Consider Iowa’s heirloom flowers in your next planting

Discussions to create healthy, more diverse habitat for our lawns and farmlands are so important.

Iowa’s heirloom flowers, shrubs, vines and fruit trees are a horticultural legacy overlooked in these discussions. They have enormous potential to enrich our backyard environments.

Still blooming in vacant lots and alleys, beside old farmhouses and cemeteries and increasingly in our gardens, these hardy survivors — whether cultivated or wild — have attracted and supported habitat for pollinators and all manner of insects, birds, and wildlife in Iowa for 150 years and longer.

Easy to grow, chemical free, beautiful, often fragrant, these plants are a gift from generations of Iowa women and men. The variety is endless — from roses to lilacs, snow peach trees to Missouri current bushes, honeysuckle vines, petunias, zinnias, phlox, feverfew, cannas, ending with the fall-blooming clematis and little chestnut-colored chrysanthemums blooming thru the first snow.

For those unable to undertake a large project like a prairie, a garden is simple. Perhaps plant some milkweed, an apricot tree (from a seed!) or some phlox and zinnias. Your choices are limitless. Everything we do matters.

Good sources for information are the Seed Savers in Decorah, or Backyard Solutions in Iowa City. Most importantly, find a neighbor or friend growing these lovely old plants. We’re all happy to share.

Antonia Russo

Solon Heritage Flower Society