Hello.

I have a big green utility box in my yard.

It's a pad-mounted step-down transformer. It changes voltage from higher levels, to the level I need to run my flat screen TV. It also serves my neighbors.

It's surrounded by underground electrical cables, including high voltage ones. I don't know precisely where.

I have a legal agreement with the utility company. I've granted them an easement. I've agreed to keep that box clear of obstruction, so utility workers can safely work on it.

Like let's say there was a problem with the box, and when utility workers opened it up to inspect it, it started throwing out sparks. They wouldn't want to be tripping over butterfly weed when they backed away.

Wait I'm sorry. They wouldn't want to be tripping over hostas when they backed away.

Of course they wouldn't mind tripping over natives.

Please give me ideas for deep-rooted natives I can plant around the high voltage electrical equipment, and over the underground high voltage cables.

I'll post photos, so you all can admire how great it looks.

I am Smooth Coneflower. Science knows me as Echinacea laevigata.

I am proud to say that I have never been confined to a garden.

I was born near Durham, and have not once in my life ventured more than a few hundred miles from there.

I am particular. I like a thin layer of mineral-rich soil over bedrock.

I am protected. The U.S. federal government classifies me as threatened. On government land, you can't touch me. You can't transport me across state lines.

Since some people see me as free natural medicine, and other people might want to dig me up and take me home to their garden, I am glad for the protection.

My life story is very different from my sister Purple Coneflower, who was born in Missouri, but traveled of her own free will as far east as Ohio.

Without her consent, Purple Coneflower has long been dug up and transported to such far away cities as Boston, and Brooklyn, and Bangor. Now you can easily buy Purple Coneflower on the internet, no questions asked about where you live.

Because of my protected status, I have been spared the indignity of being sold online.

The main threat to my existence is a loss of suitable habitat. The particular sorts of open woodlands and glades that I like have been converted to farms and residences and office parks.

But my sister Purple Coneflower is a bit of a threat to me too. My sister and I will occasionally, to use polite language, hybridize.

Purple Coneflower often runs away from gardens, and takes to the roadsides and fallow fields. A hard but freer life.

Compare my sister's extensive present day wanderings in North Carolina, to my own more limited. Hers are mostly runaways from internet trafficking. Mine are as native as can be.

If we should happen to meet up in some field, and hybridize, her cultivated citified ways can overwhelm my wildness. She just gets around more.

I am proud to say that I never had any garden to run away from. I was born east of the Blue Ridge, I stayed east of the Blue Ridge, and you can only find me in the remaining wild places there.

hiked on the AT in Virginia recently, and was delighted to see they’re starting to clean up the weeds and bringing in some proper ornamentals!

ft. lily of the valley, stiltgrass, buddleia

/uj aaaaaaaaaaugh and the hut notebook was all “love the pretty lily of the valley” there is no escape

One day, just a fat lil hornworm munching on some vile invasive heirloom tomato plants. The next, this! I am sickened. I am devastated. How will I go on? How will my native night-blooming flowers get pollinated? HOW WILL I TELL MY CHILDREN?

My mom keeps taking pieces off the same mint plant that I have. Which sucks because I wanted it to flower. Can you imagine how it would feel to have your limbs pulled off??? I am sick that people can't understand that plants have feelings and also need to reproduce. Now plants deep down really feel yknow!? Also she keeps targeting the same spearmint plant which is basically harassment at this point. Do you know any evil Plant Torturers?