Out behind our house we have a detention pond. Being a
detention pond, as opposed to a
retention pond, sometimes there's several inches of standing water in it, while other times it's dry. Lots of people probably think of this as unusable space, but I see it as potential for something I'd love to have in my garden - a meadow!
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| It doesn't know it yet, but this detention pond is going to be a meadow. |
Right now it's not really quite my ideal meadow (or as Mr. Red House calls it, my 'mud-dow', since it's usually muddy there.) It's mostly full of cattails, ferns, and grasses; however the large majority of flowering plants in the pond are comprised of the terribly invasive
Purple Loosestrife. |
| the beautiful, but highly invasive Purple Loosestrife |
On the upside there are some Goldenrods and Asters in my meadow/muddow, and I've even spotted some Joe-Pye Weed and
Common Milkweed growing wild on the banks. Then last week I saw this:
Swamp Verbena, or
Verbena hastata, is a nice, native perennial that likes, well, swampy areas (if you couldn't tell from the name.) It likes full or partial sun and grows between 2 to 5 feet tall. The sunnier the site, the taller it gets. It is supposed to be a great substitute for invasive species like Purple Loosestrife since it likes similar conditions. (Hurry up, little Verbena! So far the Loosestrife is winning!)
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| Swamp Verbena flowers |
Swamp Verbena is also known as Blue Verbena, Blue Vervain, and Simpler's Joy. Why the nickname 'Simpler's Joy', you wonder? (I also wondered!) Apparently back in the day this plant was very easy for Simplers - aka Herbalists - to sell, since people used it as a folk remedy for quite a number of ailments. (There is a similar Verbena
native to Europe with the same nickname that was thought to cure all sorts of stuff, as well as have supernatural properties.)
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| When the little flowers get old, they fall, making little purple piles on the leaves. |
This native plant is great for wildlife. The flowers attract a number of bees, including Bumblebees and the specialized Verbena bee (
Calliopsis subgenus Verbenapis), and birds eat its seeds. It is also a host for the
Verbena Moth and the
Common Buckeye butterfly.
I think by itself Swamp Verbena is kind of a funny-looking plant with all its little candlesticks of flowers, but I'll bet it would look great in a mass at the back of a border...
...or en masse in a meadow!
