This Cedar Rapids neighborhood is spotted with native plant gardens

CEDAR RAPIDS — Cedar Rapids residents living on or near Garden Drive SE will tell you the street is well-named.

One of the most striking gardens there, filled with tall, brightly colored native plants, belongs to Karen Rawson, who said she never wanted to become a gardener. But that changed after the 2020 derecho dramatically changed her Bever Park neighborhood, damaging homes and felling trees like it did across the community.

Across from Rawson’s home, a 200-year-old bur oak fell. That tree had shaded her yard for 95 percent of the day, supporting her shade-loving hostas. Now the question was: What could she do with a sunny yard?

Inspired after reading “Bringing Nature Home” by author Douglas Tallamy, Rawson decided in 2021 to grow native plants in part of her lawn. Native plants are ones that naturally occur in Iowa, like goldenrod, ironweed and prairie violet. They provide the habitat and food source that pollinators look for and need to survive.

Rawson’s project slowly expanded beyond just a section of her yard.

“I didn’t think I was going to turn most of my front yard into a garden, but I did and I love it,” she said.

Rawson reused slices of that fallen historic bur oak to build steps into her garden from the road. Wood also was sourced from another fallen tree on Grand Avenue SE.

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“I think that’s like one of the best points of her whole garden,” neighbor Heather Adams said of the steps.

Adams also has incorporated native plants in her yard, and has mature crops of rudbeckia, coreopsis and Blazing Star ready to be divided and dispersed. Over the coming years, she and her husband, Nathan, are replacing their front lawn with native plants.

“I’m not old yet but at some point I will be,” Adams said. “I know I’m not going to want to mow the lawn. So maintenance to me is important but then I want it to look beautiful because I love being outside.”

How neighbors have reacted

Growing native plants is not a summerlong project. It requires starting with a fresh slate, meaning grass and weeds must be smothered. Rawson fast-tracked the growing process by planting plugs as opposed to seeds, which take a few growing seasons to get established and then bloom in full force.

Rawson was worried about how her neighbors would react — especially in the early stages as the native plants were trying to take hold.

“I live in a neighborhood that a lot of the people will hire lawn services … and take a lot of pride in having this kind of suburban picture of what the … perfect lawn was in 1950,” Rawson said. “I was a little worried that I was putting in a garden in my front yard and how people would react. But largely everybody’s been supportive and at least tolerant and understanding.”

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Rawson’s yard has been a connection point between her and neighbors like Barbara Rhame. Rhame’s front garden is stocked with native plants — some of which came from swapping plants with friends.

“It’s very nice to be able to share some common problems or common successes,” Rhame said. “And it’s just a really great way to sort of break the ice. If you’re talking with someone that you haven’t met, a garden is a great icebreaker.”

Rhame said that by providing habitat through her native plants, she gets to enjoy an array of fireflies with her grandson each night. She maintains the garden a few hours a week, but said, “I think you can have a garden like this without making it your life’s work. So you can make it your life’s passion and still do other things, too.”

While Rawson planted plugs, Rhame’s neighbor, Natalie Ross, took the slow route. Ross is a landscape architect and wanted to experiment with planting meadows from seed.

“(Rhame) has a really flourishing beautiful garden and that actually encouraged me to want to do something with my front yard as well,” Ross said. “I think as you see neighbors experimenting, especially with their front yards, because you can’t always see the backyards, it just gives people some license to reduce their lawn and to add garden space.”

Ross’s front meadow is one growing season into the three-year process. Early on, she was concerned about rabbits and deer eating her hard work, but said once the plants matured the herbivores seemed to lose interest.

“But I did try to choose a lot of plants that were not really palatable to them. So things that are kind of rough textured or strong flavored are good to keep the animals away, but they do love to eat the acorns.”

Once plants mature and germinate more of their own species, the yard will fill in and wildflowers will bloom. Plus, weeds won’t stand a chance and maintenance should be low.

Cedar Rapids grass and weed control policy

The Cedar Rapids residents included in this article have not had conflict with the city over their native plant gardens. Keeping paths mowed and weeds managed shows that the garden is intentional and not a result of neglect.

The city of Cedar Rapids limits the height of lawns to 12 inches. Failure to mow a property could result in the city authorizing the mowing of the property and billing the property owner. If the property owner fails to pay the bill, the charges will be assessed against the property.

This isn’t Ross’s first time experimenting with her yard. Ross’s backyard has a full sun “gravel garden.” It’s a large raised space with full-sun natives planted in clay soils with 6 inches of clean limestone on top. The limestone layer prevents seeds from germinating on the top and weeds from coming up from below.

“So far I’ve had about two years of zero weeding and zero watering. … It’s a little bit labor intensive at first and has a different aesthetic,” Ross said. “But I’ve found it to be really successful.”

Why plant native?

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Plants and insects native to Iowa have evolved together for generations. Think of staples like goldenrod, milkweed and wild phlox. Gardeners are prioritizing native plants because just 0.1 percent of Iowa’s original prairies remain.

If you provide the habitat, the creatures will come, Rawson said. Before the derecho, she said she’d get sparrows in her bird feeders and occasionally a hummingbird and a monarch. Now, she gets “zillions of fireflies” and has spotted a rusty patch bumblebee and American bumblebee, both of which are endangered, in her yard.

“On September days, I will get hundreds of monarchs coming through my yard,” Rawson said. “I see hummingbirds every day all over my garden. It’s like you need air traffic control sometimes.”

She’s taken down her bird feeders because the birds forage for seeds in her native garden. “These plants support these native birds that we’ve got; we don’t need to have the bird feeders up,” Rawson said. “That’s what our environment was for.”

Is sourcing native plants easy? Depends on who you ask.

Rawson and her neighbors tend to share plugs, divide up their plants and save seeds. Adams is giving out milkweed seeds with candy this Halloween.

But you may have a hard time finding true natives in garden centers. Make sure you check the plant tag. If the name of the plant has quotation marks around it, that means it’s a nativar or cultivar — plants that have been selectively bred to favor certain characteristics, like shorter stems or different colored petals.

Some of these characteristics are purely cosmetic. Penstemon digitalis — or Foxglove Beardtongue — naturally has green leaves, but the nativar penstemon digitalis “Husker Red” has burgundy leaves. Other species have been altered in ways that impact wildlife.

“Sometimes when you’re going to a lawn and garden center, the plants have been altered in such a way that might make them survive better in a plant nursery but don’t necessarily sustain the bees and birds and bugs in the same way,” Rawson said.

But don’t dig up native plants from ditches. Prairie Moon in Minnesota and Prairie Nursery in Wisconsin supply true native plants, if you’re willing to order online. Indian Creek Nature Center and Linn County Master Gardeners occasionally hold native plant sales as well.

“I think that our biggest impediment in Cedar Rapids and in the area is that we don’t have a good place to source the native plants,” Rawson said. “And there’s not a lot of information on how to get started. … I wish that the nature center would offer a workshop on starting native gardens.”

To encourage others beyond her neighborhood, Rawson started sharing her native gardening experience, tips and book recommendations online. “I ain’t no master gardener and this is not your grandpa’s lawn” greets guests when they visit the Iowa Native Gardener blog.

How to get started

For those getting started, preparation is the most important part of putting in a native garden. Smother the area with a tarp or cardboard for at least two months. This will kill the grass and weeds. You can also use herbicide to accomplish this.

“Putting the right kinds of plants together is important so that one species doesn’t just dominate another,” Ross said. “And I think over time, native gardens can be really low maintenance but the one key is that when you first install them … you have to make sure that you’re getting rid of all the weeds and the weed seeds those first couple of years so that the plants can establish themselves.”

Adams said she wants people to understand that starting a garden has an impact on the people and wildlife around you.

“We have chipmunks, squirrels, birds, rabbits … a mom deer and her two babies that are here all the time. … And when you have that thriving ecosystem, I feel like you as a person can thrive.”

Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com