-Mary Julian

Migrating birds love the American dogwood tree, also known as Cornus florida. They devour its berries, which are packed with calcium and fats that support them on their long journeys.

Enter Cornus kousa, the kousa dogwood imported from Asia. Kousas have more blooms and much larger berries, so people see them as an improvement over the delicate American dogwood. But a new form of anthracnose, a fungal disease suspected of making its way into the U.S. on kousa dogwoods, has torn through American dogwoods, decimating their number. As a result, people plant more kousa dogwoods because they are resistant to the disease.

Unfortunately, the country’s native birds cannot eat the kousa’s berries. So as a critical food source for our migrating birds declines, so do the birds.

Since the 19th century, non-native ornamental plants have been promoted as “more interesting” replacements for our native flora. Yet non-natives do not support native insects, birds or animals. Our native flora and fauna, having evolved together over thousands of years, depend on each other for survival.

That is one reason why, for the fourth year running, April has been designated Native Plant Month by New York state. (This year, for the first time, both the U.S. Senate and House also passed Native Plant Month resolutions.) The goal: to highlight native plants and encourage people to incorporate them into their landscape gardens.

Communities are finally understanding the wider importance of native plants and encouraging their use on both public and private lands. And Rye, for one, has an abundance of native-plant converts. Here is what they are doing.

Garden Clubs

It makes sense that garden clubs would lead the charge in encouraging the use of native plants in everyone’s gardens, and all three clubs in Rye do their bit.

Little Garden Club of Rye, under the leadership of President Rosario Benavides Gallagher, maintains a native plant garden at Rye Nature Center to educate the public about the beauty, function, and ecological value of native plants. The club also has held workshops at which members have learned how to grow native shrubs from cuttings and native perennials from seeds. Those plants will be shared at a plant exchange later this year and should wind up in many members’ gardens. Later this year, the club’s flower show, Meet Me in the Meadow, Sept. 25-26 at The Meadows in Harrison, will connect flora to fauna by celebrating the American bluebird and its habitat.

Rye Garden Club, led by President Lisa Wallace, also actively promotes native plants and every year focuses on planting a few more native trees. Most recently, the club has planted Amelanchier (serviceberry) trees; Ulmus americana ‘Princeton,’ a disease-resistant elm tree; and American dogwoods at Rye Town Park, the Jay Heritage Center, and the traffic island by Knapp House. Under the leadership of member Lucy Berkoff, it also has updated the native demonstration garden in the Edith G. Read Wildlife Sanctuary in conjunction with the Friends of Read. They used native cultivars, or “nativars,” of Verbena, Penstemon (beardtongue), Coreopsis (tickseed), Liatris (blazing star) and Echinacea (cone- flower), with native grasses and blueberry bushes added along the garden’s edges.

Ceres Garden Club, under the leadership of its president, Ann Moller, redesigned and replanted the Marion Kirby Garden at Rye Rec using many native perennials, including Hydrangea quercifolia (oakleaf hydrangea), Baptisia (false indigo), Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed), Rudbeckia hirta (black eyed Susan) and Cornus sericea (red twig dogwood). For Arbor Day, the club is also plant- ing a native tree on the grounds.

Parks and Preserves

Our parks and preserves also are actively working to increase native habitat in our community.

At Rye Nature Center, the conservation staff, along with volunteers and interns, continues to remove invasive plants and increase the biodiversity of the 47-acre preserve, which was once a private estate with gardens of non-native species. Last year, the team removed over 2 tons of non-native invasives and in their place planted 1,400 shrubs, trees and plugs representing 44 native species. The area surrounding Nanderwhere Pond was restored using native plants to filter rainwater and runoff entering the pond. To help native insects, an understory of “soft landing” plants and a forest pollinator garden were put in. The center also has increased its adult-education opportunities, including recent guest speaker Evan Abramson, who spoke on the “Pollinate Now” project, an undertaking to install specific native plants needed to help offset declines in butterflies and other pollinators.

The Marshlands Conservancy, under the guidance of curator Michael Gambino, has initiated a Native Understory Plant Project to address problems with the understory’s regeneration. The county-run wildlife sanctuary and

nature preserve has planted 128 native shrubs and several hundred ferns and sedges within “exclo- sures” to protect them from deer. Once the most successful species are identified, additional plantings will be installed over the next several years.

The Edith G. Read Wildlife Sanctuary, as noted previously, has partnered with Rye Garden Club to update its native plant demonstration garden. The sanctuary also conducts programs to involve people in the native landscape; they invite the public to come by on April 20, from 1-2 p.m., to help them prepare their gardens for the 2024 season.

Rye Town Park, with encouragement from Russ Gold, park director, and Diana Page, president of Friends of Rye Town Park, has increased the park’s biodiversity by adding native plants in all its gardens. This year it plans to add some big-blooming natives, especially lupinus perennis, an important food plant for the Karner blue butterfly. Also, watch for the new Bill Lawyer Red Buds to bloom along Rye Beach Avenue.

The Jay Heritage Center is scheduled to reopen its gardens on May 7. They feature more than 36 types of native plants in an award-winning design by Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz. The center’s Native Pollinator Room showcases an array of native plants suitable for any garden. And there is QR signage and a colorful brochure to help visitors identify plants like Liatris spicata (blazing star), Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed) and more. An adjacent meadow designed by Larry Weaner consists of native sedges and plants that include little blue-stem, mountain mint and Penstemon digitalis (beardtongue).

City of Rye

Rye’s municipal government has taken native plants to heart. William “Billy” Weeks, the city’s tree foreman, has a list of trees scheduled for planting this spring, and the priority is native species. One of them, Amelanchier, is a wonderful spring-flowering native that hosts several butterflies and moths while attracting birds and various pollinators. Weeks also plans to plant oaks, sycamores, disease-resistant American elms, and other native trees this year.

Rye Sustainability, a City Council-appointed committee that aims to implement sustainable policies and practices throughout the community, has been working with committee member and local landscape architect Chris Cohan to rid Playland Parkway of miles of invasive vines and replace them with native plants. The committee, chaired by James Ward, is also partnering with Tracy Stora, chair of the Conservation Commission and Advisory Council, to reinvigorate the Healthy Yards Program, designed to encourage homeowners to provide food, water, and shelter to native fauna through the use of native plants.

Community at Large

A number of individuals involved in the native-plant movement have been bringing more of the community together by working across existing agencies, organizations, and committees to promote various projects. As with the institutional efforts throughout Rye, the overall goal is to reverse the loss of keystone native species and, in doing so, help the area’s birds, bees and insects – and the environments they inhabit or through which they migrate.

For example, Cohan, who has been spearheading the planting of native species along Playland Parkway, has enlisted not only Westchester County, which oversees the road, but also Rye Sustainability, local residents, and garden club members to get the job done. Cohan also worked with the Little Garden Club of Rye in the pond restoration at Rye Nature Center.

Lucy Berkoff, an active member of Rye Garden Club, has also been leading “Spring for Rye,” a five=school installation of 200 native trees across the Rye City School District. Helping her, in addition to the district, is Jennifer Crozier and many other Rye families who understand the importance of native trees. Berkoff is also an inspiration for the Friends of Rye Town Park when it comes to native plantings.