Lawns? Yawn! Plant Native Groundcovers for Excitement and the Environment

Phaon crescent butterfly on native frogfruit. Photo by Janis Piotrowski.

Not all nature-loving hippies are peacemakers, at least not when it comes to manicured lawns. Murderous pleas to “kill your lawn” implore suburbanites to ditch the pitch and plant native instead. This native groundswell grows larger by the day as more folks learn about how small changes in their lives can make a big impact in their environment. Native groundcovers fill this niche and, often, fill in areas where sod might never grow.

My personal lawnicidal urges began in January of 2021 when my sod turned brown due to the cold and simultaneously drowned in the winter rains. I walked outside and my yard felt more like a sponge than a lawn. I looked up a simple solution to this issue and learned that many native plants absorb a lot of water. I planted a native tree, native shrubs that love wet feet, and water-loving wildflowers, all of which reduced the standing water in my yard to a great extent.

Still, areas my dog traversed showed signs of wear and tear in addition to crispy brown grass in the summer and soggy brown grass in the winter. So, my experiment with native groundcovers commenced. I dug out sections of my lawn, mulched, and planted native groundcovers.

Below are profiles of these individual plants and my observations.

The fan-favorite native frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) thrives in full sun to part shade, adapts to many different soils, and grows vigorously. Chartreuse green vines reach and ramble, crisscrossing itself multiple times. These vines boast tiny, white flowers with purple centers containing flecks of gold. Bees alight on the blooms and multiple butterflies, including common buckeye, phaon crescent, and white peacock, as well as skippers and moths, use frogfruit as a larval food. Frogfruit spreads by rhizomes and endures trampling from pets, foot traffic, and mowing. Frogfruit keeps foliage in the winter, shedding a few leaves and looking less exuberant, yet still maintaining a nice plentiful appearance.

Sensitive plant or sunshine mimosa (Mimosa strigillosa) loves full sun to part shade and takes moist soils. Its pink, cotton candy blooms resemble the blooms of its relative, the invasive mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin). This native groundcover sustains insects, hosts the little sulphur butterfly, and provides coverage for frogs. It spreads by rhizome and grows aggressively. This plant cooperates less than frogfruit and its deeper roots make it harder to pull and a bit more unruly than the frogfruit. The only drawback? In the winter, the foliage thins out and leaves behind a sparse vine.

Sunshine mimosa being grown as a groundcover for blueberries. Photo by Janis Piotrowski.

Wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) grows well in full sun to part shade. Classic white strawberry flowers appear in early spring followed by tasty small strawberries in the summer. Wild strawberry grows prolifically by runners and adds a bit of whimsy to the yard while providing food for you and other creatures. Wild strawberry’s tough leaves flip and flop over when kicked around, but this plant thrived despite frequent sabotage by my bulldozer of a dog.

Golden ragwort (Packera aurea) maintains its evergreen, fun lilypad-esque foliage and even blooms in the late winter. Its stalks of yellow flowers provide winter pollinators food when nectar sources are scarce. This perennial groundcover spreads by rhizomes and fills areas in a nice carpet of flush green. A combination of golden ragwort and leaf mulch satisfactorily prevents weeds from breaking through, but this plant does not take as much traffic. Place in full shade to part sun with moisture.

Golden ragwort maintains evergreen foliage and even blooms in the late winter. Photo by Wendy Klooster, Ohio State University OARDC, Bugwood.org

Partridge berry (Mitchella repens) requires full shade to part sun and loves a moist forest bed. Its small evergreen leaves add a texture and pattern. Partridge berry blooms white flowers in the early spring and bears tiny, red berries for animals from fall through winter. This plant SLOWLY colonizes! Partridge berry tolerates some foot traffic and loves mulch but cannot compete with more aggressive groundcovers or grasses.

Shade-dependent Walter’s violet (Viola walteri) slowly colonizes by seed and rhizome. Its silver foliage thins out in the summer but fills in vacant areas during the winter. Tiny purple-blue flowers like jewels shimmer across the landscape. Walter’s violet tolerates light foot traffic and mostly fills in patches. Do not expect a crop of these violets to spread the entire width of your yard.

The major takeaway: plant native groundcovers with the knowledge of their on and off seasons. Native groundcovers are like the tides, they come in and go out. They encroach and retreat during certain seasons so plant them appropriately. And do not be afraid to plant them beside each other for this very reason! Close plantings, like waves, crash into each other and form beautiful collisions.

Native groundcovers often suppress weeds and provide wildlife food. Minimize your lawn and maximize your biodiversity by planting native!

In Love with Acorns

I love acorns – their simple beauty, their value as wildlife food and the promise they hold for the future.

The caps are cute and some have very interesting textures and patterns. A swamp chestnut oak’s cap consists of many woody scales in an intricate overlapping pattern. It is large enough (up to 1¼ inches wide) to serve as a squirrel’s helmet if it only came with a chin strap. The over-cup oak’s cap is unique because it encloses ninety percent of the acorn.

The live oak acorn, when freshly fallen, is white on top, grading into pale yellow and on to dark green. I love this acorn after it has had time to ripen and change colors. The top becomes tan and transitions into a beautiful black. I like to buff them to get a striking sheen and have a handful sitting on my dining room table with a fresh green sweetgum ball and a branch of pokeweed.

I suspect deer, turkey, bear, woodpeckers, wood duck and 75 other species of wildlife see beauty in calories and full stomachs. Acorns can be a staple in their autumn diet. For a deer, a large swamp chestnut oak acorn at 1.6 inches long and over one inch wide would be a tasty morsel indeed.

I enjoy watching a busy squirrel dig a hole, place an acorn in it and pack the soil with a jack hammer action, then sneakily hide the spot by raking leaves over it. I wonder if it will find the acorn during winter. If not, this acorn holds a promise for the future. With warming soil in spring, the acorn is split in half by the root and tender shoot and a new oak tree is on its way. The root grows quickly and deep, beginning to form an incredible anchor, sometimes extending three times the spread of the branches above. The shoot depends on luck that open space waits above providing maximum sunlight and room to grow to its full magnificent size and shape.

Size and shape vary in the noble oaks—from the diminutive running oak, usually less than three feet tall and forming extensive ground cover by underground runners, to the stately southern red oak, up to 125 feet tall. The Florida champion live oak in Gainesville has a spread of 160 feet and a height of 85 feet. I’m lucky to have a patriarch live oak in front of my house on Ellicott Drive in Tallahassee. It has three huge vertical trunks and one big horizontal limb 36 inches in diameter that sprawls 81 feet across my yard. It is a massive weight to hold horizontally, requiring strong wood. The limb seems to be tiring with age; it rests wearily on our yard. Fifteen years ago it was six feet off the ground.

I like to think of this tree as mine, but it really belongs to the people of Tallahassee. This tree produces many acorns. The few that survive the blue jays, squirrels and acorn grubs may grow into other majestic specimens for future generations to enjoy. So the acorn holds a wonderful promise for the future. Maybe that is why I love acorns so much.

Native Perennial Sunflowers

The benefits of sunflowers are so abundant that no yard should be without them. I’m not referring to the large-headed annual cultivars you see growing in a field, but rather the native perennial sunflowers with small, bright yellow flowers seen growing along roadsides mid summer and early fall. As a genus, Helianthus gets a top-of-the-list rating for biodiversity value for herbaceous plants. They are tremendous nectar and host plants that support over 50 types of pollen specialist bees and over 73 species of caterpillars. In addition, their seeds provide a critical food source for many songbird species, such as cardinals, bluebirds, pine siskins, mourning doves, goldfinches, chickadees, and nuthatches. 

According to the Florida Plant Atlas of Vascular Plants, there are 16 native species of sunflowers found throughout the state, including coastal areas. They come in a variety of different sizes and tolerate a wide range of soil and growing conditions. In fact, some species are not fit for a traditional garden bed setting because they have a tendency to out compete other desirable plants. However, because of their wildlife food value and natural beauty, we should strongly consider making space for them in our suburban yards.

The narrow-leaf sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius, is a beautiful addition to a natural area of the yard where it can ramble and spread. This powerhouse of a sunflower thrives in full to part sun and average to moist soil. It can grow anywhere from 5 to 8 feet tall and usually requires a little help with staking, especially with our pounding summer rains. The statuesque clumps are densely covered in 2-3 inch blooms that happily light up the garden by mid October. Majestic stands of this sunflower bloom in the coastal marshes of St. Mark–a sure indicator that fall has arrived–dappled throughout like endless waves of yellow. Blazing stars or native grasses, like chalky bluestem and yellow Indian grass, are great companion plants for narrow-leaf sunflowers due to their structural support and contrasting color ensembles. 

Another moisture enthusiast is the lakeside sunflower, Helianthus carnosus. A rare endangered species that only occurs in five counties of North Florida. Unique in comparison to its relatives, this sunflower has a compact, low-growing rosette of leaves that shoot up 2 to 3 foot stalks of the typical, sunny yellow bloom by mid summer. A​​s its common name implies, lakeside sunflower is a species of wet-soil habitats and full sun, and does not fare well when left to dry out. They do not spread aggressively like some of the other native sunflowers, making it a tame addition to the moisture loving wildflower garden in your landscape. Stoke’s aster, beardtongue, winged loosestrife, and brickellia are other native wildflowers that pair nicely with the lakeside sunflower. 

The woodland sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, grows by underground roots to make expanding colonies and it will self sow under the right conditions. In the wild it grows on dry, partially shaded woodland edges. However, in the rich and moist soils of your backyard it may become more aggressive. This species blooms in July and August, and can provide that much needed burst of color to the mid-summer shade garden. Depending on the conditions these plants can vary in height from 3 to 6 feet tall. They are a graceful addition to the fern patch where plants are left to grow wild–and then managed by the string trimmer once a year in late winter. Good companion plants for woodland sunflowers include southern woods fern, white indigo, white doll’s daisy and ironweed.

Also at the high end of the aggressiveness continuum, there is the notorious Jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus. It is grown as a food crop, but recommended only in areas distant from other gardens, since in addition to being a rapid colonizer, the deep rhizomatic root system makes it difficult to eradicate once established–I have it growing in a patch where I can mow around it, which seems to stop it from spreading. The plants easily reach 5 to 6 feet tall and grow in full to part sun. The roots bear tubers that can be harvested after the first frost. When eaten raw, it has a crisp texture, like that of a water chestnut, and when cooked, the tuber has a soft, nutty flavor similar to potatoes. 

Despite its name, the Jerusalem artichoke has no relation to Jerusalem, and little to do with artichokes. Native Americans (who called it “sunroot”) cultivated the tubers long before the arrival of the Europeans colonists. The sunroot got its recent name when a French explorer sent some plants back to his friend in Italy to cultivate in the Mediterranean climate. The Italian named the tuber “girasole articicco” simply meaning sunflower artichoke, believing that they tasted like artichokes. English speakers misunderstood the pronunciation of girasole, which they thought sounded more like “Jerusalem,” and so the name stuck.

Dune Sunflower, Helianthus debilis, is a low growing, short-lived perennial that often reseeds and spreads, especially in nutrient-poor and well-drained soils. Many gardeners like to use it as a colorful and drought-resistant groundcover in hot, dry sites, including coastal areas. One plant may quickly sprawl 4 to 6 feet across and generally no more than 1 to 2 feet in height. Dune sunflower thrives best in full sun and will bloom almost year-round from spring through fall. In a large sandy garden bed I would mix it with blue porterweed, blanket flower, dwarf fakahatchee grass, wild rosemary, red salvia, and seaside goldenrod.

Native sunflowers fulfill important niches in our plant communities. They provide food for our bees, butterflies, moths, and birds, as well as contribute color and texture to the beauty of our roadsides and other wild areas. It’s not too late to add a few splashes of the sunny yellow bloom to your own backyard habitat. There are many rewards to reap for such little investment, and with so much variety there’s a native sunflower for every garden.