Among the charming stone homes and tall tulip poplars of Woodhaven, a quiet Bethesda, MD neighborhood, is something unexpected: a retail native plant store. Here, customers will find only the real deals — the straight native species that occur in the wild and reproduce without human intervention. Plants that have developed over thousands of years in the soils and climate of our area and co-evolved with the insects and other invertebrates (and vertebrates) living here.

And if you want to see what a plant will look like outside its plastic pot, there’s a good chance its growing somewhere on Mariana Borelli’s corner lot. 

Opening Wildflower Native Plant Nursery was a dream of mine,” said Borelli. “I combined my passion as a conservationist and my hobby of gardening.”

At Mariana Borelli’s home-based Wildflower Native Plant Nursery, customers can buy plant species that have grown in our Mid-Atlantic area for thousands of years, knowing they form the base of local food webs.

A Learning Process

Insects called leafminers leave tracks on native honeysuckle leaves at Borelli’s nursery. Insects and other animals eating and living on your plants is a good thing, says Borelli. Other naturalist/gardeners agree.

During Covid, Borelli volunteered at Chesapeake Natives, Inc., a nonprofit with a mission to promote, protect, and propagate plants native to the Chesapeake region.

“I learned so much about seed gathering and sowing,” said Borelli. She kept studying and found that many “native” plants sold at stores were actually nativars — native plants cultivated or selected for a specific trait, such as bloom color or height. This can lead to the plants having sterile flowers or seeds. And in some cases, the manipulation removes the plants’ value to wildlife.

Take for example, cultivars and nativars bred to have double flowers, or extra petals. Most of these have little or no pollen, and the petal layers make it difficult for bees to access any possible pollen. Ditto for butterflies and birds, which often cannot reach the nectar beneath the dense petals. (That said, not all nativars are inherently bad; some, for example, have been developed to better fight off disease than straight species. For more on this intriguing and complicated science, click here.)

Borelli sources her plants as locally as possible. Some she grows herself from seeds, some come from her sister’s 25 acres in Virginia, and many are from wholesale growers in MD, VA, and PA. 

Sust Manager and plant diva Anna Kelly, on left, purchases plants — for customers and for her home garden — at Mariana Borelli’s Wildflower Native Plant Nursery in Bethesda, MD.

All Are Favorites

Borelli knows the growing requirements of her inventory and offers advice on plant placement. She sees the value in many underused native plants, such as path rush (Juncus tenuis), a grasslike plant that self-seeds and can tolerate light foot traffic as well as salt. Path rush grows about a foot high in shady conditions.

Other shady site favorites include blue wood aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium) and our common blue violet (Viola genus). (For more info on this often misunderstood plant, read our post on herbs here.

Beneath the protective webbing on these pussytoe leaves are American lady butterfly eggs. The hatched caterpillars will feast on the plant’s leaves, enough to survive but not enough to kill its host.

What’s wonderful about the plants at Borelli’s home-based shop is that they are all beneficial. And what’s more beautiful than a useful plant? Still, when pressed, Borelli identifies sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), and pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia) as favorites.

The latter, highly resistant to rabbits and deer, is a larval host for the American lady butterfly (Vanessa virginensis).

I didn’t come to the Nursery to buy anything. My beds are busting, but resistance was futile. Besides, how could I pass up a 2-for-1 sale? I brought home a pussytoe and its living cargo of butterfly eggs.