Trail Time – Landscaping with Native Plants
Summer opens clear, bright and twittering on the Gunflint Trail. It is a perfect morning: sunny with a cool breeze; birds singing from every quarter; stacks of puffy cumulus clouds floating over the lake toward Canada. The part of Canada I see is a hazy blue hill to the northeast. There is a big tree on that distant hill that tilts right at about a 30-degree angle. We’ve been checking on the status of that tree for a while now — not the full twelve years I’ve enjoyed this view, but it’s been a few years. Why didn’t we notice it earlier? Maybe a few other trees had to fall before we noticed our leaning tree of Canada. There are millions or trillions of trees in Canada, but that’s the one I watch. There has grown in me a kind of affection for it; not like the tree belongs to me but like it’s a neighbor who is too far away to talk to but I wave to acknowledge — and honor — their existence. The increased helicopter and airplane traffic on the Canada US border that we have witnessed this year makes me wonder if I should adjust my attitude toward our fine neighbor to the north, but no, I can’t. I don’t think I ever could. I feel a kind of fierce loyalty to that tree and to my longstanding neighborly affection toward its country.
From here to Canada and all over the world in the subarctic zone, the boreal forest is blossoming with the fruit trees that feed the birds and animals and provide pollen and nectar for pollinators. We are just a small part of that oxygen-giving zone that spans the globe in the northern hemisphere. Here on the Trail we have blossoming serviceberry (or Juneberry or Saskatoon), elderberry, pin (or fire) cherry, chokecherry. Strawberries and gooseberries are just beginning to flower. I saw the just-forming white flowers on a blueberry plant too. Soon I’ll search for the tiny blue star-shaped flowers that grow in a grassy area at the base of a north-facing hill. When it’s warmer, I’ll search for the striped coral root orchids that hide out in their secret places. Then in the fall or after a rain, I’ll look for mushrooms. Every corner of the woods holds a secret or a surprise waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.
We live in an area of the Gunflint Trail that was hit hard by the blowdown of 1998. In many ways, it is a young recovering woods, with willow, aspen, birch and fir springing up in the areas that were cleared by the logging that took place after the blowdown. There are still a few tall white pines, but some massive downed trunks deep in the woods tell us that more fell than were left standing on the higher elevations. Our immediate area was replanted with Jack, white and red pines that were maybe a foot tall when we first saw the land. Now they are 20 feet tall and higher. To encourage the growth of the young white pines, it helps to “release” them from competition, cutting down any trees or shrubs — or even grass — that impede their growth. We regularly make the rounds, giving these young trees a better chance to grow tall long after we’re gone from here.
This boreal land is so rich and varied that when I started landscaping around our cabin, I planted trees and shrubs that are native to the area. One of them, the Canada Plum, has the sweetest-smelling flowers you can imagine. It took years to start flowering. And now it is in its second year of those sweet, sweet blossoms. The bark looks purple beside the green gold of the willows beside it and it has those little thorny-looking twigs that apple trees have. We also planted sugar maples, black cherry and stag horn sumac, Arrowwood, American hazel and Tamarack. This year we planted three white oak trees. But mostly we planted white pines, about two hundred of them. We got the white pine seedlings for free from Hedstrom’s Lumber here in Cook County. They give away seedlings every year, available by ordering online and picking them up at the lumberyard. They gave away 21,000 seedlings this year alone. There is an abundance of resources giving — or selling cheaply — native tree seedlings in Cook County besides Hedstrom’s. The North Shore Forest Collaborative is handing out up to 50 seedlings at the Cook County Community Center until June 2. And the St. Louis County Soil and Water Conservation District holds a native tree and shrub sale with signup in March. Make a note on your calendar for next year.
The land around us has changed so much in twelve years. What was once a dry and dusty hillside is a shady spot among teenage pines. The ground underneath is now covered in needles, making footsteps nearly silent as we walk under the tall boughs overhead with the wind sighing through. A big rock that was once a hot spot in the sun is shaded and cool now and the perfect spot to write a poem.
Landscaping with native plants is an experiment I want to keep playing with until I can’t do it anymore, but it is a long game. You do not see immediate results. The rewards are far in the future, which engenders hope. I made a deal with the woods that I would always keep some of everything that is here, maybe just not in that spot. It isn’t really gardening; it’s more like moving the elements of the forest — rocks, bushes, trees —around until it pleases me.
This is me, Marcia Roepke, queen of the woods, here on the Gunflint Trail
