2022 Plant Sale

Create a wildlife oasis in your yard! The Wild Ones Keweenaw chapter is holding its first sale of the summer to help you bring a little more life to your yard. We  are offering a selection of native plants to get you started gardening for butterflies, birds, and pollinators.

Blue Vervain Verbena hastata

Bumblebees are important pollinators of Blue Vervain; it’s always a pleasure to see the bees’ big, fuzzy bodies clinging to the delicate purple flowers. The plant readily self-seeds and prefers the wetter conditions of marshes, ditches, wet shores and stream banks—but in the Keweenaw it will do fine in just about any sunny garden.
Also known as Blue Verbena, it’s an excellent native landscaping substitute for invasive purple loosestrife and purple foxglove. Deer avoid it; rabbits have been known to nibble on young foliage. The seeds are a staple for small mammals and birds.

Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia hirta

OUT OF STOCK
This beloved roadside wildflower tolerates nearly all sunny conditions. A biennial or short-lived perennial, it will return year after year if the seeds land in their happy place.

Bush’s Poppy Mallow Callirhoe bushii

OUT OF STOCK
Rare in the wild, this lovely plant with tulip-like blooms is found in the central Midwest. It’s taproot helps it survive dry conditions and even drought. Visiting pollinators include bees and hummingbirds.

Lance-leaf coreopsis Coreopsis lanceolata

OUT OF STOCK
Lance-leaf coreopsis is the hands-down workhorse of the summer garden, throwing an exuberant display of flowers when it seems like every other plant has thrown in the towel. Dead-head to keep the show going on, and on, and on. As you would expect, lance-leaf coreopsis is not fussy. It just likes lots of sun and not too much water.

Dense Blazing Star
Liatris spicata

OUT OF STOCK
This gorgeous midsummer bloomer deserves a place in most any garden, so long as it’s not too dry; it might appreciate a drink during those occasional midsummer droughts. Consider pairing with another showstopper, purple coneflower. Very similar in appearance to prairie blazing star, Liatris spicata has even more flowers per head with smooth-pressed floral bracts, while the floral bracts of L. pycnostachya are clearly curved outward, or recurved.

Gray-headed Coneflower Ratibida pinnata

Found in the wild along woodland edges, it adapts readily to the garden, where you can appreciate its shuttlecock flowers up close. Fair warning: those long, graceful stems do tend to flop, so consider the back of the border or tucking them amidst sturdier customers like purple coneflower.

Gray-headed coneflower is drought-tolerant, always a plus with our unpredictable summers, and deer resistant.

Helen’s Flower Helenium autumnale

This delightful plant loves full sun and tolerates all kinds of soils, doing best if they are damp. The charming flowers bloom en masse late in the season—maybe plant several together in a nice clump. The genus is thought to have been named by Linnaeus (the guy who began giving plants scientific names) for the world’s most beautiful woman, Helen of Troy. Legend has it that the flowers sprung up from the ground where her tears fell.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit Arisaema triphyllum

OUT OF STOCK
Who doesn’t love Jack-in-the-Pulpit? It’s one of those rare plants that delights the eye mainly though its clean lines and elegant structure. As for color, green and maroon are colors, plus the berries ripen to a brilliant scarlet. And guess what? It’s easy to grow, so long as you give it what it needs: a bit of shade and moisture.

Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium

OUT OF STOCK
One of our most attractive ornamental grasses, it sports attractive blue-green foliage that turns a striking burgundy red in fall, with stems topped by pale, silvery seed heads. Like most native grasses, it appears impervious to insects and deer.

Prairie Coneflower Ratibida columnifera

This cheery plant blooms throughout the summer, filling in happily when others are trying to make up their minds to flower. The blossoms, which can vary in color from golden to red, are held aloft on stiff stems and are generally at their best in a mass planting. As you might expect, this sun lover grows well in a variety of conditions, so long as they aren’t too wet.

Prairie Blazing Star
Liatris pycnostachnya

Right up there with purple coneflower as one of the showiest native plants for the home garden. It looks great with other natives including Purple Coneflower, Rattlesnake Master, Wild Quinine and prairie grasses in formal or naturalized settings. It loves medium, damp soil, but isn’t as fussy as its gorgeous looks imply. if conditions are a bit drier, it will just be a bit shorter.

Rattlesnake Master Eryngium yuccifolium

A very unusual plant and a perfect choice to replace nonnative globe thistles in your native garden. The opposite of fussy, it grows well in most soils, so long as it has full sun. Fun fact: Rattlesnake master is cousin to the carrot.

Showy Milkweed Asclepias speciosa

SOLD OUT
Somewhat similar to common milkweed, showy milkweed is not an aggressive spreader, so you can use it in a tended garden. (You might want to pull a few stems out at some point. Oh well.) A clump is stunning when in bloom, and like its cousin, it’s happy in lousy conditions. It will do fine in just about any sunny spot so long as it doesn’t get wet feet.

Spotted Bee Balm
Monarda punctata

OUT OF STOCK
Spotted Bee Balm, a pollinator magnet, has been designated as having special value to native bees according to the Pollinator Program of The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Preferring drier conditions, Spotted Bee Balm is more drought tolerant than other monardas and readily self-seeds on open, sandy soils. This is a good thing, because you will want lots of this plant.

Spotted Bee Balm, also known as Dotted Horsemint, is aromatic and avoided by deer and rabbits. The plant is attractive when paired with butterfly weed and lead plant.

Rose Mallow Hibiscus laevis

OUT OF STOCK
These blooms are so fancy you might be tempted to think they aren’t native to the U.S., but indeed they are. While it loves the wet, you can grow rose mallow (aka halberd-leaf rosemallow) in your garden, so long as it has rich, moist soil. This isn’t a plant for dry sand. While it will tolerate some shade, it flowers best in full sun. It attracts butterflies and other pollinators with its showy blossoms.