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Native Pollinator Plants

June 15, 2018

Pollinator Week is June 18 to 24! Leading up to and throughout the week, we’ll be sharing posts about how you can support the pollinators that help our gardens grow! To learn more, visit www.pollinator.org/pollinator-week.

How can you support our natural heritage and support our neighborhood pollinators? By including native plants in your pollinator gardens! A plant is considered “native” if it was here prior to European settlement of North America. These are naturally occurring species that were not introduced to the land by humans either intentionally or accidentally.

Native Plants Benefits

When you use native plants in our garden, you help sustain our native pollinators! Native plants provide food and shelter to our native wildlife, contributing to the health of our ecosystem. Because they are already adapted to our regional conditions, they may require less maintenance. This means you may use fewer pesticides in your garden.

Middle Tennessee Natives

Middle Tennessee is made up of two physiographic provinces: Central Basin and Highland Rim. Each province has unique conditions. For example: Rutherford County is in the Central Basin. Our soil is alkaline while Warren County has acidic soil in the Highland Rim. It’s important to keep your garden’s characteristics in mind when picking out plants. Here are some that are native to our Middle Tennessee area:

Thimbleweed
Wild columbine
Wild ginger
Butterfly weed
Swamp milkweed
Bushy aster
Tall bellflower
Coreopsis
Joe-Pye weed
Wild geranium
Alumroot
Dwarf crested iris
Cardinal flower
Great blue lobelia
Virginia bluebells
Bergamot
Prickly pear
Appalachian pachysandra
Wild phlox
Beard-tongue
Poke weed

Grasses:

Big bluestem
Bushy beardgrass
River cane
Hop sedge
River oats
Creeping spikerush
Virginia wildrye
Soft rush
Rice cutgrass
Switchgrass
Little bluestem
Three-square bulrush
Green bulrush
Woolgrass
Softstem bulrush
Indiangrass
Eastern gammagrass

Shrubs

Red buckeye
Hazel alder
False indigobush
Pawpaw
American beautyberry
Sweetshrub
Silky dogwood
American witch hazel
Oakleaf hydrangea
Winterberry
Virginia sweetspire
Mountain laurel
Spicebush
Chickasaw plum
Piedmont azalea
Pinxterbloom azalea
Fragrant sumac
Elderberry
Possumhaw viburnum

Shrubs

Red maple
Sugar maple
Serviceberry
River birch
Pecan
Sugarberry
Redbud
Flowering dogwood
American beech
Honeylocust
Black walnut
Eastern red cedar
Sweetgum
Tuliptree
Sweetbay
Blackgum
Sourwood
Loblolly pine
Virginia pine
Sycamore
Black cherry
White oak
Swamp chestnut oak
Northern red oak
Black oak
Black willow
Sassafras
Bald cypress
Eastern hemlock

As you plant them in your garden, use native plants that occur naturally together. Do not dig up plants from the wild to place in your garden. Protect our natural habitat and only get your native plants from responsible nurseries. All our suppliers take great care of the native plants that they provide Martin’s Home & Garden with!

 

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