Garden Photo of the Day

A Mostly Native Meadow Garden

A rich, informal, wildlife-friendly garden

By GPOD Contributor

Today we’re visiting Haliburton, Ontario, to see Justin Dumitrescu’s garden. The garden is ten years old and features mostly native plants in an informal, meadow-like design.

Stepping-stones lead through a beautiful stand of purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea, Zones 3–9). Coneflowers are beloved by pollinators when in bloom and produce lots of nutritious seeds for goldfinches and other birds after the flowers fade. And they are beautiful too! Win-win-win!

More beautiful coneflowers mix with the spiky blue flowers of seaholly (Eryngium sp.), another flower that is a favorite with a wide range of pollinators and beneficial insects.

A rich matrix of flowers and grasses. Dense, diverse plantings like this are beautiful, give few chances for weeds to germinate, and provide homes and food for a wide range of native insects.

False indigo
False indigo (Baptisia australis, Zones 3–10) is native to a wide swath of eastern North America. It can be slow to establish but is very long-lived, develops deep, drought-resistant roots, and gets more and more beautiful each year.

Hillside terraces are filled with plants—a perfect solution to a steep slope that would be impossible to mow and prone to erosion.

queen of the prairie
The soft pink plumes of queen of the prairie (Filipendula rubra, Zones 4–7). Ranging from eastern Canada down to Missouri and Virginia, this elegant perennial can reach 5 feet in height with wonderful late-summer flowers—a perfect way to send the gardening season off on a high note.

 

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Comments

  1. User avater
    treasuresmom 09/15/2020

    It is all so beautiful. I love meadow gardens.

  2. garden1953 09/15/2020

    Love your gardens and I’m sure the pollinators do as well!

  3. Carolyn3134 09/15/2020

    Lovely! Thank you for helping the pollinators!!

  4. User avater
    user-7007816 09/15/2020

    Lovely garden. I'm heading my gardens to a more natural feel. Thanks for sharing.

  5. User avater
    GardenGnomeTess 09/15/2020

    What a beautiful garden!

  6. User avater
    simplesue 09/15/2020

    Fabulous! Looks like you sort of did a terraced hillside with some nice big stones in that one photo...nice to see a perennial bed that is not just flat on the ground.
    It's such a natural wild garden and still so nicely organized.
    Most magnificent purple cone flowers I ever saw- what is their exact name? I would buy some just like them- so tall with such dark stems.
    You really did an amazing job on this garden!

  7. btucker9675 09/15/2020

    This is a truly wonderful garden - I'd love to take a stroll through it right now! Thank you for sharing.

  8. reginamelo 09/17/2020

    I love meadow gardens, and your garden is simply beautiful Justin. I can 'hear the buzzing bees' when I look at this photos :))

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