Plants

Delaware has claimed the American holly as its state tree since 1939, when the state led the nation in shipping holly wreaths. Hollies are either male or female: only females bear berries, and they need a male tree nearby to pollinate them. Ask the nursery which you're buying — one male will serve several females.

Give it room and time. American holly grows slowly and resents being moved once established, so choose its spot with care. Its dense evergreen branches shelter birds all year, and the berries hang on well into winter, when they become food at the hungriest time of year.

Like American holly, winterberry comes as male and female plants, and only the females bear berries. Plant a male within about 40 to 50 feet; one male can pollinate six to ten females. Nurseries sell matched male varieties for each female, so ask which to pair with yours.

Cut branches last for weeks indoors and make a native stand-in for the oriental bittersweet so often used in fall and holiday arrangements.

Redbud blooms on bare wood — along twigs, branches and even the trunk — weeks before its leaves appear, which is why a redbud in flower looks like a pink haze at the edge of the woods. It's a member of the pea family, and the flowers are edible, with a slightly tart taste that brightens a spring salad.

Redbud is a natural understory tree, happiest at the sunny edge of taller ones, and its modest size suits most home gardens. Plant it young: it doesn't take kindly to being moved once established.

Serviceberry goes by many names. Shadbush and shadblow come from its flowers opening just as shad swim up East Coast rivers to spawn; Juneberry from its fruit. It's a small tree for all four seasons — spring flowers, summer fruit, fall color, and smooth gray bark in winter — and a fine native replacement for Callery pear.

The fruit is sweet and edible, good fresh or in pies and jam, though you'll need to pick quickly to beat the birds.

Virginia bluebells are spring ephemerals: they rise in early spring, bloom for a few weeks, set seed and vanish by early summer, leaving no trace until the next year. Pair them with ferns or later perennials that will fill the gap. The buds open pink and turn sky blue as the flowers mature.

Given moist, rich soil like the stream banks of the Brandywine Valley, they slowly spread into generous drifts. Divide or move them just as the foliage begins to yellow, while you can still see where they are.

Black-eyed Susan is a biennial or short-lived perennial: individual plants bloom hard for a season or two and then fade. Let a few flower heads go to seed and new rosettes fill in on their own, so a patch carries on even as its plants come and go.

Leave the dark seed cones standing into winter and the goldfinches will find them. It's an easy first native for a sunny border or a new meadow planting, shrugging off heat, drought and poor soil.

Sweet Joe-Pye weed is the woodland-edge member of its family, happier in ordinary garden soil than its cousins of wet meadows, and its flowers carry a faint scent of vanilla. The domed flower heads can reach a foot or more across and draw clouds of butterflies at the end of summer, when many other flowers have finished.

Give it the back of the border and room to stand tall. If seven feet is too much, cut the stems back by about half in late spring; the plant will branch, bloom a little later and stay shorter.

Butterfly weed is a milkweed, and like its relatives it feeds monarch caterpillars — but unlike most milkweeds its stems carry clear sap rather than milky latex. A deep taproot makes it one of the most drought-tolerant plants in the garden, and one of the hardest to move, so set young potted plants where you want them to stay.

Be patient in spring. Butterfly weed waits until the soil is thoroughly warm and is often the last plant in the bed to appear. Mark its spot in fall so it isn't dug up by mistake.

Coral honeysuckle climbs by twining, so give it a trellis, arbor, or fence and a little guidance at first. Unlike its Japanese cousin it doesn't root along the ground or smother its neighbors, and it has little fragrance — its scarlet trumpets are made for hummingbirds rather than noses.

The heaviest bloom comes in spring, with scattered flowers into summer. In a mild winter it may keep some of its blue-green leaves.

Fire pink is common farther south and west, but Delaware sits at the edge of its range and the state ranks it critically imperiled in the wild. Never dig it from a natural area; buy nursery-propagated plants from a native plant nursery or a plant sale.

In the garden it wants excellent drainage — a rocky slope, a wall pocket or the edge of a woodland path — and dislikes wet winter soil. Plants are short-lived but will self-sow where they're happy. Sticky hairs on the stems trap small insects, which gives fire pink and its relatives another common name: catchfly.

English ivy came over with colonial settlers as an ornamental groundcover. On the ground it forms mats that smother wildflowers and tree seedlings. Once it climbs, it shades out a tree's own leaves and adds heavy, wind-catching weight that brings trees down in storms.

Climbing ivy is also the only ivy that flowers and fruits, and birds carry its berries into nearby woods. Cutting the vines on your trees is the single most useful step: it stops the seed supply and saves the tree.

Callery pear was planted across American suburbs from the 1960s on, mostly as the 'Bradford' variety, which was thought to set no fruit. Different varieties pollinate one another, though, and the small fruits they now produce are eaten by birds, which scatter the seeds along roadsides, fields and woodland edges. The wild seedlings grow into thorny thickets that crowd out native plants.

Older Bradford pears are also notorious for splitting apart in storms, so replacing one is often overdue anyway. Serviceberry gives the same white spring bloom, followed by berries the birds (and people) enjoy.

Japanese barberry was planted for decades as a tough, deer-proof hedge — and the deer's refusal to eat it is exactly what lets it take over the forest floor. Researchers at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station found far more Lyme-carrying blacklegged ticks in dense barberry than in woods without it. The thickets hold humidity and shelter the white-footed mice the ticks feed on, and clearing the barberry brought tick numbers down for years afterward.

Winterberry holly offers the same bright red winter berries without the thorns or the ticks.

Multiflora rose came from East Asia in the 1800s as a rootstock for garden roses, and in the mid-1900s it was promoted to farmers as a "living fence" and wildlife cover. Birds love the hips, and a single plant produces enormous numbers of seeds that stay alive in the soil for years. It now fills pastures, hedgerows and forest edges throughout the region.

Our native roses, Carolina rose for dry sunny spots and swamp rose for wet ones, give the same pink-to-white summer flowers and winter hips without the takeover.

Japanese honeysuckle's sweet scent is part of summer in the mid-Atlantic, which is how it spread so easily: it was sold for gardens and planted along roadsides to hold soil. Keeping its leaves into winter gives it a head start on native plants each spring, and it climbs over shrubs and small trees until they collapse beneath it.

If you love a flowering vine on a fence, plant our native coral honeysuckle instead. Its scarlet trumpets are a hummingbird favorite, and it stays where you put it.

Norway maple was a favorite street tree for much of the 20th century because it tolerates pollution, compacted soil and hard conditions. Those same traits let it escape into woodlands, where its dense shade and shallow, fibrous roots leave little room for wildflowers, shrubs or young native trees beneath it. A lawn under a Norway maple rarely thrives for the same reason.

When an old one comes down, a native red maple, sugar maple or blackgum makes a fine replacement — with far better fall color.

Oriental bittersweet wraps trees so tightly it strangles them, and its weight pulls canopies down in snow and wind. Birds eat the berries all winter and spread the seeds widely, so one vine at a forest edge can seed a whole woodland.

A note for arrangers: the berried stems are prized for fall wreaths and centerpieces, but every discarded arrangement can start new vines. Cut branches of winterberry holly give the same bright color. If you plant American bittersweet, buy it from a native plant nursery — the two are easily confused, and they hybridize.