Understanding the texture of your soil is one of the most important pieces of information to arm yourself with when selecting native plants for your landscape or garden.
Soil can be distinguished by its texture, meaning what percent of sand, silt, or clay is in soil. An easy and simple test to determine your soil texture is to put a small amount in the palm of your hand, wet it slightly, and knead it with your fingers. From here you can conduct a feel test: sand = feels gritty, silt = feels smooth, clay = feels sticky.
We all know plants need water and nutrients to survive and, of course, plants need to be able to access those things from the soil they grow in. When it comes to holding water and nutrients though, not every soil is created equal.The finer the soil, meaning the more silt or clay, generally equates to a higher water holding capacity.
However, water holding capacity is a bit of a double edged sword when it comes to soils. The same properties that allow a fine-textured soil like clay to hold more water than a loamy or sandy soil are also what make it more difficult for plants to extract water from that soil. In fact clay soils often hold too much moisture and, especially if compacted, come with the additional challenge of low oxygen levels for plants.
Many plants perform the best in the middle ground of soil types - a loam which is a mix of both sandy and silt or clay soils. These soils drain faster but also give retained water up to plants more readily than a fine-textured soil. They are quite literally the happy medium ground for plants.
But where does that leave a person who knows they have only clayey soil to work with?
Here in the Rocky Mountain West we have a lot of ground composed of sandy soils, and the number of native plants that prefer or require coarse, well-draining soils to survive is a clear reflection of that. While soil can be amended, it is often not in the budget when planning your native garden. However, there are some special natives that are well-adapted to survive in a clay soil if you’re unable to alter your soil type.
Below is a list of native plants for clay soils:
Forbs and Wildflowers | Grasses and Grass-like Species | Shrubs and Trees |
Canada Anemone (Anemone canadensis) | Side-oats Grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) | Leadplant (Amorpha canadensis) |
Nodding Onion (Allium cernuun) | Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis) | Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) |
Showy Fleabane Daisy (Erigeron speciosus) | Water Sedge (Carex aquatilis) | Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) |
Maximillian Sunflower (Helianthus maximilliani) | Nebraska Sedge (Carex nebrascensis) | |
Wild Bergamont (Monarda fistulosa) | Western Wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii) | |
Black Eyed-Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) | Torrey’s Rush (Juncus torreyi) | |
Western Coneflower (Rudbeckia occidentalis) |
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