At first glance, the meadows at Downs Farm Preserve in Cutchogue look done for the year. The grasses are tawny and tall. Milkweed pods have split and feathered and the blazing colors of last summer’s wildflowers have faded into rust and crimson. To some, it looks like seasonal decay. To Taralynn Reynolds, it looks like the start of something new.
She said late autumn is the “perfect time of year” to start a native plant garden.
“Each spring there’s a big rush: ‘It’s spring! Get all your flowers!’” said Reynolds, outreach director for the Group for the East End,. “Fall is actually the best time to plant for most any plant species, native or non-native, but in particular for native species.”
At a community seed swap Saturday morning at the town-owned preserve, Reynolds and others from the Group for the East End teamed up with Nancy DePas Reinertsen and Ralph Reinertsen of ReWild North Fork to trade regional native seeds, answer questions and encourage North Fork gardeners to rethink their planting seasons.
With fall plantings, there’s no need to worry about consistent watering. “You’re literally putting the plants to sleep, essentially,” said Reynolds. “But underground, they are starting to extend their roots.”
Those roots are the point. Fall and winter rains help plants settle in without the heat stress of July. By April, native plants start ahead of schedule, with deeper roots and a better chance of surviving the dry spells and droughts that have plagued the North Fork in recent years.
“They’re going to have a competitive advantage come spring into that first summer.”
Seeds, too, are tuned to the cold. Reynolds described different ways in which native seeds are triggered to germinate.
“Some have to pass through the gut of an animal and have those gut acids break through the shell case,” she said, while in many cases the “thawing and freezing of the ground soil cracks open that seed and allows for it to begin to germinate.”
Different native plants attract different webs of wildlife. If you like swallowtails, Reynolds suggested planting Zizia aurea, known as golden Alexanders or golden zizia. Most importantly, she said, “choose the right native plant for your type of soil, your sunlight.”
If Reynolds sounds like a convert, she is. The master gardener, who holds a Columbia University degree in conservation biology, once sat in a lecture by naturalist Doug Tallamy and left “sold,” as she put it. “He hooked me.”
Dr. Tallamy, a University of Delaware professor of entomology and best-selling author, is one of the most influential public advocates for native plants in the U.S. His decades of research on how insects rely on native plants has changed how ecologists, gardeners and land-use planners think about biodiversity in human-managed landscapes. His work has documented the ecological collapse that follows when native flora is replaced by ornamental or invasive species.
Tallamy co-authored a 2018 peer-reviewed study that found yards dominated by non-native plants support far fewer caterpillars, depriving insectivorous birds like the Carolina chickadee of the food they need to raise their young. The study identified a key threshold: when non-native plants make up more than 30% of plant biomass on a given property, bird populations can no longer find enough insects to feed their chicks and stop breeding successfully in those areas.
“Native plants are crucial for literally everything,” said Reynolds. She called them “foundational food webs … Native birds need native insects, but without native plants, you don’t have the insects.”
Reynolds is an unabashed evangelist for milkweed, oaks and native grasses, and for letting a garden look like a meadow in November.
“I will tell you, from experience, it becomes addictive,” she said.
She said the monarch butterfly is the perfect on-ramp for beginner native gardeners.
“Monarchs are what we call an obligate species,” Reynolds said. “They need a specific type of plant to survive, and without that plant, they will go extinct. And that’s milkweed.”
The wildlife will find you, she promised.
“Monarchs in particular can detect milkweed from like a mile away.”
Milkweed is vital to native gardens on the East End — creating an ecosystem that supports a multitude of species, including milkweed tussock moths, large milkweed beetles and milkweed bugs. Hummingbirds will come for the nectar, and monarchs will lay eggs on the leaves.
Reynolds hopes that in time more East End residents will skip fall “cleanup” and leave seed heads for birds and hollow stems for native bees.
“Leave your leaves, too,” she said, noting that fireflies and other species “literally depend” on leaf litter in winter.
Reynolds said anyone can plant a native garden.
“You don’t have to have acreage. You don’t have to have a yard at all. You can do container gardening with native plants and still make a major difference. I had a tiny patio. I got three containers — I think I upped it to five containers … I had 20 monarch caterpillars my first season.”
Sofia Vallecillo, 24, a recent hire at Group for the East End who works alongside Reynolds on habitat restoration, represents the movement’s next wave. She started as a volunteer and never left.
“I kept volunteering. I liked the work. It was something I’d been studying, was passionate about — and then they hired me.”
Vallecillo now spends her days removing invasive plants at local preserves with Reynolds.
She said her generation cares deeply about the environment.
“I think a lot of young people, if you were to ask them if they care about the environment, they’d say yes. But they maybe feel like there’s not a lot of opportunity for them to actually put that passion into action.”
Standing beside a monarch waystation at the Cutchogue preserve, Reynolds offered one last plea.
“Please stop cutting down your oak trees. Native white oak, Quercus alba, supports over 400 different species of wildlife. Every time we lose an oak, we’re losing a lifeline for wildlife, and it’s happening more and more and more.”
She gazed at the milkweed stalks, their seeds sailing on invisible currents toward some unknown patch of open ground.
“You can see the little milkweed fluff starting to fly,” she said. “Hopefully it’s carried by the wind and it lands someplace where somebody is going to let it grow.”
For more information on native gardening, the nonprofit Xerces.org offers a native plant seed and services directory, as does Tallamy’s HomegrownNationalPark.org website. MonarchWatch.org includes a deep well of resources on monarchs, from creating your own monarch waystation to “butterfly gardening” guides and migration maps. The website for the Long Island Invasive Species Management Area, an islandwide coalition of organizations, provides extensive charts and tables with images of invasive and native species and briefings on how to identify and manage the invasive ones.