Native plants in New Providence, NJ area

Plant Databases – What to plant in my yard

New Jersey specific

• Great Swamp Watershed Association – Native Plant Program, their Plants for Pollinators Sale 2024 which includes wonderful garden kits for various conditions, and a natives resource page
• Jersey-friendly yards – Very user friendly. Highly recommend.
• Awesome Native Plants – Spin off of NPSNJ.org so from New Jersey native plants unless otherwise noted. Great photographs.
• Street trees for NJ outside the Pine Barrens (Thanks NPSNJ!)

Mid-Atlantic region

• Mid Atlantic Native Plant guide by Wray Co Designs
• Homegrown National Park’s container plant suggestions for our zipcode

North America including New Jersey

• Plant native ground covers & make America green again
• USDA’s plant database can be sorted by state, county, natives, introduced and much, much more. Here are Union County natives. Can be a little overwhelming. NJ friendly yards plant database is a more user-friendly place to start.
• The Biota of North America Program: North American Vascular Flora (BONAP) – Doug Tallamy recommends as a great site to research what oak tree to plant where. For example can search for Oaks in our New Providence zip code
• Audobon: “The National Audubon Society protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow, throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground conservation. “(Audobon and Audobon NJ are separate organizations)
  • Plants for Birds: Native plants support our birds throughout the year – articles
  • Audobon’s database for best plants for birds in New Providence’s Zipcode 07974. Includes >70 “Best results” & >230 “full results” including those that are harder to find or are less beneficial to wildlife.
  • Audobon’s 4 NJ chapters
• National Wildlife Federation: Keystone plants by ecoregion
  • New Providence is in are “Eastern Temperate Forests – Ecoregion 8” They list 2 kinds of keystone plants
  • Bring your garden to life

There are two types of keystone plants:

Keystone plants are native plants critical to the food web and necessary for many wildlife species to complete their life cycle. Without keystone plants in the landscape, butterflies, native bees, and birds will not thrive. 96% of our terrestrial birds rely on insects supported by keystone plants.

Host plants that feed the young caterpillars of approximately 90% of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera). – Plants that feed specialist bees who only eat pollen from specific plants. Keystone plants for native bees feed both specialist and generalist bees.

National Wildlife Federation

Helpful organizations & websites

• NJ Audobon‘s – Highly recommend their “Designing for Wildlife” course.
• Native Plant Society of NJ (NPSNJ) – Great webinars with recordings
• RVCC Center for Environmental Studies – Outstanding presentation on why improving our deer management programs is key to maintaining our forests, birds and biodiversity, above and beyond any climate change issues
• How we get tree planting wrong: wrong tree wrong place – video from the Guardian (5 minutes)
• Great Swamp Watershed Association – Great spring native plant sale with pick up points in Summit & Chatham in 2024. Passaic River Waterkeepers Alliance Affiliate. Do their water quality surveys include New Providence & Berkeley Heights?

About New Providence’s climate & ecosystem

• Humid warm continental
• Eco-region – Mid-Atlantic’s Piedmont & their excellent native guides
• Passaic River Watershed Map
• Watershed Management Area (WMA) 6, Upper Passaic, Whippany & Rockaway. Our WMA Ambassadors
• Passaic River Water Coalition

New Jersey Butterflies

North American Butterfly Association (NABA) – NABA-North Jersey Butterfly Club has a lovely website which lists of NJ butterflies, sites & events.

• Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) – one of our favorites.
• Recent sitings
• Annual and Perennial Plants of Northern New Jersey and the New York City Region– Short list of top 17 plants
• NJ butterfly Host plants

Inspiration! near our region

• Brooklyn Bridge Park – Incredibly inspirational from a native plant and animal perspective. (1:30 minutes)
  • Plant & wildlife guide as well as their local Horticulture & Ecology Databases – Not that far from our own climate
  • Heather Wolfe – One of their leaders. Gave an amazing presentation to NPSNJ’s annual meeting. Recording coming soon.
• Mount Cuba Center Native Plant Botanic Garden (2:15) – Authoritative leader for Mid-Atlantic region native ecology
  • Video of their Trial Garden Tour Veronia (Ironwood), Solidago
• Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve & nursery (1:10) – New Hope, PA near Gino’s
• Gino’s Native Plant Nursery (1:15). Newton, PA, near Bowman’s Hill – very educational, well organized & breadth of native offering. Knowledgeable staff.
• Hartshorn Arboretum & Bird Sanctuary – a woodlands garden and educational institution located in Short Hills, New Jersey. Emphasizes natives. (~ 15 minutes)

Inspiration from other regions

• Colorado Native Landscaping Coalition: Recommended Native Landscaping Policies For Colorado Local Governments and Water Providers
• Monarch butterfly habitat management resources – Great class. Research showing that planting milkweed around the outside of the garden than mixed in or the center. Also research had more caterpillars when trimming milkweed in June & July.

Planting Guides – What to plant in our region

• Container Garden planting guide

Certification Programs

• Certified Wildlife Habitat – birds, butterflies & other wildlife
• Homegrown National Park – Regenerate biodiversity – plant native! With Doug Tallamy. Includes a list of native plant finders. Also guides to both container plants & shrubs/ trees by eco-region
• Monarch Watch Monarch Waystation Program
• Wild Birds Unlimited – Certify your yard

Design your own yard – leaders in the space to learn from, Courtesy of reddit readers

• Native Plants for the Small Yard: Easy, Beautiful Home Gardens that Support Wildlife – Lovely ebook by Kate Brandes for Lehigh Gap Nature Center’s “Landscaping for Communities and Wildlife Program”. LeHigh County is located in eastern PA ~1:30 west of New Providence in zone 6a & 6b so is similar to our conditions.

Matrix Gardening Overviews.

• Popular book on technique is Prairie Up by Benjamin Vogt – Also his video channel, Monarch Gardens LLC. Vogt’s Garden Guides ($) Vogt’s Prairie Up website
• The Northeast Native Plant Primer by Uli Lorimer which covers 235 native plants
• The Living Landscape and Garden Revolution by Doug Tallamy & Drake ” Lots of pictures and I use it for design inspiration. The geographic focus is more mid-Atlantic.”

Other books – My native plant design wish list

• Gardening in a Post-Wild World
• Roy Diblik’s Know Maintenance Gardening 
• Bringing Nature Home or Nature’s Best Hope by Doug Tallamy.
• Sources: Reddit post on book recommendations & backyard gardening advice

Deep dive for fellow nerds

• Perennial Plant Sociability Matrix (builds on Vogt’s work).

Online Forums

• Reddit r/NJNativePlantGardening & r/NativePlantGardening
• Facebook
• Instagram – Native landscape & exhibit design/build @Phytostudio (Philadelphia, PA). Tony Spencer, @the_new_perennialist. @RefugiaDesign.

Native species vs. cultivar

• Bees, Bugs & Blooms Table 3 Total Pollinator Visits on the Species vs. Cultivar – Penn State  –
• Nativars Research Project – BudBurst.org

Fall Clean up

• The right way to leave stems for native bees – from Tufts
• Leave The Leaves: Winter Habitat Protection – from Xerces – Society for invertebrate conservation