 Hello, I'm Peter Bacher, Properties Director here at Maine Audubon, and it's mid-summer, mid-August actually, and I thought today I'd talk a little bit with you about some native plants that we have on site, and specifically native plants that we're selling in our native plants, which has been running all season. We appreciate those of you who have visited our website and have purchased plants online for a curbside pickup. That has some nice advantages for everyone, but the downside is for many of you you don't get to see the plants beforehand, and I thought it would be worthwhile to give you a brief tour of our hoop house and our outdoor growing area so that you can see some of these plants, and some of them are well-kept secrets, but so these are some of our poor orphans here. It's really too bad that they're still here. This here is Helianthus decapetilus thin leaf sunflower. I say it's sad that they're still here. They want to be in the ground now. It's a nice mid-sea, you know it's flowering now, kind of a yellow daisy-like flower. The other one, which I'm growing in my yard and they're falling all over, is Heliopsis helianthoides or false sunflower or ox-eye sunflower you might know it at. These guys are flopping around a little bit because they've been living in a pot for too long. They'd like to be in the ground. When they're growing in your home landscape, they're going to be about four to five feet tall. They're blooming right now. It's a real nice bright yellow flower. It's a pretty plant. This grouping in the back is obedient plant, physoesthesia. It's called obedient plant because when you bend the flowers, it's supposed to hold the shape, but I'm not having that much luck with it. But it's called obedient plant more for how the flowers bend than for its behavior in the garden. If you have a spot that has a good sun and a soil on the moist side, it will spread quite well by rhizomes. Not a small plant. We'll grow three feet tall. Some lovely ones here that nobody gets to see until now. A nice versatile evergreen native plant is Eastern Arbivite or Northern White Cedar or Eastern White Cedar. You get the idea. It's a cedar. These here are Thuja occidentalis. We have not sheared these. You've seen these, I'm sure. It's a common plant that people use for evergreen hedging, for screening. It's a nice alternative to something like a white pine which is going to become a large tree. This is more medium sized and you can shear it if you'd like it to be more dense or keep it lower. I have to tell you, one of the downsides is deer do like to browse on Arbivite. It's one of their favorite foods. If you're in an area with a high deer pressure, you should be aware of that going in. But it's a lovely hedging plant. You can space them three or four feet apart and let them fill. They're not a small growing tree. It'll get 30 feet or more if you just let it go. But you can easily shear it and prune it back to keep it denser and fuller than that. There are tons of cultivars of Eastern Arbivite in nurseries all over, but we are selling the straight species. Thuja occidentalis, not a cultivar. Milkweeds are a great introduction plant for people who want to see insects and life in their garden. Of course, milkweed is the poster child for monarchs because that's what monarchs feed on. If you plant milkweed, you're likely going to have monarchs. It's a pretty cool thing. The first year you plant it, all of a sudden you go out there and find a caterpillar eating it and saying, wow, and you have monarch butterflies flying around. This one is swamp milkweed, nice rose flower, tall growing, supports a ton of pollinators, and the monarchs love it. This is the butterfly weed, a type of milkweed very popular for the monarchs, but it's a plant that can really take a dry spot. That doesn't mean put them in and don't water them. These plants have been cared for a bit. They don't have their taproot established yet. They're not fully rooted. So early on, it's good to water them. Over the season, you can wean it down and let them go on their own. It is important to remember to water them early on to get them established. If that's a problem, if you're going to be planting these far from a house or a water faucet, it's best to plant them in the fall or in the spring when natural rainfall will help you out. Mid-summer like right now, which is fine to plant, but you do have to give them some water. Another grass type plant that we have, this is actually a sedge, Pennsylvania sedge. It grows about eight to ten inches tall. It's a pretty adaptable plant. This can grow in full sun. It's a pretty deep shade. It's best, I think, with a little bit of both. It can also take some dry conditions as well. As you can see, as it's laid out here in the bed, it has a nice textural look to it. So sometimes just the grouping of these around a stone can really be an effective landscape thing. It's also popular for use as a no-mow lawn, an area where you want to have sort of a grass appearance that you don't mow and can take occasional traffic. But pretty looking plant. I think all by itself, you might think it's just a piece of grass, but you can kind of see what you can get. I thought I'd show you some of the plants in the landscape so you can see what some of the smaller plants will grow into. Right now I'm standing next to this lovely little blue stem. It is a little blue stem. Big blue stem gets a lot bigger. But this is a warm-season grass. Hosts a lot of caterpillars. The seed heads in the fall feed the birds quite well. Just a lovely plant. And here we've used it kind of with the sculpture to sort of simulate a reed-like effect. But you can see that it has some nice uses. Now because it is a warm-season grass, it's late to emerge. So don't panic if you don't see it. First thing in the spring, it needs the warmth before it will start. One thing with little blue stem is it's best not to cut it down in the fall. It has a really unique appearance in the fall and winter. In the fall it has kind of a straw color, almost an orange-ish reddish look that really looks neat. And it looks good into the winter too with the snow upon it. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, the birds feed on the seeds. I hope you've enjoyed this tour of our growing area and a behind-the-scenes look at some of the native plants we have on sale right now. And I hope it's inspired you to consider landscaping with native plants and bringing life to your yard. Thanks very much.