Get Growing Goldenrod!

A borchure I co-wrote with Ryan Godfrey has just been published by the City of Toronto. The subject is goldenrod, and we’re encouraging people to rethink these wonderful plants. Along with photographs, we provide cultivation details for many goldenrod species for any garden conditions: dry sun, dry shade, rain gardens, wet spots, balcony pots, community gardens.

We wrote it because there’s a lot of misinformation out there about goldenrod. Too many people think it aggravates hay fever when ragweed, not goldenrod, is the culprit. Or they think that all species of goldenrod will “take over” the garden, when it’s only a few of the most common species (Canada goldenrod, tall goldenrod and giant goldenrod) that are prolific spreaders. Some goldenrods, in fact, are rare in the wild and others are quite compact and “tidy.”

Goldenrod needs a publicity agent, and I’m volunteering for the team.

There is simply no other plant known to support as many different species of pollinating insects as goldenrod! Entomologist Douglas Tallamy puts the number at 125 species of moths and caterpillars that are specialist feeders on goldenrod leaves. Sam Droge and Jarrod Fowler enumerate 39 species of native bees that have specialist relationsips with goldenrod pollen. And that’s not including the many, many generalist feeders on goldenrod nectar!

The late summer and fall blooms make goldenrod of crucial importance for monarch butterflies fueling for their migration and for bees (e.g., bumblebees provisioning the developing queen brood and as food for new queens preparing for hibernation).

And let’s not forget the brilliant blast of yellow, so welcome as the gardening season is waning.

For too long, goldenrod has been a victim of conventional gardening ideas that favour the “exotic” over the available! So let’s start welcoming this beauty into our managed landscapes.

Evolution of the Front Garden

I was devastated when the huge ash tree in the front yard succumbed to emerald ash borer and was cut down by the city.

But this was an opportunity to totally redo the garden!

We planted a red oak and dozens of sun-loving native meadow plants. Below is a photo of the new garden on planting day, May 2018.

Planting day, May 28, 2018

Here it is, a year later, August 2019.

The native meadow plants have flourished with very little maintenance and almost no supplementary watering. Below, the front garden at the beginning of its third growing season, May 2020.

And here it is, flourishing in late summer of its third growing season, August 2020.

Pre-Planting Joy

Is there anything better than the feeling you get when the beds are all prepared and ready for planting?

Everything feels full of opportunity and promise. And weed-free!

The long view

I am planting this public boulevard site with native sedges and some native flowers with the hope of inspiring others to tend to such spaces and create habitat.

Sedges Instead

I’ve long wanted to do a demonstration planting of native sedges—gorgeous, totally undervalued plants—as a low-maintenance alternative to lawns. So when an opportunity for a public space arose, I jumped at the chance.

Say hello to a boulevard in the west end of Toronto that is now home to the project Sedges Instead!

I solarized this bed for about a month and a half to suppress the abundant weed crop prior to planting.

The first small bed has now been planted with awl-fruited sedges (Carex stipata). Thank you to Lara Mrosovsky (of Miinikaan Innovation & Design) and Ryan Godfrey (of World Wildlife Fund—Canada) for rescuing these plants and passing them along.

Seeing the awl-fruited sedges sway in the wind, with their graceful blades, is a delight.

Awl-fruited sedge in the small, unsolarized bed to which I added new soil.

A bigger bed is being solarized in preparation for a mid-summer planting of many more great sedges and native pollinator plants!

The beds will be a “seed orchard” and the seeds will be collected for distribution to community projects and growers in order to propagate more sedges and make them available for plantings. Not only are sedges rare in gardens, but they’re also rare in the nursery trade. This project is a small part of trying to encourage the growing of sedges! Especially if you’re looking for an incredibly low-maintenance and ecologically valuable alternative to lawns.

(Many thanks to WWF-Canada and the Pollinator Partnership for supporting this volunteer project.)

The Backyard: Originally and Now

When I first moved in, eleven years ago, the backyard had a few trees (a sugar maple, redbud and chokecherry), a largish area of lawn, and some non-native shrubs and perennials.

April 2010

A July 2010 visit with my niece Deanna and nephew Christopher in my new backyard.

Rather than cut the grass, I grew pumpkins in the lawn.

And I planted native trees and shrubs, lots of them: sycamore, eastern hemlock, eastern white cedar, serviceberry, pussy willow, alternate-leaved dogwood, 3 paw paws, 3 staghorn sumacs, and American chestnut. (A blue beech came later.)

For the next few years, while the trees were growing and there was still lots of sun, I didn’t really start transforming the understory. I grew a lot of vegetables instead, some in raised beds.

As the trees filled in, the yard started to feel like a forest, and years of building the soil with loads of dead leaves ensued that native woodland perennials could thrive.

Here’s the backyard woodland garden in mid-June this year.

The sycamore, which I planted in 2010 (and can be seen in the photo before this one, in the foreground on the right, with light green leaves), is now the 40-foot-tall beauty with a big honking trunk in this photo. I’m amazed by how much it has grown in just 11 years.

Urban Neglect as Opportunity

Cities are full of public spaces that are virtually abandoned, with no one tending to them, caring for them, giving them the love they deserve, taking advantage of the opportunities they offer.

This is the state of the public boulevard where I’ve planted the Sedges Instead beds. I seem to gravitate towards impossible sites!

The soil is basically compacted concrete, low in organic matter, and full of tenacious non-native plants that provide little in the way of habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects.

The surrounding trees, non-native black locusts, spread like mad, sprouting up everywhere with their thorny protection.

I’m determined to demonstrate that this boulevard can be brought into some semblance of ecological health and community value! These places call out for tending.

At this site, I am planting native sedges, along with other flowering native plants, with the hope of inspiring others to tend neglected public spaces.