Gardening is hard labor. Many new gardeners may have this thought. It can be true if we look at our yard and only think about what we need to clean up, from sticks to rocks to weeds. There are so many things that we need to do. To make it worse, all of these are true.
However, if we can learn to work with our yards instead of against them, gardening is easy to do and a great way to practice our observation and researching skills.
In the past, whenever I saw a new “weed” or some new “plants” that did not “belong” to the place, I immediately got rid of it. However, a few years ago, I changed my method. I allowed the unknown plants to grow. Then, I took some pictures and looked them up on the internet. Surprisingly, I found out that some of those weeds were native plants in New Jersey!!!!! They were not weeds, but in fact, they belonged to where they were!
Fast forward, this year, I finally saw the result of this unknown plant. It is a winterberry holly! It is a beautiful shrub with green leaves and white flowers during summer.
The white flowers of winterberry holly provide nectars for many native pollinators like bumblebees and butterflies. When I dug deeper into it, I found out that winterberry holly is also a host plant for various butterflies and moth larvae. After each Autumn, the shrub loses its leaves but gives us the bright red berries to brighten up our dull winter months.
Those pretty berries also become a valuable source of food for many small mammals, such as wild rabbits and raccoons, and various birds, from our beloved American robins to northern mockingbirds during the harsh winter months when other sources of food are scarce.
All in all, we can see that Winterberry holly is a precious native plant to Northeast America. Because it is native to this region, it does not require any special care. However, it becomes the provider to different elements and species to our native wildlife.
Winterberry holly is a great plant and easy to grow. It has few serious insect or disease problems.
I am so glad that I took my time to allow this little shrub to grow and did my research before getting rid of it.
Thus, my advice to anyone starting to tender our yard is first to make notes to all different plants. Take pictures of the plants and look them up on the internet if we need to. The best plants to keep are those that are native to our regions. Those native plants do not require special care from us. Yet they are valuable to our native wildlife and provide much-needed ecosystem services to our local environment.