Less Lawn More Life Challenges

We finished our Less Lawn More Life challenge space, just a day or so ago, but it has only made a small dent in our south knotweed expanse. It is a start though! The Week 5 Challenge: Identify and Remove Non-native Invasive Species is our starting point with the ongoing fight with the knotweed, which here involved lots of shoot and rhizome removal. Earlier we planted a Betula nigra and Hamamelis virginiana, a river birch and witch hazel respectively which turned out to be the Week 4 Challenge of planting a tree or shrub. The river birch is a keystone tree for Atlantic Highlands, our Level II ecoregion, and the Hamamelis virginiana is a host to over 60 moths and butterflies. This tree and shrub layer is a backdrop for our native plant bed inspired by the Less Lawn More Life challenge. 

The area we planted to the north of the river birch is around 70 square feet and not so much an oval as a trapezoid with rounded corners. We planted eleven plugs from The Pollen Nation or Bagley Pond Perennials and three seedlings that Renee started from seeds.

• 3 New England aster, symphyotrichum novae-angliae, a late blooming nectar source into the fall. 
• 3 sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale, another fall blooming perennial native. 
• 3 short toothed mountain mint, Pycnanthemum muticum, another pollinator favorite, blooming starting in July with vigorous spreading characteristics and deer resistance. 
• 2 golden alexander, Zizia aurea, a spring blooming shorter perennial, host plant to Black Swallowtails.
• 3 basket flower, Centaura americana, an annual native to the American southwest and Mexico that Renee started from seeds. While the new perennials "sleep" or "creep," the basket flowers will show off and appeal to pollinators. 

 

Planting Some Natives

Cupplant -- Silphium perfoliatum

While we are working on a list of possible plants for the area that we have chosen for the Less Lawn More Life challenge and a plan for planting them, we finally had a nice day today and chose to work somewhere else. Renee has some plugs with cupplant seedlings that are getting root bound and they will be too tall when they mature for the area we are planning. So, we switched gears and chose another location in what we are calling the knotweed expanse that extends all along the south boundary of our property. 

We chose an area that is a little over ten feet by ten feet and just beyond a barely established trail that weaves along the property boundary to plant three cupplants, Silphium perfolatum. First we dug up any of the knotweed shoots that had appeared here. We also found several live rhizomes and removed them. They and the shoots are now spread along the edge of our asphalt driveway to bake in the sun for a couple of months.  Then we planted the three plugs approximately two to three feet apart. In the photo, the small plugs are hard to see; clicking on the photo will enlarge it. One is to the right, appearing below the watering can. One is to the left, below the watering can. The third is farther to the left, along with a goldenrod that has popped up on its own. 

Cupplant, Silphium perfoliatum, is a tall and aggressive plant that likes moisture, making it a good choice for the back of beds like this one here in the knotweed expanse. While it may not bloom or reach its full height for the first year or two, upon maturity it will bloom with yellow flowers from mid-summer attracting pollinators of all kinds. Cupplants get their name from the way their leaves project directly from the square stem forming a cup that holds water after rain. It has a reputation for, in addition to being a pollinator magnet, supporting birds by providing food, water, and shelter. Goldfinches are known to relish the seeds of the cupplant. While it is found naturally in counties south and north of us in eastern Pennsylvania, it is not native to our local ecoregion. That said, with its aggressive nature, we are hoping it will outcompete the return of the knotweed, and we appreciate the support it will provide to pollinators and birds. 

Guidelines and More First Steps

In our last post I mentioned that we had joined the Less Lawn More Life challenge and had chosen a site.  This photo shows a portion of former knotweed expanse that will be our location for this challenge. 

As part of the Week 3 Challenge, Wild Ones shared this webinar: Native Plants Planted Right. I took some notes broken into three parts, similar to Loris Damerow's presentation itself, on  planning, prepping, and planting, and I will outline them below. 

Today, I viewed a pair of videos featuring Doug Tallamy on a YouTube channel that focused on planning and planting native plants in the home garden. This one was filmed at the Mt. Cuba Center. This one was filmed at the University of Delaware Botanic Garden. Each of them gave an overview of his rationale for individuals becoming conservationists in their home landscape as well as some detailed information on how to do so.  

With these guidelines, I feel a bit better prepared to tackle the Week 3 Challenge (Plant Some Natives) in an informed manner rather than just planting some natives willy nilly. My next post should be the plan and maybe some progress reports. 

Plan:

• Draw or sketch a plan to scale
• Consider the needs of plants: soil, light, moisture levels
• Plan for layers and drifts (odd numbers, three or five)
• Include a variety of bloom times
• Incorporate keystone and host plants

Prep:

• Lasagna method: Cardboard and chips/mulch (easy but slow)
• Dig up sod (fast but harder)
• Specific to us: knotweed shoot and rhizome removal 

Plant: 

• Don't overwork the soil
• Consider the plant's size when grown for placement
• Dig wide, but shallow hole
• Water deeply: first year once or twice a week
• Mulch lightly 2" or 3" inches away from stem
• Label each plant: physical label, sketch, and/or spreadsheet 

Post Planting:

• Weed early and often
• Observe over time: notes or journal
• Is every plant labeled?
• Remember "sleep, creep, leap" for the first three years

Knotweed and Less Lawn Updates

 

The knotweed, whether it is Japanese knotweed, Fallopia Japanica, or the hybrid discussed in Joan Jubela's article mentioned earlier, is unrelenting. Elimination has not and will not be achieved this year (ever?). We have to be satisfied with some combination of controlling, managing, or reducing the spread of the zombie-like plant for now.  I did come across a helpful video for controlling invasive knotweed. Yes, it is from a commercial company, but it pulls together ideas that are supported by other recognized and legitimate sources. This video supports the steps we are taking, but we still need to try to not be demoralized by the numbers of shoots emerging from what had appeared as a knotweed cemetery earlier this spring. 

The knotweed appears most unfazed by the past two year's treatment trying to eliminate it in the wet areas over the property line and on the borders of the "expanse" on our property. As we are not prepared to use herbicides ourselves, we may need to contact the service we used in 2023 and 2024. 

We are making some headway on the area that I refer to as the "knotweed expanse" most of which is seen in the background of the photo of the river birch, Betula nigra, taken after it had started to leaf out below. 

While not that attractive, we are fencing or caging the woody plants as we go to protect them from browsing by the deer or other critters while the plants are still young and susceptible. While investigating about a week or so ago, we found an oak seedling that was growing along the property line between the river birch and the springhouse overflow bog. I crafted a cloche to protect it from the browsers, the edge of which can be seen in this photo:

We also planted and caged the witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, that we had purchased at Edge of the Woods. We planted it just to the east and fairly close to the birch tree. As they mature, we hope their roots will intertwine and cooperate rather than compete for water while these two plants provide layers between canopy and understory. The witch hazel is native and pollinator friendly, flowering in the fall. 

Before the storms at the end of last week, we also planted the last two purchases from Edge of the Woods, the Virginia bluebells, Mertensia virginica. Renee took the lead with these, planting them in the area under our red oak. These pretty spring ephemerals are native and should thrive in this area. This area under the tree has been lawn, but our plan is to work towards this to be an area to shrink the lawn and be friendlier to caterpillars. Leaves that we left last fall under sticks never blew away. Spring ephemerals, leaf litter, and perhaps a large rock or tree branch will provide better pupation sites than lawn would.

We have joined the Less Lawn More Life challenge and the week two challenge was to choose a site for the challenge. We chose an area between where we planted the river birch and witch hazel and the driveway.  This site is in a direct line of sight from our three-season room seen in the photo above and will be a focus area for the challenge as we move forward with other plantings and locations. We have a number of seedlings to plant, and we are approaching the last frost date. Our next post will discuss planning and planting. 

Stopping the Spread?

 

In an earlier post, I suggested that we might plant the three spicebush, Lindera benzoin, seedlings or starts in the south knotweed expanse, near the new river birch. Instead we chose to put them in the area between the woods and our back yard native garden and lawn to the west of our house. This area has been infiltrated by the knotweed, but apparently fairly recently without totally taking it over. 

It is a wet area that should be a good location for the spicebush. Earlier this week, my wife dug out a number of knotweed shoots that had popped up, and on Wednesday we planted the three seedlings. The mature spicebush are thought to be fairly unattractive to deer, but since they are so small we built small cages for them from the end of a roll of coated wire fencing. We planted them about six feet apart in a wide "V" shape. This area already has a number of prolific ostrich ferns, Matteucci struthiopteris.

We are hoping that the spicebush grow successfully and quickly in order to combine with the ferns to counter the return of the knotweed. Both the spicebush and the ferns prefer the kind of partly shady and wet environment found in this location. The spicebush is a pretty multi-season shrub with flowers in the spring, vibrant yellow fall leaves, and red berries (or drupes) on the female plants if a male plant is nearby to pollinate. We won't know for a while if we have both male and female plants, but we can always plant additional ones if these three are only one sex. 

In addition to the berries being attractive to birds, Lindera benzoin is the host plant to the spicebush swallowtail butterfly, Papilio troilus. So, while not a keystone plant, the spicebush is a specialist host plant. Diving into iNaturalist, Papilio troilus have been observed nearby, so if these young spicebush thrive, we will be helping these butterflies too. Here is an interesting video about Specialist Host Plants and the bees, butterflies, and moths that need them. 

For this year, our biggest task is not to focus on specialist pollinators, but to revegetate towards managing the knotweed expanse at the southern end of our property. This tray with our order arrived via Fed Ex yesterday from Pollen Nation with 25 plugs. The tray has ten mountain mint, five common sneezeweed, five cutleaf coneflower, and five New England aster. Some of these are keystone plants, and developing a plan or design concept incorporating these along with my wife's seedlings and her ordered plants is our next task.

Small Successes and Dealing With our Biggest Obstacle

I signed us up on the Homegrown National Park map a few days ago, and I plan to continue adding new as well as existing native plantings. As I mentioned in my last post, celebrating small successes helps to keep us from being overwhelmed with our ongoing knotweed issue. 

Here is a photo from just a few days ago of the serviceberry, Amelanchier x grandiflora, that we planted in the fall of 2023. We have taken photos of it in full bloom on May third both this year and last. This is in front of our house, in an area of the turf where we have put down cardboard and then covered it with composted wood chips from our township's maintenance yard. We also have a white snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus, that we planted last year leafing out in this area. This is one of several garden areas or beds that we have started this way amongst or on the edge of the turf yard. This one we are referring to as "the shrub garden," but we also plan to include other plantings here.  

Over in the south knotweed expanse, we installed a cage around the newly planted birch which has been leafing out, to protect it from browsing. Sadly, a fair number of young knotweed shoots have emerged as well. The shoots emerging such as the one in the photo can be dug up to be "properly disposed of" after they dry up in the sun. The ones emerging from large clumps from past years are more worrying. 

Yesterday, I came across an article here about trying to eliminate knotweed and instead resolving to manage it. I think that the author of the PennState Extension article is dealing with a larger expanse, but her article makes me think about a couple of issues. One is the site and why the knotweed thrives there. Just past our property line a mini bog is formed from the overflow from our spring house. This feature of the area needs to stay. Mini bogs and vernal pools are precious features. We might start thinking of other plantings that will compete with the knotweed. The portion of the knotweed expanse on our property is in full sun. Whether we eliminate or only "manage" the knotweed, we will need to be very aware of a plan to "revegetate" the site which is a major point of Joan Jubela's article. Outcompeting the knotweed and planting keystone natives will need to combine as goals as we move forward in this area. 

It's Back, but Two Trees Planted!

 

Birch planted, but it needs a cage!

This week, we planted a second tree, a river birch, Betula nigra, along a band of the Japanese knotweed we are trying to eliminate between the driveway and the south property line. This six foot birch is a "keystone" tree for the Atlantic Highlands, although not really native to the Pocono High Plateau. We planted it here where we will see it from the sunroom and where the runoff from our sump pump and gutters flow across the driveway. We will need to not let this major project for this summer, reclaiming the knotweed infestation, become overwhelming. One approach can be celebrating small steps such as planting this tree, instead of fretting over the size of the task.

While planting the birch, we found several thriving rhizomes and dug them up. The large clumps of stalks and associated roots do appear dead, but some of the younger plants with smaller rhizomes are sprouting as seen in this photo. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see the emerging red pods. Walking around in the field yesterday, we saw many new pods/leaf shoots appearing. Again, it will be a challenge to keep from becoming overwhelmed or demoralized. Focus on the new tree, which needs a cage to protect it from browsing. That may be our next small step!

The first tree, really a pair of twigs, that we planted a couple of weeks ago is surrounded by a cage to protect it. The twigs are red oak, Quercus rubra, seedlings growing together that we transplanted from right next to our house's foundation. Quercus rubra is also a keystone tree and clearly native to the Pocono High Plateau. We have several other oak seedlings growing next to another section of the foundation to transplant out to this back section of the knotweed fields. Since the monetary cost of transplanting these is low, we may transplant some on the far side of the property line. 

Earlier this week, we journeyed to Edge of the Woods,  a relatively close native plant nursery. We purchased the two Virginia bluebells, Mertensia virginica, to plant under the majestic oak at the south end of our house. Our plan is to allow that area to naturalize with leaf litter and some spring ephemerals there instead of turf. Although much harder to see in the photo, we also picked up three spicebush,  Lindera benzoin, seedlings (basically six inch sticks) and the one gallon pot with a young witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana.  Although we don't have a specific final plan yet, we are thinking that these will be associated or visually layered with the birch. While the spicebush will be somewhat deer tolerant once established, we will need to cage them and the witch hazel while they become established and can be gobbled in a couple of bites. Speaking of caging, I just came across an interesting how-to video on making various kinds of cloches. It is kind of a rabbit hole, but kind of fun too! Celebrating small successes and having fun will be key moving forward!

Our Setting and Ecoregion

 

In considering joining the Homegrown National Parks, a movement restoring habitat and biodiversity by adding native plants and removing invasive ones, we need to know our ecoregion. An ecoregion is an area that shares common ecosystem characteristics. They range from broad regions to more localized regions. The screen shot here is from a map of ecoregions on the website of Wild Ones, another organization working towards a similar goal. In addition to Wild Ones and Homegrown National Park, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (at least for now) has a collection of online maps that break down the different ecoregions into four levels. 

In looking for the most appropriate and productive native plants or the keystone plants, finding an authoritative list based on ecoregion location seems prudent. Our property, as best as I can tell, can be identified as the following, going from broadest type to the most local type:

1. Northern Forest
2. Atlantic Highlands
3. North Central Appalachians
4. Pocono High Plateau

I want to consider our very local setting before joining the Homegrown National Park movement to put "your place" on their Biodiversity Map.  Our house is on a square lot just under .7 acre. We also own an L-shaped  area bordering it to the north and west at just over .7 acre, so combining the two, our "place" is 1.4 acres. In the front, to the east, is a somewhat busy, two-lane road, and on the other three sides are mixed woods owned by a local family corporation. 

Here, to the north, on our property and beyond is a lovely stand of eastern white pine, with some beeches, maples, red oaks, and a couple of younger hemlocks mixed in. This plot of woods contains about a third of our property. Looking at an arial photo from the late 1930s, this part was clear, except what may be the large red oaks along the road. So, my assumption is that although substantial, the eastern white pine stand is no older than around eighty years. 

To the west and beyond our back yard, the woods become more mixed. One red oak, right along our property line, is larger (and apparently older) than the rest. Almost entirely deciduous, these woods include a lot of maples. While the woods extend quite a ways to the west,  our property only extends around 75 feet into them. As seen in the photo here from 2022, the Japanese knotweed had started to spread to the edge between the woods and turf of our back yard. 

Here looking to the south in this photo from the winter of 2023, is another view of the Japanese knotweed infestation extending from our property into the mixed woods surrounding us. While the invasive knotweed here and fairly extensive yard around our house are obstacles, we do have several mature native trees. In the center of this photo one sees a black cherry. Next to the house, we have a large red oak, two red maples, and what I believe to be a black maple (the Yellow Sapsucker certainly likes it better than the others). 

Knowing our setting and ecoregion, we can move forward with  adding our "place" to the HNP Biodiversity Map. On a somewhat more pragmatic level, we can move on with planning and planting on this summer's goal of reclaiming the knotweed field. Knowing the ecoregion, we can be informed and purposeful in choosing native and keystone plants. As spring is somewhat here and we have already started planning, we will be posting with updates! 

Perhaps Our Biggest Obstacle!

 

Southwest Corner of Our Property, March 2025

This photo shows the beginning of our third year of fighting the invasive Japanese knotweed on this end of our property. While we were aware of the issue, it wasn't until 2023, our second summer here, that we started trying to deal with the problem.

We hired Strauser Nature's Helpers to help us. We followed the plan presented by Penn State Extension and suggested by Strauser's expert on knotweed eradication, Robin. In the photo here, one can see where their crew had started cutting all the knotweed to around three feet in late June of 2023. If it is not cut then, it will be too high (10+ feet) to spray later at the appropriate time. Then in September, between flowering and the first hard frost, they returned and sprayed with an herbicide. It is at that time that the leaves are pulling nutrients into the rhizomes, the true nemesis. They repeated the process again in 2024. We are hoping that we can continue the eradication on our own starting this year, without the expense and extensive use of herbicide. 

We need to take several steps to try to eliminate the knotweed: remove the rhizome clumps, plan and plant to provide competition, and watch for young knotweed sprouts. The larger rhizomes are roughly the size of a boot or football. Several sources suggest digging them up and storing them in black plastic bags in the sun before "disposing properly." I have seen conflicting advice about dealing with young shoots that appear. Some have suggested digging them out, while others have suggested letting them grow and applying herbicide in September. We are in the first phase of planning and planting a mix of trees, shrubs, and other plants, many of them native. The development of the plan and first steps of planting may be topics of further posts. 

Intro to Hemlock Homegrown National Park

The "Homegrown National Park" movement, a conservation approach based on starting in your yard, provides guidance and an opportunity to do something positive during what seems to me an overwhelmingly negative time. 

Douglas Tallamy, in his book, Nature's Best Hope, lists ten steps: 

• Shrink the lawn
• Remove invasive species
• Plant keystone genera
• Be generous with your plantings
• Plant for specialist pollinators
• Network with neighbors
• Build a conservation hardscape
• Create caterpillar pupation sites under your trees
• Do not spray or fertilize
• Educate your neighborhood civic association