They’re Waking Up!!

Posted April 17, 2026 by Erica Schroeder

It’s finally spring and time for one of the most emotionally taxing games of the year: alive or dead!  The game where we walk our gardens to see what survived the long winter and what amounted to throwing money straight in the trash.

This is my second spring since I started planting entirely with native plants, and I can tell you this game is way more fun for me now!  In years past it was a tossup between alive and dead, but now it’s more like “it’s probably alive, even if you thought it was dead.”  (The game I’m currently losing is “I’ll definitely remember what I’m putting here next year, so no need to write it down”)

Let’s see what’s coming up!

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Ok this one’s easy.  Smooth blue aster and blunt mountain mint.

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I raked a ton of leaves into this bed last fall.  Look at these champs pushing through no sweat!  Here is Pennsylvania sedge, wild strawberry, heart-leaved aster, lavender beardtongue, columbine, and blue-stemmed goldenrod.

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It’s some kind of blazing star….

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It’s…definitely a plant.  I’m pretty sure I planted this.  There’s nothing around it so I must have planted this, right??

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I slaved over a new roadside garden last fall during that drought, carting water to the baby plants I had the brilliant idea to put in right before a drought.  Then over winter the dirt road was graded right through a bunch of my prairie pussytoes and I figured they were done for. These plants are built different!

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I couldn’t even fully bury this sunflower last year because of tree roots, so I gave up and just threw some plant debris around it.  I’m legitimately shocked it survived.

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I was 100% sure this wild ginger was dead all summer (don’t mind the garlic mustard photobomb in the back 😠).

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Thanks for checking out my yard with me! I hope to see you at the NOWO Spring Native Plant Sale on May 29 & 30, where I’ll be picking up plenty of friends for these plants!

— Erica