In the spring of 2019, I decided to add gardens and chickens to my yard to supplement my homeschooling curriculum. Fortunately, I came across a native nursery set up at my local farmer’s market. After listening to what they had to say, I decided to give natives a try. I began with a native pollinator patch.
During that summer, I saw the native plants thrive and attract many pollinators. The perennials I had purchased from big box stores sat untouched. They looked pathetic compared to the natives. I dug them up and replaced them with more natives.
I saw such a difference after creating habitat, that I was hooked. As the years went by, I added more natives: flowers, grasses, vines, shrubs and trees. I removed some invasives and replaced them with natives and non-invasive annuals for more color.
I started helping the nursery with their social media and learning as much as I could about natives. My passion and excitement for educating others about natives led me to create my own Facebook group to learn, share seeds, and create a community.
A previously empty landscape has been transformed into raised beds for a kitchen garden and includes noninvasive annuals for a spot of early color. The area includes small native trees and shrubs such as dogwood, sumac, ninebark, and redbud.
A huge empty patch is slowly being filled with native pollinator beds, a berry patch, a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and lots of native trees and shrubs, including edibles such as American hazelnut, pawpaw, persimmon, and elderberry. Note the growth in the trees in the back. It filled in quickly.
I removed invasive shrubs such as burning bush and installed a Monarch Waystation and a NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat with native host and nectar plants.
More empty space filled with noninvasive zinnias, a plethora of native host and nectar plants, and native grasses. Each summer, my yard is full of butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, birds, and other beneficial pollinators.
A journey of replacing invasive nonnatives and barren land with native flowers, shrubs, and trees. My yard is now full of life and habitat!
Emilie Grace Yochim is a homeschooling mom to two teens and has been married to Philip for 20 years. Since 2019, Emilie has developed a slight obsession with pollinators, poof heads (bantam Satin and Silkie chickens), and native plants.
She enjoys educating others about planting natives and identifying pollinators by sharing pictures and information about the native plants, chickens, and wildlife in her yard. She also enjoys making terrible memes and puns that she finds hilarious.
I was seven years old when my aunt and uncle took my sister and me bird watching in the woods of wild, wonderful West Virginia. While vacationing with them at a very nice state park, they decided to give my parents a break from us for the morning. To them, we were “city kids,” having lived all our lives in a house that was built in an old farm field along with 150 identical units about 20 miles from downtown Philadelphia. I have construction photos of the property from 1950 and there isn’t a tree to be seen anywhere.
On the other hand, my uncle had lived his whole life in the Mountain State and was an avid hunter, fisherman and nature lover. My mother said that her brother would never live anywhere else in the world other than West Virginia. Years later, I finally understood the spell the mountains had placed on him and why he could never leave.
My sister and I were doing what kids our ages would normally do, running ahead of our caretakers by a good 20 or 30 yards at least. I don’t know exactly what we were looking at or listening to. Maybe we were “watching for birds” because we were on a “bird watching” trip, right?
“Kids, come back! I have something to show you!”
After repeating himself a few times (maybe several times), we finally turned around and trudged back down the trail, reluctantly retracing our steps. When he came into view we could see him bending down looking at something on the ground in the middle of the trail.
Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina). The reddish eye indicates that this is a male.
“It’s a box turtle and you guys ran right past it. I’m glad you didn’t step on it. Have you ever seen one of these before?”
The answer to his question was a resounding no, because we were city kids and box turtles usually don’t hang around in old farm fields surrounded by 150 houses. He went on to explain to us, very gently as I remember, that there are a lot of things to see in the woods, but you have to slow down and take your time, or you might miss some of the amazing things that are out there.
There was a character named Ferris Bueller in a movie several years back about this one day he took off from school. He went joy riding in a sports car, took in a Major League Baseball game and sang on a float in a parade. At one point in the movie, he turns and speaks directly into the camera.
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
If Ferris and my uncle had ever met, I feel like they would have gotten along just fine.
So that’s what it’s all about. Go slow, take your time, and look all around…. rocket science, huh?
Of course, there are plenty of folks who go into the woods and completely ignore this advice. The current world record for completing the Appalachian Trail in the shortest time is held by the Belgian ultrarunner Karel Sabbe who traversed the 2,173-mile trail in 41 days, 7 hours and 39 minutes, which means he averaged 53 miles per day! He accomplished this feat, which is equivalent to running 20 miles more than a marathon every day for 41 days straight, during July and August of 2018. Can you imagine how many box turtles he missed on this trip?
Actually, I don’t begrudge Mr. Sabbe too much because he accomplished a truly amazing feat of athleticism, and he did something no one else in the world has done. And maybe he turned around in Maine and leisurely retraced his steps back to Georgia at a 5-6 mile per day pace so he could see everything that he missed. No, probably not…
I have a few other rules/guidelines I follow every time I head to the woods. Obviously, I always take precautions against biting insects and the burning rays of the sun. I have an old smartphone and the GPS app I use to navigate to avoid getting lost drains the battery quickly, so I take a couple of power sticks along. I carry a roll of orange flagging tape to mark the locations of interesting plants so I can find them again. I wonder what the occasional deer or squirrel hunter thinks when they see my orange flags tied to random tree branches out in the middle of nowhere?
The most valuable implement to take into the woods, however, is the hiking stick. I use a wooden one that was hand-crafted (paw-crafted?) for me by a beaver. While it is useful for maintaining one’s balance climbing over downed trees or scampering up and down creek banks, I find it indispensable for removing spider webs. While bushwhacking through the woods, I wave my stick around in circles or just swing it up and down in front of me. Alternatively, If you are trapsing through the woods with another person or group, always hang back in second or third place, never lead. This will ensure that the other person gets a face full of spider web, not you.
I recently discovered another reason to use a hiking stick. A few weeks ago, I was crossing a field on my way back to my vehicle after an enjoyable walk in the woods. The field had been subjected to a controlled burn a few months earlier and I was concentrating on the wide variety of plants that were popping up all over the place. Suddenly, I heard a clunk as my stick hit something solid, which was unusual for western Kentucky (we don’t have many rocks here). I looked down and sure enough, my stick had landed on top of a box turtle who had sealed itself up tight in its shell. As I was taught when I was seven years old, I picked it up and checked the shell for damage (there was none) and waited for a while, hoping it would decide to check me out also. Unfortunately, it declined to make an appearance, so I returned it to the ground and continued across the field.
And as I made my way back to my car, all I thought about was my uncle and all the other things he taught me besides how to take a walk in the woods.
Robert Dunlap is an amateur naturalist living near Paducah who owns every Peterson Field Guide that has ever published.
Alan Weakley and the Southeastern Flora Team are thrilled to announce the release of FloraQuest: Northern Tier, a new plant identification and discovery app covering more than 5,800 wildflowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other vascular plants occurring in the northern part of The Flora of the Southeastern United States (FSUS).
With FloraQuest: Northern Tier, you can customize the northern tier flora by state and physiographic province.
With easy-to-use graphic keys, advanced dichotomous keys, habitat descriptions, range maps, and 20,000 diagnostic photographs, FloraQuest: Northern Tier is the perfect companion for your botanical explorations. FloraQuest: Northern Tier doesn’t need an internet connection to run, so you can take it with you wherever you go in the field.
You can use FloraQuest to learn about and identify all plants occurring within the 12-state “northern tier” portion of the FSUS. The app allows you to filter the state and physiographic region in which you are botanizing, seeing only relevant results close to you. Do you struggle to remember complicated botanical terms? We’ve got you covered: click on a word you don’t know, and the definition will pop up in the app without you having to leave the page!
This app covers Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Washington (D.C.), Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In the coming years, our Flora team will be releasing additional apps for the remaining regions of the Southeastern Flora. Next up is North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Begin the graphic key with a choice of which plant group you are in, with multiple images for each group
Answer further quick questions in the Graphic Key to find the plant you’ve encountered. Here, 14 plants matched.
Browse plants based on search or graphic key results
Species photos
Species distribution, phenology, habitat, comments, synonymy, and more
Species range maps with legend
More options
Configure which states or regions within states to show
We remain committed to traditional floras and making flora data accessible: you can access the FSUS web app or download the latest PDF of the Flora of the Southeastern United States for free (donations optional) at ncbg.unc.edu/research/unc-herbarium/floras/.
Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences; Blacksburg, VA
Country Home Farms; Pembroke, VA
Eastern North America’s tall fescue grasslands produce a plethora of beef stockers, replacement heifers, and cow-calf pairs. These pastures replaced a variety of native woodlands and grasslands in the past 70 years. While tall fescue is a useful forage for much of the year, most tall fescue acreage consists of toxic endophyte Kentucky 31 tall fescue. This endophyte reduces animal performance in terms of average daily gain, reduced reproductive success, and decreased milk production. A lot of this tall fescue acreage cannot be easily converted to alternate forages, such as novel endophyte tall fescue or warm-season forages, in part due to soil conservation as well as economic constraints.
Producers might be able to reduce or eliminate toxic endophyte effects in cattle by overseeding this tall fescue with clovers. Clovers (Trifolium spp) are commonly overseeded into tall fescue stands. Red (T. pratense) and white (T. repens) clovers are currently recommended in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia for pasture clover. There are native alternatives to red and white clover.
A suite of native clovers are present in the United States. Kentucky historically had at least three native species from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Plateau. These species were present in native grasslands and woodlands throughout the region at the time of European settlement. Native clovers declined with land use change, overgrazing, and fire suppression, but they are still present in modest populations. Native clovers serve a similar nutritional role to wildlife as red and white clovers serve for livestock. Conservation crop science has led to some study as to whether native clovers are agronomically competitive with red and white clover.
Cattle nutrition can justify native clover conservation in pastures
Clovers provide crude protein to cattle in cool-season grasslands. This additional crude protein comes with no additional nitrogen (N) fertilization. Native clovers often serve as the protein concentrate for native ungulates such as bison and deer, as well as monogastric species such as turkeys. Secondary metabolites, such as isoflavones, can dilute or interfere with the alkaloids found in tall fescue pastures. Screening native clover species for traditional metrics of nutritive value can make subsequent analysis for secondary metabolites more effective. Ultimately, this project would provide publishable data regarding the nutritional value of native clovers in comparison to red and white clover under common conditions. This data would guide existing research at Virginia Tech, including Bee-friendly Beef (NIFA-funded). Native clovers are a prime candidate for native plants in livestock production. Including native plants in working grasslands could provide production and conservation opportunities, especially if native clovers offer improved animal nutrition over introduced species.
Native clovers can support cattle and co-exist with non-native grasses
Native clovers are an important protein source in the western rangelands. Species nutritional value has been reported for several of the species native to California, Wyoming, and Oregon range (Bentley & Green, 1954; Cooper, 1957; Cooper and Hunter, 1959; Hamilton, 1961; Hamilton & Gilbert, 1971). These western clovers establish in stands and grow similarly to their nonnative equivalents (Lulow, 2008). Clovers from the eastern United States have only recently been investigated for their agronomic potential. Native clovers have similar agronomic performance relative to traditional red and white clovers.
Image: Jonathan Kubesch
1990s research suggests that native and nonnative clovers cannot be easily crossed, but native species such as Carolina (T. carolinianum) and peanut (T. polymorphum) clovers in addition to the buffalo clovers have improved pest resistance relative to red and white clovers (Taylor et al., 1994; Quesenberry et al., 1997). Running buffalo clover (T. stoloniferum) is competitive in orchardgrass stands subject to hay and forage clipping schedules (Barker and Sparks, 2013). Running buffalo clover also appears to persist in regularly grazed pastures (e.g. Taylor Fork Ecological Area, Eastern Kentucky University; Good Enough Farm, Peru, Indiana). Buffalo clover (T. reflexum) has a similar seed weight and comparable establishment as red and white clovers (Sanne et al., 2023; Kubesch et al., 2023). This work is lacking in reporting the nutritional value of these native clovers.
Click on the image to view and download the PDF of the proclamation.
Governor Andy Beshear has proclaimed April 2023 as “Native Plant Month in Kentucky.” In his proclamation the Governor said:
“Now, therefore, I, Andy Beshear, Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, do hereby proclaim April, 2023, as Native Plant Month in Kentucky and encourage Kentucky citizens to observe this occasion by removing non-native invasive plants in our yards and communities, planting native trees, shrubs, and flowers, and educating our citizens about the many benefits of native plants.“
In the fall of 2022, The Garden Club of America launched an initiative to request proclamations from all 50 Governors to make April 2023 Native Plant Month in every state! As of April 4, 2023, 42 of the 50 states have issued such a proclamation. You can see all of the state proclamations here: Native Plant Laws and Proclamations by State.
In addition to the state proclamations, The Garden Club of America, beginning in 2021 has worked with Senators Rob Portman (R-OH retired), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Mike Braun (R-IN) to introduce and pass resolutions in the US Senate to declare April as National Native Plant Month. Resolutions were passed in 2021 and 2022. Senators Hirono and Braun introduced the resolution for 2023 in March and the expectation is that the Senate will pass the proclamation as soon as it returns from the Easter recess. You can read the press release from Senator Hirono’s office here: Hirono, Braun Introduce Resolution Designating April 2023 as National Native Plant Month.
There are over 150 organizations in 49 states supporting the Senate resolution, including the Kentucky Native Plant Society. In our supporting email, the Society said “The Kentucky Native Plant Society is in full support of the Senate resolution to designate the month of April as National Native Plant Month! Native plants are essential to both the well-being of our natural ecosystems and the public enjoyment of these native ecosystems. This resolution is in full alignment with our organizational purpose to promote conservation of native plants and natural plant communities and to promote public education in botanical science.”
That’s the question I hear most often at native plant events. People want to know where they can purchase Kentucky native plants.
If you’re in central Kentucky, you have a nursery nearby that’s dedicated to native plants: Ironweed Native Plant Nursery. Every plant is a Kentucky native.
Owner Alicia Bosela started Ironweed Native Plant Nursery in Columbia, Kentucky about eight years ago. Last fall, Alicia bought property in Waddy Kentucky and moved her nursery there in February of this year. In the last two months, Alicia has made many new connections with educators and growers in the area. Alicia says “The momentum for native plants is growing!”
Alicia’s still moving in. She’s currently in the process of expanding an area for native plants that prefer shade by hanging shade cloth.
Fortunately for us, Ironweed is fully stocked with native plants ready for new homes. You’ll find an amazing selection of flowers, grasses, trees, and shrubs, all native to Kentucky.
Ironweed Native Plant Nursery is open for business by appointment. The nursery’s number is (270) 250-3587 and the email address is info@ironweednursery.com. The physical location is 400 Waddy Road, Waddy, KY 40076, which is easy to find. The entrance is on the east side of the road and clearly marked. You can also order online by pointing your browser to https://www.ironweednursery.com/. You can follow the nursery on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Ironweednursery/.
A couple of happy customers, Kris and Charlie Goggin visit Ironweed.
By Jonathan O.C. Kubesch1,2, Derek Hilfiker 1,2, Frank Reith 1,2, Dillon Golding 1,3 , Joe House4, Jenna Beville1, Peter Arnold1,5, and Forrest Brown1
Virginia Tech School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Blacksburg, VA
Country Home Farms, Pembroke, VA
Hoot Owl Hollow Farm, Woodlawn, VA
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Arnold Classic Farms, Chestertown, MD
The vast majority of Kentucky’s population is not directly involved with livestock. However, backyard chickens have become a popular trend in recent years. Many people are raising chickens both for their fresh eggs and as pets. Some households even dabble in turkeys and ducks. While these birds can be a fun and rewarding addition to any backyard, there is some debate about whether or not they harm native plants and landscaping. In this article, we discuss both sides of the argument to determine whether backyard chickens help or harm native plants. Potential solutions and management ideas will also be presented in this article to balance your interest in native plants as well as backyard poultry.
Benefits of Backyard Poultry for Native Plants
There are several ways that you and your native plants can benefit from raising backyard poultry. In this section, we’ll review a few.
Pest control
One of the primary benefits of backyard chickens and other poultry is that they can help control pests. Chickens love to eat insects and other small animals that can be harmful to native plants. A few examples of this are chickens searching and eating beetle grubs such as June beetles (Cotinis nitida), common black ants (Lasius niger), and brown marmorated stink bugs (Halyomorpha halys). Removing these insects can be beneficial to desired plants. By reducing the number of pests in your backyard, your plants are more likely to thrive and grow.
Free organic fertilizer
Another benefit of backyard chickens is that they can provide a source of natural fertilizer. Manure is composed of ammonium, which is a volatile form of nitrogen, and organic N, which is stable but not immediately available. Poultry manure has one considerable advantage: it does not require commercial production and is a by-product of livestock production. Chicken manure is high in nitrogen, which is essential for healthy plant growth. By adding chicken manure to your garden, you can improve the soil quality and increase the nutrient content of your plants. This can help native plants grow stronger and healthier, making them more resistant to pests and diseases.
Poultry manure is a valuable resource that is often undervalued and subsequently misused in gardens and on farms. Fresh poultry manure typically contains 1.3% nitrogen (N), of which 55% is available for crop uptake (Zublena et. al 1996). Poultry manure also contains between 1.1-1.3% P2O5 (phosphate) and 0.5-0.8% K2O (potash). When using recommended poultry stocking rates, an average of 19 lbs N/ac, 31 lbs P2O5/ac, and 16 lbs K2O/ac are defecated in poultry manure monthly. If you were to assume a 40-lb bag of 13-13-13, a commonly used home fertilizer, costs $20, then accounting for the nitrogen contribution of poultry manures saves you $73 per acre each month on fertilizer. Scaled to your backyard, this might translate to $33 of nitrogen savings.
Of course, the nutrients from the manure need to be utilized, otherwise the full economic benefits will not be realized. Native plants are often slower to use nitrogen compared to introduced species, and so limited applications of poultry manure are preferable to larger deposits. To best utilize the manure nutrients, consider rotating poultry through garden or lawn areas, which will help nourish plant growth without the need for synthetic fertilizers. Backyard gardeners might prioritize getting their bird manure into vegetable gardens, then cool-season lawns, and finally into native plantings. Synthetic fertilizers are incapable of adding carbon to the soil as they do not contain carbon. When considering the immediate savings on fertilizer and the long-term increase in soil carbon, having poultry provides many other benefits beyond the meat and eggs produced.
Figure 1. Nitrogen cycle in mineral soils showing various transformations and processes related to fertilization practices (Havlin et al., 2014).
Nitrogen cycling in mineral soils is a complex process with several pathways: plant uptake, soil-bound, aqueous losses via leaching, gaseous losses via denitrification, nitrification, and urea hydrolysis (Figure 1). Although manure and urea forms of nitrogen result in gaseous losses, utilizing litter as a part of a fertility regimen is a beneficial use of a by-product of livestock production. Additionally, using a mobile coop may be advantageous compared to stationary chicken coops, which often result in exposed soil. Exposed soil presents an issue when considering the advantages of poultry litter fertilization. When there is a lack of plant cover to protect the soil, there is additionally a lack of plant matter to incorporate nitrogen from poultry litter.
Improved soil organic matter
Poultry manures also provide valuable carbon (C) to the soil, something that inorganic fertilizers cannot do. Coops and runs full of wood shavings, sawdust, or other carbon sources can bind up the nitrogen in poultry manure and produce a more stable compost. Poultry manure can be a more stable form of fertilizer for native plants as the bedding material immobilizes nitrogen and then gradually releases the nitrogen back into the rhizosphere.
Plant roots can then uptake this nitrogen. This carbon is cycled by soil microbes into soil organic matter, which helps soil hold more water and provide more nutrients to plants, among many other benefits. While it is difficult to place a monetary value on the carbon additions of poultry manure, repeated applications will build up soil organic matter, saving you money in the long run from the countless benefits seen from increased organic matter. It should be noted that shavings are an additional cost to consider. This organic matter can also serve as an enriched mulch around native plant beds that can suppress weed seedlings.
Health and safety considerations
The direct application of fresh manure can also be detrimental to plants and their fruits. High levels of nitrogen, in the forms of urea and ammonia, and salts are often toxic to common vegetables and fruits. A direct application may quickly kill many desirable species. Conversely, manure with shavings will increase the amount of carbon present, which will immobilize nitrogen, making it less available to plants (Mahr, 2012). Bacteria harmful to humans such as E. Coli are often present in manure as well.
Composting recommendations vary, but it is generally accepted that poultry litter should be aged for 3-5 months and have reached a temperature of 140-160 degrees Fahrenheit. The USDA recommends waiting 120 days before eating crops fertilized with manure (Swanson, 2016).
Native plants for the backyard flock
Certain native plants can tolerate disturbance and high soil fertility, such as the rare previously federally-listed running buffalo clover (Trifolium stoloniferum). In another case, wild onions (Allium canadense) tend to grow rapidly, exhibit good health, and have increased numbers after a period of poultry foraging (F. Reith, personal observation). Across eastern North America, some native plants can even require regular disturbance to remain useful to wildlife (Table 1) (Kubesch et al., 2022; Brooke & Harper, 2018).
Common name
Scientific name
Big bluestem
Andropogon gerardii
Little bluestem
Schizachyrium scoparium
Indiangrass
Sorghastrum nutans
Black-eyed Susan
Rudbeckia hirta
Maximilian sunflower
Helianthus maximiliani
Annual gaillardia
Gaillardia pulchella
Running buffalo clover**
Trifolium stoloniferum
Wild Onion
Allium canadense
Table 1. Native herbaceous plants with tolerance to high fertility and/or disturbance conditions.*
*Based on ongoing research at Virginia Tech as part of Bee-Friendly Beef; Kubesch, 2018. **Running buffalo clover will be commercially available in 2027 in Kentucky. The authors anticipate that commercial availability will allow this species to serve as an alternate turf.
It is important to have woody plants that can benefit poultry year-round and cater to their needs. These species should provide shelter, protection, and serve as a food source. A variety of trees and shrubs can create layered diversity even across a “thin” woodland or a mixed range. Picture this as a layered forest garden for your flock.
Amongst the native species, there are a few that stand out and will serve your birds well:
Mulberry (Morus spp.) is a native deciduous tree that most landowners probably already have on their property. It produces sweet berries that are loved by poultry and it can tolerate a wide range of soils and is easy to grow.
Another great woody plant is serviceberry. Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) is another native deciduous shrub that can tolerate poultry well. It produces clusters of white flowers in the spring followed by blue to black berries in the summer.
Elderberry (Sambucus spp.) is a small tree that you might already have due to its preference for rich soils. This tree would do well downslope in a backyard. It provides shade and serves as an additional food source.
A tree that also might be found downslope is the dogwood (Cornus spp.) as it too thrives in rich, fertile soil. It will provide your flock with late season fruit to further diversify their diet.
Another great tree, especially for the winter months, is the crabapple. Crabapple (Malus spp.) has a tendency to hold onto its fruit until late fall/early winter and gradually drop off.
Further recommendations for shelter include eastern red cedars (Juniperus virginiana) and Willows (Salix spp.). Additional woody plant suggestions include various bramble fruits that are easily accessible to your birds. These include, but are not limited to blackberries, raspberries, and dewberries (Rubus spp).
Poultry can also be used to convert lawns into native plantings by destroying the existing vegetation (Arnold et al., 2022). This process is often unintentionally done when people first get into backyard chickens or poultry; however, it can be beneficial. Birds will forage and scratch through existing vegetation repeatedly when looking for food. Poultry preferentially eat broadleaf plants over grassy ones which can help to control the succulent broadleaf weeds around native plants. Furthermore, the continuous presence and addition of manure will also suppress and kill plants.
These actions combined will rapidly convert land to mud, dust, and manure when there is a large and stationary population. Poultry will not disturb more than the first 2-3 inches of soil generally, but nonetheless are an efficient form of “tillage” (Lee & Foreman, 2011). Such shallow tillage might be ideal for native plant seeding as it creates a fertile and loose seed bed. This scratching will likely be insufficient to plug plants. Controlled long-term presence of poultry may therefore allow for a natural, low cost, and easy form of native seed bed preparation.
