Big Landscaping Change – Tweaking the Plan

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The Missouri Master Naturalist chapter meeting this month was about the Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden. As we walked around the boathouse and learned the history (and challenge) of some of the plantings, I realized that I was mentally tweaking the plan for my front yard.

The beautyberry at the Boathouse is thriving and it provides winter food for birds. I have one in my backyard and am going to plant another one in the front yard rather than a wild hydrangea which was not doing well at the Boathouse.

The serviceberry at the Boathouse was about 4 years old and had already lost most of its leaves (i.e. young trees might not have pretty fall color). I am still going to plant one, but I am adding a spicebush to my list to enhance the near-term look of the garden.

The big bluestem clumps looked great in the back of the garden at the Boathouse. They would be great to provide a different color and shape among the other plants in my front yard. The garden is on the south side of the house so the plants will always get some sun for part of the day…so the grass should thrive long term.

The cup plants are insect magnets, but they are too tall for the front garden. I decided to buy some to plant along my back fence (I can put some twine looped to the fence to hold them up).

It could be 4 years before the new plantings are big enough to look like I want – but there should be improvement each year. I might add some nectar plants like coreopsis next spring. To fill in around the young plants

I’m going to trim some of my larger plants before they get buds/are too tall (like gray headed coneflower and pokeweed) to see if I can keep them short enough to use as front yard plants too. I’ll do that experiment in my backyard next spring with the plants already established there.

After this first round of tweaking – the plantings I will buy in early October are:

  • Roundleaf groundsel  Golden ragwort Packera aurea (3) (change made because of what the native plant vendor offers)

  • Blue Wild Indigo Baptisia australis (3)

  • American Beautyberry Callicarpa americana

  • Big bluestem Andropogon gerardii (2)

  • Spicebush Lindera benzoin

  • Serviceberry Amelanchier arboria

  • Pawpaw Asimina triloba (2- one for the front and one for backyard)

  • Cup plant Silphium perfoliatum (2 for backyard)

The plan for before winter comes is:

  • Order more wood chips/mulch and complete making the new bed (lots of work)

  • Place order for plants to be picked up the first week in October

  • Make 811 request (need to do before digging)

  • Plant (lots of work…but maybe not as much as making the new bed)

  • And, of course, continued pulling of weeds as they come up in my new landscaping area!

  • I am making a diagram to guide my planting…and will in include it in my next progress report.

Previous posts about Big Landscaping Change

Lake Springfield Boathouse – July 2025

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The garden around the Lake Springfield Boathouse is maintained by Springfield Plateau Chapter of the Missouri Master Naturalists. I’m not part of that team but I do enjoy their results. My husband was looking for a place to practice a technique for photographing bees and the first place I looked was a good starting location for him: the buttonbush near the front door of the building! I took a few pictures before he even got his gear unloaded!

While he tried out his new technique, I photographed the other plantings. The second place I hoped to find insects/bees was the cup plant, but it wasn’t blooming yet. It did have buds…so should be a great place to check later in the season.

We headed past the purple martin houses (which were very busy) to the meadow area. The milkweed was blooming but the flowers looked less colorful than I expected, and they were not attracting large number of insects either. The bee balm was more attractive to bees than the milkweed. There was a spiderweb that looked a little like a hammock in some dried stems from last season; it was highlighted by the heavy dew. I took some backlit images of 2 plants that were not blooming but had interesting shapes.

One of the pictures I took of an insect on a milkweed leaf had a surprise when I looked at it on my big monitor at home: a tiny egg (maybe a Monarch egg)!

Across the walking trail there are brambles and trees. The locust was full of still-green pods and vetch was blooming in the undergrowth.

It was a productive morning activity. My husband thought maybe it was not warm enough for peak insect sightings; he might have been right but, with the humidity, it was the best time for us to be there!

Fall Meadow at Lake Springfield Boathouse (1)

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We visited the meadow near the Lake Springfield (Missouri) Boathouse last week  on a sunny, but relatively cool fall morning. Near the Boathouse, I noticed some beautyberry and asters.

The large cup plant has already been cut down - the stumps of the 4-angled square stems obvious.

We noticed that the purple martin houses had been taken down; there were big mowers in the area around the boathouse as we walked toward the meadow.

A lot of meadow plants have already produced seed. The goldenrods and asters are still blooming…and a few thistles.  

The area that becomes an overflow creek during heavy rains was dry but there were some interesting plants around it:

Invasive bush honeysuckle with lots of red berries.

Seed pods of mallows.

There was only one milkweed plant I saw in the meadow…and wondered what happened to the plants I had seen earlier in the season. Perhaps they fell over, and the other plants hid them?

On the other side of the visitor center, I did find some milkweed with bursting seed ponds. The plants had fallen over but the seeds were still spilling out and floating away.

The vines in the trees were easy to see. The leaves on both poison ivy and Virginia creeper turn red in the fall! The edge of the forest is full of trees with the vines growing up the trunks and into the higher branches.

Tomorrow’s post will be about the insects we saw.

Lake Springfield Boathouse/Meadow – August 2023 (1)

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A mid-morning walk around the Lake Springfield (Missouri) boat house and meadow was pleasant…also our last outdoor activity for the day that rapidly became a hot one. There was a volunteer gardener working on the plantings around the boathouse.

I learned from her that the plant I thought of as a sunflower…was a relative called Cup Plant because its leaves fuse to the stem in a way to form a cup that holds water!

It was a cloudy morning after a recent storm. There were some branches that had broken but were still attached to trees along with trees holding mature seed pods on the lake side of the path.

The meadow was a jumble of plants of various maturities.

Some of the zoomed images showed remnants of spider webs visible because of water droplets. The milkweed pods are still green…far from splitting open and releasing seeds.

The stream that is often dry was still wet and burbling from the recent rain. Marsh mallows and pokeweed grew along the bank.

Looking more closely at the beds around the boathouse before we left, I noticed several areas where beautyberry was thriving.

There were also other natives. Some have been planted on a slope…a good strategy to avoid mowing!