New Trees

We scored another plant grant this year and brought home a couple new trees and a whole bunch of plants. Here’s our haul!

Since we lost two huge mature shade trees in the storm, it was obvious to us to use our plant grant money for a couple trees.

This one, a Pagoda Dogwood, only grows about 20 feet and is more of an ornamental tree.

This one however, a White Oak, gets to be quite tall and fits the bill of mature shade tree.

Lakeshore Restoration

For the bulk of our project, we invested in plants for the lakeshore. These native grasses and plants help with any runoff or contamination to the lake. They also recruit birds and butterflies to the area. A win for everyone.

I was beginning to regret waiting until the last weeks in October, until I scored four flats at 75% off! (It hadn’t frosted yet, so it was still prime planting season.)

I looked for a variety and asked the nursery owner to help me select different types to try on the shoreline. We sought out plants that were specific to wet soil, like milkweed, st. john’s wort, blue flag irises, monkey flowers, and sweet grass.

Ok, I chose some of them for the cool name, but mostly what I thought would look good clustered together. I asked about which ones tended to spread quickly or become invasive. And we also didn’t want anything taller than 3 feet on the shore. We left the beach bare, since that’s where the traffic is, and focussed on planting in between rocks on each side of the beach.

Trees

We picked the backyard for the dogwood, next to the back garage door. This one gets a great canopy and hopefully we’ll be able to see birds here out the back window.

I just thought this one was pretty here 😉

We put the oak in our front yard, in the willow patch. We have a cluster of aging willows and the plan is for the oak to grow up here to stand tall once the willows are long gone. Plus the acorns (and squirrels) won’t be anywhere near the house.

This guy gets great fall colors!

I’m hoping to have some spring updates to see how our little plants are doing by then.

Can you believe it’s November already? Did you catch any fall colors before the snow started flying?

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