Thirteen delightful native gardens, four winners!
Once again, members of the Native Garden Contest workgroup were amazed at the native gardens our neighbors are creating and caring for in the greater Towson community. This year, 13 gardens were submitted for our Native Garden Contest, and each one was filled with diverse native trees, shrubs and plants that created an oasis for pollinators and wildlife, and in many cases, addressed problems with storm water runoff.
As we have in the past, we divided the gardens into four categories: Homegrown National Park® is for yards that approach or have exceeded 70% native plants, and also have made strides in reducing the lawn. Gaining Ground is for gardens where homeowners have been making significant progress to raise the percentage of native plants and still have room left to expand in the future. Breaking Ground is for new native plant gardens that may be fresh but are sure to make an impact! Seeds of Change is a category of special recognition for gardens that impact both the ecosystem and the greater community.
Homegrown National Park®
Rujuta Narurkar and her husband, Rahul Bharadwaj, won the Homegrown National Park category for their gardens, which are designed to handle storm water in the property surrounding their Lutherville home. They received a grant from the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy and with their help, installed a backyard rain garden in 2021. Last fall, they installed a second garden in their deeply sloped front yard. This garden is designed to handle runoff during storms through a series of swales built of wood chips, which slow rainwater. Shopping at the local Kollar and Herring Run nurseries, they dug in attractive native plant species to absorb and filter pollutants.
Gaining Ground
Olivia Cumming and her husband, Eitan Stromberg, began their native plant journey when they transformed the “hellstrip” between the sidewalk and street three years ago. Now it waves with 2-foot-high Shenandoah switchgrass interspersed with New England asters. Next they removed more than half of the lawn and dug out non-native nandina, liriope and Japanese holly in front of the house, replacing them with native shrubs including clethra, viburnum, witch hazel and grey owl creeping juniper. A slow-growing tupelo (black gum) tree—planted as part of the GTA’s program with Bluewater Baltimore—and a mature American holly provide habitat for birds. Two curving stone pathways bisect the front yard, where Olivia estimates she has planted about 50 natives in the past 3 years. The front yard of their Anneslie home attracts pollinators as well as neighbors who see her well-designed beds – plus her new Bay Wise certification sign – and ask how they can get started with native plant gardening.
Breaking Ground
Jane Anthon decided back in 2022 that she would no longer use pesticides or fertilizers in her Anneslie home, and in 2023 she began adding in native plants. Today, her backyard is home to a surprising diversity of native plants and shrubs, including brown-eyed Susan, chokeberry, hibiscus, winterberry, obedient plant, goldenrod, penstemon, cardinal flower, Joe Pye weed, coreopsis, coneflower, false indigo, and inkberry. She has several water features in her yard for the birds who share her yard. Because she frequently hosts family gatherings where children play ball and yard games, she’s keeping her back lawn for now, but continues to find native plants and tuck them into beds along the perimeter and in a few small beds she’s created in the center of her yard.
Seeds of Change
The native plants in the bioretention garden at St. Pius Catholic Church routinely attract wildlife. Even more impressive, however, is the unseen work going on beneath the black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, goldenrod, fleabane and swamp mallow blooming in the heat. The garden filters stormwater from a half-acre parking lot, capturing pollutants like grease and oil from vehicles. The water slowly seeps into the ground rather than rushing into nearby Chinquapin Run, a tributary of Herring Run, and then on to the Chesapeake Bay. Constructed in 2016 with grants from Bluewater Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay Trust, and designed by Cityscape Engineering, maintaining the bioretention garden (mainly weeding out thistles and other invasives) is a labor of love for the volunteers of the Social Action Ministry at St. Pius.
Special Recognition
Kay McConnell has gardened in her home near Lake Roland for more than 30 years and has learned to pay attention to how water and sun move across her wooded property to help her choose the native plants that now thrive there. She believes in repurposing materials, such as fallen tree logs and stones, and loves native grasses and ferns. She designed the native gardens at Friends School, and has helped many Towson-area gardeners start the process of designing native gardens in their own yards.
To see all of the finalist gardens in the 2024 contest, please see our contest webpage at https://www.nativegardencontest.com/2024-contest
The use of Homegrown National Park® is used with permission from Homegrown National Park. Please check out this website and join a nationwide effort to restore our environment through sustainable garden practices in our own yards.
https://homegrownnationalpark.org/
A special thank you to all of the gardeners who have entered our contest over the years. We wish we could give each one of you an award for all of your hard work to create the beautiful and sustaining yards you maintain in our community.