Going Native

“I was born focused on plants,” said Helen Peebles. “I vividly remember plants I saw when I was two or three.” 

Some of her earliest memories are of trees and shrubs she encountered in her native New Orleans, where she grew up as one of seven children. 

“My father was a professor of anatomy at the Tulane Medical School,” she said in a recent interview. “We lived on campus in married-student housing. I’d walk barefoot to our neighbors’ wading pool, stepping on stickers in the grass. I remember seeing turtles laying eggs under shrubs alongside McAllister Auditorium. And I remember hiding under another shrub that had yellow flowers.”

Now a licensed horticulturist and a landscape designer, Peebles has turned that childhood passion into a profession. She will be on hand May 5 to answer questions about native plants at the Friends of Hilltop Arboretum Backyard Habitat Garden Tour. Her focus will be on the native Louisiana trees, shrubs, and flowers she champions.

She credits her father for fostering her early fascination with all things green and growing.

“He was an avid gardener,” she said. “He planted sycamores, maples, wax myrtles, black willows. A volunteer [a plant that grows on its own] we loved was trumpet vine that  grew on a wooden fence. It was just gorgeous. Its orange flowers attracted hummingbirds, and he was an avid birder.

“I loved sitting out there and visiting with him while he was weeding. 

“Later we moved across the river to Algiers, and there was a beautiful [camellia] sasanqua bush with white flowers in front of our house. When I looked up the house on Google Earth recently, the sasanqua was still there.

“Growing up in New Orleans, I didn’t get to go into the woods much. But I was still in tune with nature.”

When she went off to college at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, Peebles studied forestry. 

“Sewanee had ten thousand acres of virgin forest on their property,” she said. “I fell in love with the forest. It was like being in heaven. I loved getting to know the plants I was studying.”

Later she moved to Baton Rouge and earned a bachelor’s degree in plant biology and a master’s in landscape architecture at LSU. 

Five years ago, she started her own business, Garden Innovations LLC, working with her son Kevin and several part-time employees. “I do a combination of landscape design, installation, and maintenance,” she said.

Since 2017 she has been president of the Capital Area Native Plant Society, an organization of about forty members whose mission is to preserve and study native plants and their habitats and to educate people on the need to preserve and protect rare and endangered species.

[Read this: The National Audubon Society's national database of bird-friendly native plant species.]

As head of the nonprofit, she regularly speaks to garden clubs and to groups such as the Sierra Club, Master Gardeners, and Master Naturalists.

She recommends the use of natives, which do better in Louisiana’s climate and provide food for wildlife, particularly insects and birds. “Native plants are those that were living here before humans brought in plants from other areas,” she said. “Natives coexisted with native birds, animals, and insects for ages before human intervention. Native plants provide food and shelter for birds, and birds spread the seeds of the plants. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

She recommends removing invasive species brought here from other countries. Some typical invasives are Chinese tallow, Japanese tree ligustrum (which Peebles calls “disgustrum”), Chinese paper mulberry, and camphor. 

“An invasive is any exotic plant that spreads uncontrollably into native habitats,” she said. “They crowd out the natives that are essential to wildlife.”

Peebles said even backyard gardeners can do their part for wildlife, especially birds. It’s critical to take a stand against urban sprawl, she said. Urban sprawl is the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas, which Peebles said primarily consists of “roofs, streets, and driveways. That’s what you typically see when you look at a suburban neighborhood on Google Earth. All of these structures reflect heat and contribute to global warming.

“With urban sprawl, we are destroying wildlife habitat,” she said. “It’s just unreal what we’ve done. We annihilate natives, bring in exotics, spray pesticides, and annihilate the bugs that birds eat. We are endangering backyard birds.

“They are dying off because they cannot find food. Baby birds need insects for food. The adult birds can’t find bugs to feed the babies so they go to the commercial bird seed that people put out, feed that to the babies, and it kills them. They’re not ready for seed yet. 

“Babies and even adult birds are highly dependent on insects. So many typical backyard birds eat insects—the brown thrasher, cardinal, tufted titmouse, chickadee, mockingbird, finch, flicker, cedar waxwing.” 

Baton Rouge’s rapid growth causes her great concern. “When my daughter was taking riding lessons, we used to drive out on Nicholson to Bayou Paul in St. Gabriel. Twenty years ago, it was all sugar-cane fields. Now it’s subdivisions. Hilltop Arboretum used to be surrounded by woods, and now it’s all been developed. We had a friend out on Greenwell Springs Road who had a horse barn. It was spectacular, gorgeous, surrounded by either forest or cattle pastures. Now it’s a nonstop traffic jam. Even my neighborhood in Webb Park is being developed, with houses torn down and replaced by McMansions.” 

During the Hilltop tour, Peebles will be at the home of Dick Ehrlicher, whose garden she has worked on for several years, gradually adding native plants. “Helen has brought more knowledge of what’s native and why we need native plants,” said Ehrlicher. “She’s really made me aware of the benefits of natives to wildlife.”

[Read this: An invasive insect the size of a pepper flake could accelerate coastal erosion.]

Peggy Coates, executive director of Hilltop Arboretum, sees Peebles as a successor to naturalists such as Caroline Dormon, who pioneered the establishment of the Kisatchie National Forest, and Hilltop’s Emory Smith, who donated fourteen acres of property to LSU as a habitat for native plants. 

“Helen is really carrying forward their focus,” said Coates. “She is raising awareness, and what she is doing is very important. She’s all about the plants. I wish we could get more people to think that way.”

Coates said this year’s tour was designed to show that any garden can incorporate natives. “Three of our gardens back up to Dawson’s Creek [off Kenilworth], and one of them is the Wildlife and Fisheries garden, which was designed for educational purposes.”

“With urban sprawl, we are destroying wildlife habitat,” Peebles said. “It’s just unreal what we’ve done. We annihilate natives, bring in exotics, spray pesticides, and annihilate the bugs that birds eat. We are endangering backyard birds."

Coates said the need for ecologically sound green spaces is becoming more urgent. “We’ve lost so many native-plant areas. Only two percent of the original Cajun Prairie is left. That is catastrophic. The habitat loss is unbelievable.”

For backyard gardeners who want to try natives, Peebles recommends three plants that are easy to grow. “Salvia coccinea [pronounced cox-IN-ee-ah] makes beautiful red flowers that attract bees and hummingbirds,” she said. “It can be found at local nurseries, but be sure you get the coccinea variety, which is native.

“Another beautiful plant that attracts bees is Gaura, especially the white variety. It’s also known as bee blossom.

“And the Louisiana iris comes in blue, purple, or white.”

She also recommends adding native trees to the landscape. “There are several early-spring flowering trees that each bloom at a different time, so you can have a long blooming period.” She especially likes Two-winged Silverbell, Snowbell, Mayhaw, Fringe Tree, and Mexican Plum (which despite its name is native to Louisiana).

For those who want to create wildlife habitats, said Peebles, “You need multiple layers of vegetation, from ground covers up to large trees. You need a source of water, either a birdbath, a small water garden, or a pond. Brush piles provide shelter, nesting materials, and food for birds. The fallen leaves from trees provide habitat for many insects that birds depend on, plus the leaves produce fertilizer for the trees. Don’t bag them and throw them away—use those leaves for mulch.”

For a tidy appearance, said Peebles, a top dressing of pine straw looks neat and will gradually decompose. But she urges gardeners to venture beyond the overly contained look. “Native woodlands have a charm that goes beyond straight lines,” she said. 

She likes to experiment with her own yard in South Baton Rouge. “I want to transform it to all natives, but I’m so busy with my business,” she said. “I want to take out all the exotics, except for maybe the sasanqua and one crape myrtle, to show people how beautiful natives can be.”

Meanwhile, “My back yard is covered with pots because I propagate plants,” she said. “I would love to have my own nursery someday.”  

Ruth Laney is working with Helen Peebles and her crew to create a native woodland in her Hundred Oaks yard. She can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net. Helen can be reached at h62400@bellsouth.net. For more information about the Hilltop garden tour, check the Hilltop Facebook page or in our online Calendar of Events.