Native Plants to Replace Invasive Buckthorns
Robin Schachat
If you encounter non-native buckthorn in your garden, you truly must remove it – that’s a WHEN, not an IF. And the sooner, the better, or your neighbors will hate you! Once it is gone, you will probably want something else to take its place.
The invasive buckthorns will tend to invade in batches, either in an existing hedgerow or as a small thicket. They may be in sun or shade, in wet or dry soil, alkaline or acid. Obviously, the specific location you need to fill will dictate the characteristics of the plant you choose to replace your buckthorns. Here are a few suggestions of native plants that will give you attractive foliage, attractive fruit, and a hardy constitution.
Let’s start with buckthorns growing in existing hedgerows. Most often they will arise in mixed hedgerow, and a true mixed hedgerow is at least 6’ wide and well over 10’ tall, made up of a variety of plants that will provide a long run of bloom season, a windbreak to protect crops or just your backyard, and cover for wildlife. Is the (now exterminated) buckthorn a taller element? You might consider extending your bloom season to feed pollinators very early in the spring by adding an Amelanchier tree or tall shrub – consider A. stolonifera. Or you might extend the fall bloom season by adding a native witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana. (See photos #1 and #2). If you add both of these, you will have bloom feeding your pollinators from March through December, and you will be enjoying lovely blooms when other gardens don’t have them. This time your neighbors will envy you! Alternatively, if you need a really bushy, tall filler, how about Viburnum dentatum? (see photo 3). In late fall your hedge will be mobbed by songbirds gorging on high carbohydrate berries to fortify them for their long migration.
Great native berries also cover Aronia arbutifolia (red) and Aronia melanocarpa (black) in fall. The birds will thank you for these, too. (see photos 4 and 5). And there are native hollies that provide berries in these colors also, in damp locations. Ilex verticillata (winterberry) bears red or orange fruits and grows to anywhere from 4’ to 15’ tall. (see photo 6) Ilex glabra (inkberry) is more compact, from 4’ to 8’ tall, and its berries are shiny and black. And Inkberries are evergreen! Their leaves are a more linear, but similar to boxwood leaves, although the shrubs are not usually as full and bushy and boxy – nor as problematic when it comes to diseases. (see photo 7) If your “replacement” spot is in deep shade, consider leatherwood (Dirca palustris), about the same size as inkberry. (see photo 8)
And for a jolt of real excitement in winter, whether mixed in a hedgerow, making up an entire uniform hedge, or as a specimen on its own, you cannot beat red twig dogwood, Cornus sericea, or one of its yellow or orange cultivars. (see photo 9) If you have lots of deer this may not be your best choice – but there are many possibilities among our native Ohio shrubs. Go to town!
