Rujuta Narurkar and her husband, Rahul, launched their native gardening journey in 2019. Interested in the tree canopy around their home, they began to research how conserving native flora and fauna could improve the planet’s health. As neuroscientists, they also recognized the benefits of gardening for mental health. Soon the self-described “city slickers” from Mumbai, India, discovered and became fascinated by the work of Doug Tallamy. They reached out to the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy and won a grant to install a backyard rain garden in 2021. They also built a pond with a waterfall (bullfrogs soon moved in) and left brush piles and fallen leaves to provide habitat.

Many more plantings and projects followed, leading up to a total makeover of their front yard in October 2023. Collaborating with Patty Ceglia, an ecological designer, they had three swales built of wood chips to slow runoff. Shopping at the local Kollar and Herring Run nurseries, they selected native plant species that would absorb and filter pollutants. In just nine months, the perennials are beginning to thrive in sweeping rows that flank the paths of wood chips. Passersby notice the Bay Wise and National Wildlife Federation signs, “giving us a thumbs up and asking about our native plants,” Rujuta said. Just within the front yard, there are 153 plants of 20 different species. Rujuta has observed six species of bees on them so far this season.

The 0.2-acre property has several mature trees including native river birch, red and silver maples, and white pine, among others. Naming her favorite native plants by season, Rujuta lists blue iris (Iris versicolor), mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) in spring, swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), spotted bee balm (Monarda punctata) and southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) in summer, viburnums and asters in fall, and witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) in winter.

In the 24 years since Laurie Taylor-Mitchell’s family moved from Texas to a subdivision off Cowpens Road, they have converted their 0.9-acre property into a lush landscape of native trees, shrubs and perennials. And they’ve managed it despite pressure from ever-growing herds of deer.

Instead of lawn, the front yard features swaths of thigh-high natives under a sprawling red oak planted when the development was built in the 1960s. There are masses of northern sea oats and goldenrod that the deer disdain. A path leads through the front beds, which bloom in the spring with Dutchman’s breeches, Virginia bluebells, and golden ragwort. White wood aster and snakeroot, among others, brighten the shade in the fall.

To the left of the house another path leads through a landscape protected by deer fencing and packed with younger trees (tulip poplar, American sycamore, Atlantic white cedar), thriving shrubs (American beautyberry, common ninebark, fothergilla), plus masses of perennials including towering New York ironweed and Joe Pye weed.

The property slopes down to a tributary of Minebank Run, protected by a county easement. Laurie’s family planted some trees, including swamp oak, white oak and sycamore, and others have volunteered since she let the easement “go wild” about 20 years ago. Laurie’s native plant census includes 21 types of trees, 12 kinds of shrubs, 54 different types of herbaceous plants, plus grasses (5 species), ferns (5 species) and vines (4 species). She estimates that natives fill 90 percent of their property.

When Emily Biscoe moved into Rodgers Forge in 1991, their end-of-row home was surrounded by lawn. She and her late husband, Andrew, immediately planted a maple sapling in the front yard, and Andrew began gardening. At first, they had a conventional garden with a lawn bordered by azaleas, hollies, and yews, but when Andrew learned about the important role that native plants play in supporting wildlife, he began digging up the lawn and planting native shrubs and plants. 

Within a few years, the only strip of lawn that remained was bordering their neighbor’s front yard, where a native dogwood tree sprouted up and has grown to a healthy size. Today, walking through the yard reveals one delightful plant after another. Healthy shrubs, including witch hazel, American beautyberry, and sweet pepperbush provide structure; in the understory are native ferns, including lady fern, Christmas fern, and ostrich fern, and spring-flowering plants such as native columbine, celandine wood poppy, wild geranium, and green and gold groundcover. 

A path made of shredded bark leads you around to the back yard, which is filled with native plants, many of which are in full bloom in summer. A massive native dogwood tree provides dappled shade and sunshine that allows a central bed filled with coneflowers, cardinal flower, bellwort, turtlehead, brown-eyed Susans, phlox, vervain, swamp milkweed and blue-stemmed goldenrod to thrive. A chokeberry shrub adds structure. Native wisteria and honeysuckle grows luxuriously on a side fence, and Virginia creeper covers the chain-link fence that backs to an alley. 

Mature trees on the property also include an American holly and sugar maple. As pioneers in the native plant movement, Emily and her husband once had an incident in which Baltimore County gave them a citation, saying a neighbor had complained the yard was overgrown, with an order to cut everything down to three inches. Fortunately, the county withdrew its citation and today, Emily maintains this gem of a yard in Rodgers Forge.

Karen Shavin has been gardening for the 20 years she’s lived in her Rodgers Forge home – “20 years of mistakes”, she says, smiling. For years, she cared for a conventional garden, with the sort of plants one can easily find in a garden center. Then she learned about - and fell in love with - native plants, and there was no looking back. 

Motivated to create the sort of garden that inspires others to love and plant natives, Karen has been taking classes in horticultural design, first at CCBC, and currently at the Mt. Cuba Center, where she is earning her Ecological Gardening Certificate. 

Her gardens overflow with her favorites, including native ginger, Eastern bluestar, several varieties of native grasses, wild grapes growing in pots hung on a patio wall, and a sweet bay magnolia with its stunning seed pod of red berries.

Deborah Bentz began her native plant journey by adding natives into the flower and vegetable garden she cares for behind her Rodgers Forge home. She cares deeply for the environment, and therefore she wanted to create a garden that would welcome pollinators, including the hummingbirds that regularly visit her flourishing native honeysuckle vine that grows luxuriantly on one wall. 

The plants she chose, which include butterfly weed, coneflower, golden Alexander, and cardinal flower, bloom  over a long period in the spring and summer. Tomatoes, peppers, and a flourishing herb garden are planted along a path that leads from her kitchen door to the alley. A highlight is a lovely meditation garden, complete with a comfortable chair, tucked into a corner near the flowering herbs and perennials.

Olivia’s front yard in Anneslie 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. Last year Olivia was a finalist in the Towson Native Garden Contest, and this year her plantings have matured beautifully. She’s also added a rain barrel, which has been the sole water source needed for her well-adapted beds this year.

Olivia and her husband, Eitan Stromberg, first 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. 

New additions this year include zigzag goldenrod, butterfly weed, little bluestem grass and blue-eyed grass. Others have filled out in their second year: towering Joe Pye on the property line and a tall stand of brown-eyed Susans at the front door, plus liatris, garden phlox, prairie dropseed, purple poppy mallow and false indigo, among others.

When Jane Anthon moved back into her childhood home 3 years ago, she knew that she enjoyed gardening, but she saw her role as primarily tending to the (mostly non-native) plantings her family had established over previous decades. Shortly thereafter, she became aware of the connections between gardening practices and the environment, and she began to make her own mark on the property. 

In 2022, she stopped using all fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and in 2023 she began adding in native plants. Today, her backyard is home to a surprising diversity of native species, including brown-eyed Susan, chokeberry, hibiscus, winterberry, obedient plant, goldenrod, penstemon, cardinal flower, Joe Pye weed, coreopsis, coneflower, false indigo, inkberry, bee balm, giant hyssop, iris cristata, primrose, blue-eyed grass, maidenhair spleenwort, and various ferns, etc. 

Jane has tucked these into flower beds that mostly line the perimeter of her backyard, as well as a couple smaller beds sited in the middle of the yard. Since she babysits often and the yard gets used for playing ball and other games, Jane is content for the time being  to retain the existing lawn; however, she continues to find out-of-the-way spaces to create new beds and tuck in more native plants. Other notable features in Jane’s yard include 2 bird baths, a very large Osage orange tree that has been there for as long as Jane can remember, an Eastern hemlock that Jane’s family picked up on one of their camping trips when she was little, and an Eastern redbud (in the front yard) that Jane planted 3 years ago.

Martha began planting native plants in her Rogers Forge rowhome about five years ago. She and her neighbors became concerned when they realized they were seeing fewer butterflies and bees than they had seen in the past. Between them, they made a pact to stop using pesticides, and several of them began to shift into native plant gardening. Martha says her gardener, Tanya Ray, has been instrumental in teaching her about natives, selecting the plants, and determining the best placement. 

A garden bed in a bluestone retaining wall has been transformed from a conventional flower garden to one showcasing natives, which include blue mistflower, coreopsis, coneflowers, asters, and clustered mountain mint. She is planning to move a non-native spirea from this garden to make more room for her asters and mountain mint, which are mobbed with pollinators.

The parking lot at the Church of the Redeemer is beautifully designed to restore natural habitat for birds, butterflies, and native insects while also managing stormwater runoff. Bio-retention areas in and around the lot contain special soil and native plants that absorb the water and filter out the contaminants before the water is eventually released into Stony Run.

Since 100% native plants were used in this project, support for the ecosystem is maximized in a gorgeous way. Native trees, including sweetbay magnolia, black tupelo, willow oak, and cedar, provide shade in the bio-retention areas. Shrubs planted include many winterberry holly, inkberry holly, and beauty berry, which provide seasonal beauty and berries for the birds. Grasses, sedges, and coneflowers grow alongside river rock and all add to the curb appeal as one gets closer to the parking lot. A permeable surface is located at the north end of the lot to increase water filtration and removal of pollutants.

The church vestry collaborated with many partners and sponsors as well as members of the community on this project as part of the church’s commitment to make its campus environmentally friendly. Recycled aggregates of the old parking lot were used for the new pavement, and the lighting is energy efficient. Both the pre-school and the summer school use the parking lot for nature lessons, and the church hosts a native plant sale every spring to encourage the community to choose plants that support the local ecosystem. Even when tours are not actively being given, this extraordinary water management project with its informative sign provides an encouraging example to anyone who sees it.

On a sweltering morning before the thermometer hit 100 degrees, a goldfinch feasted on switchgrass seeds as traffic hustled by on York Road. Such 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.

Three different entrances offer steps down to pathways through the garden, which originally had 900 plants. Red-twig dogwoods and towering goldenrod provide structure in these summer months, and two mature sycamore trees stand just beyond the berm that is the garden’s northern border. In late spring, the garden is a sea of white penstemon flowers.

During torrential downpours, the garden can store more than 20,000 gallons of water. Two statues of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology, greet visitors. There are also two birdbaths and concrete benches, as well as an educational plaque with a diagram explaining how the bioretention garden works. Students from the Essex Community College horticulture program have come to study the garden, and John Mitsak, a parishioner who coordinates the garden volunteers, said the church bulletin and website have included stories about the environmental benefits of the garden.

Although the Archdiocese of Baltimore has decided that St. Pius will no longer be a worship site, the future of the property is not yet known. Until then, the volunteers will continue their efforts to maintain the bioretention garden, Mitsak said.

Kay McConnell’s garden has evolved into a beautiful and expansive example of what a gardener can achieve when they are attuned to which native plants are already present and/or are well-suited to a property. When Kay and her husband moved into their home on just under 4 acres of land in 1993, the house was surrounded by boxwoods, and invasive vines covered much of the property.  A mentor in the Guilford Garden Club introduced Kay to the idea of choosing native plants for her wooded property. Kay eagerly embraced natives, recognizing in them some of the same cherished blossoms she picked as a child (flowers her mother often referred to as “weeds”). 

Since discovering natives, Kay has developed three principles that she adheres to in working on her garden: 

• Don’t take away any native plant that is healthy. 

• When removing invasive plants, put them in the trash so that you don’t allow the invasives to spread elsewhere. 

• Don’t use mulch. 

Kay says her experience has been that mulch brings weed seeds. If she needs to cover an area, she uses wood chips. Because Kay’s property Is wooded, she became interested in Rick Darke’s books, The Living Landscape, and The American Woodland Garden. She took a daylong class taught by Darke and then plucked up the courage to call him and ask him to act as a consultant on her property. He came to visit and encouraged her to draw inspiration from the native plants already there, pointing out, for example, the many existing spicebush shrubs. Darke also suggested that she create circular paths leading into the woods, plant native grasses and ferns, and encourage native mosses on the hillsides. 

Today, Kay will tell you that she loves native ferns and cool season native grasses, as she walks her hillside paths lined with thick patches of them. Ferns and grasses are more ancient than perennials or trees, she says; in our modern world, we’ve lost touch with that ancient matrix.  Some favorite sedges of hers are fox sedge, bottlebrush grass, and maidenhair fern. A rule of thumb she has developed is to study the root zones of these plants when planning how to plant them, so that they don’t compete with each other for moisture. Notice how water and sunlight move over your property, Kay suggests, and base your plantings on those observations.

Another guiding principle for Kay is the repurposing of materials. A huge tree that was struck by lightning and eventually had to be cut down was made into a ropes course for her children. When trees fall on the property, their wood is cut into steps and placed on the hillside paths. And earlier this year, during a garage renovation, the old cement floor was cut into blocks so that it could be removed and hauled away. Recognizing an opportunity, Kay, had the cement blocks placed at the bottom of the hillside below the house. There, they were positioned to form a large, wide staircase up toward the house, just the sort of staircase Kay had always envisioned would be perfect in the space! 

Kay has also worked with European Landscapes and Design, a horticultural firm in the Baltimore area that specializes in finding and using stone in the garden. One of Kay’s favorite collaborations with them was removing the crumbling spring house structure on the property and salvaging local rock (slated to be disposed from a construction site) to create a grotto and surrounding amphitheater.

Kay has been delighted to find many wonderful native plants that living on her property, which include Magnolia tripetala (an understory Magnolia with three large leaves at its tip which is native to rich woodland in mountainous regions from Pennsylvania to the upper South), and Phlox divaricata (a native phlox that cross pollinates in the wild and is therefore genetically diverse as it proliferates in the landscape). Native flowering plants include monarda, river oats, Indian pink, mountain mint, milkweed, and Joe Pye, among others. Walking Kay’s property is truly a delightful “walk in the woods!”