Lower Makefield Township Native Plant Demonstration Garden

The garden was installed in 2009 to beautify the site while benefiting birds, butterflies, and other pollinators. Bucks County Master Gardeners are now maintaining the garden for the enjoyment of all LMT residents and visitors. We hope this garden will encourage our neighbors to add some native plants to their home landscapes and community gardens. There are approximately 6-8 volunteers who work in this garden.

The garden was created to benefit birds and demonstrate that native plants could be incorporated into residential and public gardens. Unfortunately, the birds "introduced" some unwelcome foes – invasive and aggressive plants including mugwort, bedstraw, poison ivy, and goldenrod. These plants out-competed many of the original plantings.

The current plans are to restore the garden by trying different methods to suppress the undesirables:

• We laid down a thick layer of arborist wood chips (courtesy of Lower Makefield Township) to suppress the mugwort;
• We've planted new natives to fill in and compete against annual weeds (LMT and Bucks Beautiful paid for the new plants);
• Most importantly, we have developed a Master Gardener committee to watch over the garden – committee members are signing up to take a week and be responsible for watering and weeding and (alas!) monitoring for deer damage.

In the future, we hope to add more plants that were not available in the spring and some signs to explain the garden to the community. This is a public garden along a busy road and a path used by walkers, runners, and bicyclists. The plant list incorporates all of the plants - both scientific and common names - and was used to create the plant labels. There are a few things that have come up which were not on the list such as phlox and willow oak: more bird introductions!

Plant List for Lower Makefield Township Garden