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. Bald cypress, sweetbay, silky dogwood, winterberry and alder want full sun or light shade; doghobble takes shade. Together they are hardy in zones 5 through 8, with cypress, winterberry and alder hardy well 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.

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 grow fast and 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.