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.

3 Impossible Sites, 3 Native Plant Gardens

Through some kind of perverse tenacity, I tend to gravitate towards impossible sites for planting native plant habitat gardens. But it’s more than willful single-mindedness: I think these are the sites that we desperately need to figure out, especially as urbanization and climate change create difficult conditions everywhere.

My first impossible site was at Harbourfront, on Toronto’s lakeshore, where I was invited, in the early 2000s, to create a garden as part of their Artists Gardens program. I was offered three raised beds, in a building site in a high pedestrian traffic area, in a wind-tunnel, with no water access other than the marina’s murky waters. The soil in the beds was about 6 inches deep, if that.

The site at Harbourfront where I was invited to create a garden, as part of the Artists Gardens series.

I planted a native plant meadow, and despite the challenges, it flourished. I also planted a bed of heritage vegetables and invited people to harvest seeds and food. Weirdly, I discovered that when people are explicitly invited to take things, they rarely do!

The raised bed meadow at my Harbourfront Artists Garden.

My second impossible site was the Portland Place Pollinator Patch, on a busy street in downtown Toronto, surrounded by condos.

The site of the Portland Place Pollinator Patch prior to planting.

We planted a native plant pollinator garden that suffers from every problem imaginable: Salt inundation from the sidewalk in winter. Dogs digging, urinating and defecating, despite the “no dogs please” signage. Soil that has more in common with concrete than with a growing medium. No source of water. Wind tunnel effects from the high buildings. Mulch that won’t stay put in the wind. Late-night stomping from partiers. And yet, many of the native plants have flourished.

The Portland Place Pollinator Patch in its first year of planting.

My third impossible site is a public boulevard in the west end of Toronto that is City-owned but totally unmaintained. In a sea of pernicious weeds and black locust tree volunteers, I have planted three beds for my Sedges Instead project. Digging a trowel into this compacted “soil” gave me the worst blister I’ve ever had.

And yet the native plants, mainly sedges, interspersed with some native pollinator plants, are thriving, thanks to their inherent toughness and the watering that neighbours across the street are kind enough to do.

One of the Sedges Instead beds.

I’m beginning to wonder if any site is truly impossible!

Native Plant Books by Indigenous Knowledge-Keepers

For most of the 30 years that I’ve been writing books about native plant gardening, I’ve participated in the settler erasure of Indigenous knowledge by neither engaging with nor acknowledging the millennia of wisdom held by Inidgenous communities and knowledge keepers.

In the past few years, I’ve been learning from Indigenous writers’ books and from Indigenous earth-workers. The following are just a few of the books I’ve been learning from:

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: I am always reading this book! I think I’m on my fourth session with it…The subtitle opens up so much: “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” Weaving stories and science, grounded in love, this book celebrates reciprocity and deep, respectful relationship with the earth and all the beings with whom we share this home.

Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask, edited by Wendy Makoons Geniusz

Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask, edited by Wendy Makoons Geniusz: Written by the editor’s late mother, this book shares Anishinaabe teachings about plants, not as individual “specimens” but as woven in a richy animate fabric. Full of stories, cultural teachings, information about medicines, and with a section of recipes, this is a book to return to over and over.

Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant Use, by Christi Belcourt

Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant Use, by Christi Belcourt: Honouring the personality and spirit of each plant, in this gorgeous full-colour book artist Christ Belcourt explores the 27 plants in her painting Medicines to Help Us, sharing traditional Métis medicinal knowledge and the healing power of these wild plants. The book includes an essay by Elder Rose Richardson.

Community Help

One of the most gratifying things about my Sedges Instead project is the way that neighbours have become involved.

Baillie, who first told me about this boulevard and how perfect it would be for Sedges Instead, offered me the use of her outdoor tap, about 100 feet away. Lugging watering cans takes some time, but I’m grateful, as are the young seedlings.

Florinda, who lives right across the street from the Sedges Instead project and who has a gorgeous flower garden, drags her hose to the sidewalk whenever she sees me, and together we shower the sedge beds from across the street—causing a few people in cars to wonder why it’s “raining” as they pass.

Another fellow came over with a packet of Heavenly Blue Morning Glory seeds and planted them in a concrete planter on the wall.

Mike, who lives a block away, was curious about who to speak with at the City so he could do something similar.

Sahar, who just moved into a house on the street, would like to adopt a section of the boulevard for vegetable growing.

I’m hopeful that by next year, this neglected boulevard will be full of people tending public plantings!

The boulevard in May, prior to creating the Sedges Instead beds.