|
|
Bogged Down?
30 Oct, 2008 By: Brian Albright LDB Solutions Maryland Beauty, common winterberry. Photo courtesy of Doris Taylor at the Morton Arboretum. |
Poorly drained, marshy areas can be a challenge for landscape professionals and homeowners alike. Excessive moisture can displace soil oxygen and suffocate the roots of many shrubs, trees and perennials, and even make it difficult to maintain many grasses.
"You start getting root damage, and that invites fungal diseases," says Doris Taylor, plant information specialist at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL. "The stress can also create insect problems."
In many cases, homeowners want these areas filled in or drained, but with a little imagination and careful selection of native plants, these mini-swamps can be turned into attractive garden areas. Planting a large, water-friendly tree like a willow or cypress is an easy fix, but there are a wide variety of shrubs and herbaceous plants that thrive in wet sites and around natural water features like streams and ponds. "Bog gardens" have also become increasingly popular.
"You can try to amend or modify a wet site to make it less challenging, but these sites provide opportunities to try different things than you could on the rest of the landscape," says Dennis Werner, professor of horticultural science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "Instead of fighting Mother Nature, you can take advantage of what the site offers."
Many Shrubs Solutions
There are a wide variety of shrubs that tolerate damp conditions and provide a nice complement to a lake or pond, as well as help control soil erosion around a water features.
Bog Rosemary can be used for a low groundcover. The evergreen shrub grows in moist, acidic soils and flowers in the spring. Shrub dogwoods are another good choice, and are hardy into Zone 4. Sweet Gale, Rhodora and Summersweet Clethra also do well in bog-like conditions.
Deciduous hollies (Winterberry, Inkberry, etc.) can also be used in wet sites — but remember that both male and female plants are required to produce berries.
Werner is partial to the Winterberry Holly, which he says does very well in poorly drained soil in his region (Zone 7b). "It performs admirably every year, and it is incredibly well adapted even to normal soils," Werner says. "The bare branches look good during the winter, and it produces these big, beautiful berries that are good for drawing birds."
Taylor recommends Buttonbush, which has distinctive, ball-shaped flowers, and American elder, which produces edible fruit that can be used for jellies and preserves.
Cyrilla (Leatherwood or Titi) is a semi-evergreen shrub that grows in the Southeast and can reach heights of 10 to 25 ft. It flowers in late July and attracts an array of bees and other insects.
Other possibilities include Chokeberry, Red Twig dogwood and Virginia Sweetspire, a semi-evergreen that has brilliant red and orange foliage that remains in place well into the winter months.
For more suggestions on what to plant in wet sites, see the Nov./Dec. issue of Livescapes magazine.
Please send any technical comments or questions to our webmaster.