Wet Spot Pack

Why these six go together

Every plant here stands in water for weeks and shrugs off wet feet the rest of the year, and together they make a complete planting rather than a puddle with a tree in it. Bald cypress is the canopy, a swamp conifer that also thrives on a dry lawn, with feathery foliage that turns rust-orange in fall. Sweetbay magnolia carries lemon-scented white flowers from May into summer. Smooth alder fixes nitrogen and holds the bank. Silky dogwood flowers in June and hangs porcelain-blue fruit in September. Winterberry lines its bare branches with scarlet fruit all winter. Swamp doghobble arches sprays of white bells in May in the shadiest, wettest corner.

Between them they feed birds from September to March, hold the soil against a spring flood, and give the spot structure in every season.

Where it fits

The set is for ground that floods in spring and stays damp in summer: a swale, a pond edge, the low corner of a lawn, a ditch bank. Sweetbay, silky dogwood, winterberry and alder want full sun or light shade, and bald cypress full sun. Doghobble takes shade. Together they are hardy in zones 5 through 8, with cypress, winterberry, alder and sweetbay hardy beyond that range.

Sizes: bald cypress 50 to 80 feet, sweetbay 15 to 35, alder 10 to 20, silky dogwood and winterberry 6 to 12, doghobble 4 to 10. Give the cypress 30 feet from anything it could shade out, and put it and the alder in the wettest ground. The rest take the edges.

See the set's year in the bloom and fruit calendar, how many of each give a crop in the pollination planner, and how far its tallest plant goes from the house in the planting-distance tool.

Planting the pack

Plant while dormant, in the wet season if the ground allows it, and mulch with leaves. Winterberry needs a male within about 50 feet for every ten females, and a seedling does not show its sex until it flowers, so plant five or more. Silky dogwood and alder can be cut hard when they sprawl. Cypress and sweetbay are best left to their own shape.

None of these need watering once established, and none need fertilizer on ground that floods, which brings its own.