Native Plants of the Southeast: A Comprehensive Guide to the Best 460 Species for the Garden - Hardcover

“Those new to native plant gardening as well as those well-experienced will find much here to add to their horticultural toolkit. Whether one’s interest is wildflowers, grasses, sedges, ferns, bog plants, trees, or all of the above, Mellichamp’s treatise will serve as a welcomed resource.” —Gil Nelson, author of Best Native Plants for Southern Gardens
 
Create a garden that reflects the unique beauty of the Southeast region. Native Plants of the Southeast shows you the best native plants and how to use them in your garden.

• 460 species of trees, shrubs, wildflowers, grasses, and ferns
• Practical cultivation tips
• Hundreds of beautiful photos
• Helpful lists of plants for difficult situations, attracting wildlife, and fall color

Preface
How did I come to write a book about gardening with native plants in the Southeast?

When I was about ten years old something happened that changed my life, but I did not know it at the time, only in retrospect. One summer day my Great Aunt Annie let me pick a flower from a special patch in her garden that she said was just for me. What a shock, what a thrill. I did not really know what it meant. I remember picking the flower; I even remember what it was—a “wild” petunia, according to my aunt.

You don’t realize what had just happened.

My aunt had a meticulous garden: a garden so well laid out in beds, so precisely managed through the year, so off-limits that no child (rarely an adult) would have a measurable half-life of time exploring the beds, so critical that only she could weed and water, so spotless that the bees didn’t dare land on a petal for fear of leaving a foot print. No one could step off the path, touch anything, much less pick a flower. My heavens! I did not even know back then that flowers could be picked. My aunt had said that it was time I got to pick a flower.

Why did she let me do it? I don’t know. Perhaps it was like a special coming-of-age ritual, an early taste of an initiation into the inner sanctum of adulthood. She knew that I liked coming to her house, but the best I could do was help mow the lawn and water the ancient mistletoe cactus on the porch (which I still grow a piece of). Did she have a scheme, did she set a trap, and did she know what would happen?

My aunt taught fourth grade in a small South Carolina town her whole career. I guess she knew kids. She let me pick that flower so I would become a botanist someday. That was it. I know it. (If not, it’s a good explanation anyway.) And the trick worked, though it took another decade for the plan to be fulfilled.

This story, I think, points to a problem. City folks then, as now, did not have a personal relationship with plants and flowers, especially wildflowers and native plants. People hardly even noticed them, much less thought that there was any reason to do anything with them. And, if a plant was thought special, most folks still did not know how to get to know it personally.

My parents, for example, never knew a thing about a wild plant or the secrets of nature. They planted multiflora rose as a living screen because they saw an ad in a magazine, and they lined up privet as a hedge on our property line. They did not know anything important existed beyond the weedy buffer zone that separated the mowed lawn from the wilderness harboring snakes and poison ivy. I did not know any better than they did at that young age, though as a Boy Scout I was able to get out into the woods and get my first glimpse of the secrets of nature.

Back then, native animals had wild places to live and did not venture into yards to browse. Homeowners rarely saw a deer, and if they did, it was a kick. Canadian geese were rare birds in the Carolinas, and it was a marvel to see them at a local wildlife refuge. Such encounters were the limited connections most city folk had with the natural world.

Life has changed greatly since that time. Knowledge, if not experience, is more accessible because of television and the Internet. More people are simply aware of nature, the plights and pleasures of the wild kingdom. There is more told about animals to be sure, but plants get their time to shine—as well.

From the vantage point of my own little narrow view of the world, I think the new era started with Rachael Carson and her book Silent Spring, followed by Earth Day in 1970. Soon came the Endangered Species Act (1973), an increase in books about wildflowers and birds, more-frequent gardening shows on television, and the rise to prominence of botanical gardens and nature centers. Before long people were talking about global warming and climate change. Little by little, awareness increased regarding the importance of the environment and the role of other organisms that share the planet. Perhaps the NASA space program helped stimulate our interest in the blue planet as described from space, that it is finite and we need to take better care of it.

When I picked that flower in my aunt’s garden, the structure of DNA was hardly known, the details about the web of life were not common knowledge, and I had been taught very little about nature lore. Picking that flower did not come too soon to prepare me for the events to come.

I went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan (finishing in 1976) and became a botanist. I loved teaching, was very fortunate to become indoctrinated into the realm of field botany, and soon discovered it was to become my passion. No one talked too much about growing native plants at that time. However, I met Fred Case in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1971. He studied native plants and was an avid wildflower grower, and he opened the world of native plant cultivation to me. In 1983, the first conference on landscaping with native plants was held in Cullowhee, North Carolina, and this was the beginning of a completely new chapter in the popular movement for everyday people to become more knowledgeable about the role of nature in their lives. The dogma was to plant more natives and try to break the long-time practice of the overuse of (invasive) exotic plants in home and roadside landscapes.

Those early founders of what came to be known as the Cullowhee Conference were certainly visionaries, and I thank them every day for what they started. Gardening became for me a useful distraction from the daily grind, as well as a creative and challenging endeavor to see what I could acquire and grow.

I was fortunate to see two amazing Southeastern wildflower gardens, which lead to my early realization that this was an interesting preoccupation. One was at the mountain home of Tom and Bruce Shinn in Leicester, North Carolina, and the other was the renowned native garden of Emily Allen in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The encouragement of these gardens and gardeners was profound in my life.

No one influenced me more in understanding the role of plants in the lives of people than Ritchie Bell, botanist, environmental activist, and first director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. Likewise, Ken Moore, who was assistant director at that time, constantly harped on the importance of using native plants. Jim Matthews, my undergraduate mentor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, took me out on countless field trips to collect scientific specimens and study plants all across the region. What a thrill. These trips provided a solid foundation in the principles of plant identification.

When I returned to UNC Charlotte as director of the modest botanical gardens begun in 1966 by my other influential professor, Herbert Hechenbleikner, I realized that I had to devote a portion of the Gardens’ effort and resources to growing and promoting native plants. Much of the advice I present here is based on intimate involvement with propagating and growing many of the species in the University’s seven-acre native plant garden, The Van Landingham Glen.

One of the greatest successes of UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens has been holding annual plant sales that specialize in providing hard-to-find locally grown native wildflowers, ferns, shrubs, and trees. Out of this experience and in response to a rising interest from local gardeners, the Gardens began offering a series of courses leading to a certificate in Native Plant Studies. The response has been encouraging, and today the University is embarking on the development a new garden, one of the first ever at a public garden to demonstrate...