(Author note on March 15, 2026: The following was originally written and given by myself as a paper handout to attendees while speaking on May 23rd, 2023 in Conway, S.C. on the Coastal Carolina University campus for the third S.C.N.P.S. Grand Strand chapter meeting since its formation. It was an introduction, and impetus of sorts, to some of the ideas and concepts of my written journey through the seasons and more. These articles are linked at the end of this article; more of which is still to come.)
Incorporating Native Plants in the Garden and Landscape
Questions to consider before starting your native garden and plants:
How much space do I have available? What is my purpose in growing natives? What type of soil am I planting into? Is it wet, drained, shade, sun, part sun? What is the habitat and ecosystem of the surrounding land and how will my garden tie into those? What native plants exist on site if any? What native plants do I have available to plant? Are there any external restrictions preventing my native plant goal? Do I want to keep my native garden more like a formal garden or to mimic a natural native landscape? Do I need to remove invasive or non-native plants that could harm my native garden?
Tips for starting a native garden and plant:
If inexperienced, start small, learn your plants as you grow and diversify your plantings and garden.
Many native seeds require conditions that mimic nature’s conditions to help the germination rate. Follow instructions closely.
Any new planting will need some TLC the first year, especially perennials, to become established. With forbs, or herbaceous perennials, started from seed, consider deadheading, or cutting the flowering heads the first year to encourage root growth. While deadheading is not necessary with all types, encouraging strong root growth will help the plants chance of survival and thriving. Regular watering depending on the weather and plant varieties individual needs should be tended to also. As native perennials become more established in the best location that mimics their native growing situation, surprisingly much less care on your part will become needed in years to come unlike many non-natives and ornamentals. Remember that spring is an entire season and some perennials will emerge later than others. Be patient and keep a watchful eye. Take note of spreading rhizome native plants that could slowly take over in an area wanted for something else and keep a buffer to prevent this. This need varies by plant.
Native annuals, or plants that live one season and do not return, can provide a self-seeding base for those infill bare areas between perennials in your native garden. They will need intentional planting the first couple of years to establish the “seed bank” in the surrounding soil. Once they have a foot-hold, pull, transplant, or leave in place to fit your gardens needs and personal preference in years to come.
Native grasses can provide texture and a wildness that mimics succession stages in a native field or open forest canopy situation in the southeast. A natural field left alone will typically see grasses start to become the dominant type of plant in an 80 to 20 percent ratio in some situations, depending on the grasses planted.
Young native shrubs and trees provide the anchor and signs of a mature successional landscape on the east coast. If planted densely, your native grass and forb garden will become shadier mimicking a forest floor over time requiring appropriate native plants that thrive in shade. Ferns, some grasses, and even flowering perennials and annuals can provide this.
Protect your natives from lawn chemicals, herbicides, and pesticides. Many are designed to treat natives as if they are weeds to be killed. If the area around your garden is out of your control to be treated organically, consider creating a buffer zone with plants such as grasses, trees, and shrubs that can survive and protect tender native plants.
Philosophical Musings Over a Native Plant
Imagine having a living clock in the space you inhabit that never needs adjusting to your local geology and surroundings and never fails to communicate, not just the time of your place in the cosmos, but also provides messages that come from mother-nature’s many branching tree limbs. That is just what you can have with a native plant and native garden.
To incorporate native plants into the landscape and garden is to do much more than just plant something for aesthetic beauty for one’s own personal pleasure or preference. The act of planting natives in our modern society is an act and admission in and of itself that we as the human race have taken away something in the past that should not have gone away. It takes courage and humility to admit, understand, and accept this. Native plants and native habitats by their very definition should be common and be something that nature itself has made carefree for us. Whatever the variety of complex reasons have been for the mass alteration in the past of the native landscape, at this moment in time planting a native plant, starting a native garden, or restoring a native landscape, is an act of returning the favor of care mother-nature has provided us as part of mother nature’s purpose of existence.
To plant a native garden is to on some level admit and understand deep down that we as humans do not know all there is to know, why we are here, where we came from, where we are going. Native plants on some level have come to recognize this eternal enigma also. The goal is to thrive and grow together on every level, while standing in awe of this ability, freedom, and situation we did not create.
Native plants and pollinators in their current unaltered existence in the wild co-adapted and learned to thrive on their own without the assistance of human intervention. In a sense, by starting a native garden you are adopting a child that was abandoned, will be nursed back to health, and be set free again to continue down this path it never wanted to leave.
When you contemplate how to take care of your native garden going forward in South Carolina, remember to take heed of the larger lesson seen in the fluid river of the seasons. All seasons appear to be separate, but are in fact one beautiful reaction to something even greater. The blossoming of spring, with its bounty of new and rejuvenated growth becomes the fullness and mass of summer all while secretly preparing for the autumn harvest and its grand tapestry for the senses! Autumn then later introduces the winter calm and stillness holding steadfast against the elements while dreaming and whispering the promise of spring!
May your thoughts and dreams be sweet while planting!
Jason Flynn – May 18, 2023 – Grand Strand Chapter of the South Carolina Native Plant Society Meeting – Conway, SC
Related Articles and Poems by Author:
• SCNPS: Autumn Blooms Deep
• SCNPS: The Winter Setting
• SCNPS: Spring Emerges Urgent
• Coming soon: Summer article
• SCNPS: The Native Seed Bank That Surrounds the Pavement
• SCNPS: Poem: Wisdom of the Acorn
• SCNPS: Poem: Emergence
• SCNPS: Poem: Heat Within
• SCNPS: Poem: Reasoning Winter
