mid-Atlantic Region from Pennsylvania to Virginia.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Summer sweet and spicy is the pleasant fragrance of this pollinator magnet that naturalizes readily in shady, damp places as well as coastal landscapes. Although not native to NoVA (it is common in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain), it grows well in cultivation here.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This slow-growing, but long-lived, large tree is indigenous to river banks and flood plains and makes an attractive ornamental specimen for large landscapes with good fall color, distinctive exfoliating bark, and edible nuts. It also supports a variety of wildlife.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Once the dominant species of the North American tallgrass prairie, this native warm-season grass is noted for the open, airy appearance of its seed heads and the multi-season interest of its foliage. Many ornamental cultivars are available.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This native tree of northeastern and north central North America can be long-lived; some Canadian specimens could be over 1,000 years old. The common name, “tree of life,” refers to the medicinal properties of the bark and foliage, which cured scurvy.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
This graceful grass naturally grows in dry woodlands and barrens mostly north of the Mason-Dixon Line. It is the most shade-tolerant native grass, and its distinctive flowering and seed heads are a lovely ornamental feature, showing especially well when backlit.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
While primarily native to several southeastern states, this trouble-free shrub, also known as Carolina Allspice, grows well in NoVA. It delights the senses with showy and fragrant flowers when planted as a specimen or a screening hedge near a front door or patio.
The Glencarlyn Library Community Garden coordinators have created a new series of short videos about locally invasive plants and native alternatives. This series looks at individual invasive plants, discussing how to remove them and suggesting native plants to consider as replacements. This month's post is on Liriope (Liriope spicata).
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Though native to parts of the Mid-Atlantic Region (but not NoVA), Sourwood is more common in the South, including Virginia’s southern half. In residential landscapes, this decorative tree offers year-round appeal: lily-of-the valley-like flowers, brilliant fall foliage, persistent fruit capsules, and reddish twigs.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Found in fields and forests and in dry soils and wet, this native vine is widely distributed in Virginia. It can be a vigorous spreader, but its attractive foliage and low maintenance can make it a feasible option for difficult-to-grow places.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Native to the eastern United States, Spotted Beebalm inhabits dry prairies and sandy areas. This showy plant with tubular flowers, colorful bracts, and a stacked, whorled appearance provides interesting form and texture to gardens and attracts a variety of pollinators and beneficial insects.
The Glencarlyn Library Community Garden coordinators have created a new series of short videos about locally invasive plants and native alternatives. This series looks at individual invasive plants, discussing how to remove them and suggesting native plants to consider as replacements. This month's post is on Chinese Silver Grass (Miscanthus sinensis).
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Golden sprays of flowers brighten gardens and natural habitats across the Mid-Atlantic Region from late summer to frost, supporting 115 species of pollinators—moths, butterflies, native bees... The cultivar ‘Fireworks’ is more compact, easier to contain, and flowers more vigorously than the species.
Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic
Common throughout the Mid-Atlantic, this elegant shrub grows mainly in thickets and woods. The oval crowns of young plants often become, with age, irregular with drooping lower branches. Creamy white flowers give way to pink berry-like fruits (drupes), edible when ripened to blue-black.
