Written by Adam Latham
Nearly everyone enjoys spending time near the ocean, and many plants do, too. But it can be very challenging to grow plants in weather conditions that can be brutal one day and docile the next. Seaside gardening isn’t limited to those who live directly on the waterfront. If your home is in a coastal community, it’s influenced by the bay or ocean. Wind, waves, salt spray, saltwater flooding, fog, sun exposure, and soil conditions all play a part in formulating your home’s unique microclimate. Understanding these environmental factors and knowing which plants are adapted to thrive in maritime environments is your key to a successful garden.
Dividing It Up
The area of land affected by coastal influences is divided into zones known as exposure belts. Remember that there are no hard lines delineating these zones, and growing conditions can change dramatically within a few hundred feet along the shore. You’ll also notice transition areas between the belts, where plants from one exposure belt intermingle with another based on local conditions.
Exposure Belt 1 – Seashore Conditions: land immediately adjacent to the water, including dunes, rocky shores, or marshes.
Exposure Belt 2 – Coastal Plain, Bay, and Protected Areas: land a bit back from the waterfront, slightly protected by trees, dunes, or other coastal landforms.
Exposure Belt 3 – Land even further away from the water but still affected by ocean weather.
If you are living directly along the Narragansett Bay or Atlantic waterfront in exposure belt 1, you benefit from a front seat on Rhode Island’s beautiful coast, but the plants in your landscape are put through the most rigorous tests of survival, exposed to gale force winds, salt water flooding, erosion, salt spray, and difficult soils. In this belt, you’ll find mainly perennials like seaside goldenrod and beach wormwood, and grasses like American beachgrass. Along Narragansett Bay in this belt, some woody plants can anchor their roots in the soil, but at the ocean, few woody plants can withstand these conditions. If your home is in the harshest of these environments, you’ll probably find it best to grow ornamental plants in containers.
Seaside Container Tips
Container gardening allows you to control the soil and moisture conditions. Select large, sturdy, heavyweight containers, not lightweight plastic or fiberglass ones that are more likely to tip over. Position the containers in protected areas behind a fence or wall. Don’t limit your container plant selection to annuals alone. Perennials, ornamental grasses, and low-growing shrubs are good choices as well, and all types of plants can be mixed in the same container. Stay away from tall shrubs and trees, as these plants, placed in relatively small pots compared to the size of the plant, may topple in heavy winds. Select drought-tolerant plants for your containers if you only visit the home on weekends.
In Sheltered Locations
In the more protected areas of exposure belt 2, woody plants are able to get more of a foothold and the available planting palette increases dramatically. When you’re beginning the plant selection process, observing the native vegetation in the area is always a good place to start. Understanding the growing requirements of native plants will give you clues to selecting ornamentals that favor similar conditions. Here you’ll find shrubs including bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica), inkberry (Ilex glabra), beach plum (Prunus maritima), highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum), and arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum). Beach rose (Rosa rugosa) is also here, but you may be surprised to know that this ubiquitous, fragrant, thorny shrub is not a native. Its fruit, called rose hips, which contain the plant’s seeds, are easily spread along the coast by moving water, birds, and animals. Native trees that are at home in shelter belt 2 include the evergreens Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and American Holly (Ilex opaca) and the deciduous Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) and red maple (Acer rubrum).
Improved selections of many native coastal plants are available at your favorite nursery. You can also find ornamentals that will thrive in exposure belt 2 gardens, such as butterfly bush (Buddleia sp.), mophead and lacecap hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla), lilac (Syringa sp.), and hybrid landscape roses (Rosa sp.).
In exposure belt 2, the use of hedges for privacy also has the added benefit of creating planting areas protected from strong and constant coastal winds. These sheltered pockets are where it’s safe to install plant material that in windy locations is prone to dry out or suffer from broken stems and tattered leaves. Hedges can take the form of formal, sheared shapes where space is a premium, or a looser, staggered planting with a mix of plant shapes and sizes.
Gardeners further back from the water, in exposure belt 3, have the advantage of being able to grow the widest variety of plants. Here gardens have the benefit of a temperate coastal climate and are able to support plants that may not grow successfully just a few miles inland. For example, in Bristol, Warren, and Swansea, the Mimosa or silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) grows quickly into beautiful, mature specimens. But in North Rehoboth, about 10 miles inland from the bay, the tree is frequently damaged by slightly lower winter temperatures, resulting in smaller, weaker trees.
The greatest challenge to growing plants in this belt may be dealing with fungal disease on plants. Conditions are right for an explosion of fungal disease when moist fog settles in. The most likely plants to have their foliage damaged by disease include summer flowering garden phlox, lilac, roses, aster, and beebalm. To help avoid this problem, select disease-resistant varieties.
Whether your home is on the coast or set back from the water, you need to take the distinctive features of your location into account as you garden. When you do, you’ll be able to spend more time enjoying the seaside views and less time addressing problems in the landscape.
Nearly everyone enjoys spending time near the ocean, and many plants do, too. But it can be very challenging to grow plants in weather conditions that can be brutal one day and docile the next. Seaside gardening isn’t limited to those who live directly on the waterfront. If your home is in a coastal community, it’s influenced by the bay or ocean. Wind, waves, salt spray, saltwater flooding, fog, sun exposure, and soil conditions all play a part in formulating your home’s unique microclimate. Understanding these environmental factors and knowing which plants are adapted to thrive in maritime environments is your key to a successful garden.
Dividing It Up
The area of land affected by coastal influences is divided into zones known as exposure belts. Remember that there are no hard lines delineating these zones, and growing conditions can change dramatically within a few hundred feet along the shore. You’ll also notice transition areas between the belts, where plants from one exposure belt intermingle with another based on local conditions.
Exposure Belt 1 – Seashore Conditions: land immediately adjacent to the water, including dunes, rocky shores, or marshes.
Exposure Belt 2 – Coastal Plain, Bay, and Protected Areas: land a bit back from the waterfront, slightly protected by trees, dunes, or other coastal landforms.
Exposure Belt 3 – Land even further away from the water but still affected by ocean weather.
If you are living directly along the Narragansett Bay or Atlantic waterfront in exposure belt 1, you benefit from a front seat on Rhode Island’s beautiful coast, but the plants in your landscape are put through the most rigorous tests of survival, exposed to gale force winds, salt water flooding, erosion, salt spray, and difficult soils. In this belt, you’ll find mainly perennials like seaside goldenrod and beach wormwood, and grasses like American beachgrass. Along Narragansett Bay in this belt, some woody plants can anchor their roots in the soil, but at the ocean, few woody plants can withstand these conditions. If your home is in the harshest of these environments, you’ll probably find it best to grow ornamental plants in containers.
Seaside Container Tips
Container gardening allows you to control the soil and moisture conditions. Select large, sturdy, heavyweight containers, not lightweight plastic or fiberglass ones that are more likely to tip over. Position the containers in protected areas behind a fence or wall. Don’t limit your container plant selection to annuals alone. Perennials, ornamental grasses, and low-growing shrubs are good choices as well, and all types of plants can be mixed in the same container. Stay away from tall shrubs and trees, as these plants, placed in relatively small pots compared to the size of the plant, may topple in heavy winds. Select drought-tolerant plants for your containers if you only visit the home on weekends.
In Sheltered Locations
In the more protected areas of exposure belt 2, woody plants are able to get more of a foothold and the available planting palette increases dramatically. When you’re beginning the plant selection process, observing the native vegetation in the area is always a good place to start. Understanding the growing requirements of native plants will give you clues to selecting ornamentals that favor similar conditions. Here you’ll find shrubs including bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica), inkberry (Ilex glabra), beach plum (Prunus maritima), highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum), and arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum). Beach rose (Rosa rugosa) is also here, but you may be surprised to know that this ubiquitous, fragrant, thorny shrub is not a native. Its fruit, called rose hips, which contain the plant’s seeds, are easily spread along the coast by moving water, birds, and animals. Native trees that are at home in shelter belt 2 include the evergreens Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and American Holly (Ilex opaca) and the deciduous Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) and red maple (Acer rubrum).
Improved selections of many native coastal plants are available at your favorite nursery. You can also find ornamentals that will thrive in exposure belt 2 gardens, such as butterfly bush (Buddleia sp.), mophead and lacecap hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla), lilac (Syringa sp.), and hybrid landscape roses (Rosa sp.).
In exposure belt 2, the use of hedges for privacy also has the added benefit of creating planting areas protected from strong and constant coastal winds. These sheltered pockets are where it’s safe to install plant material that in windy locations is prone to dry out or suffer from broken stems and tattered leaves. Hedges can take the form of formal, sheared shapes where space is a premium, or a looser, staggered planting with a mix of plant shapes and sizes.
Gardeners further back from the water, in exposure belt 3, have the advantage of being able to grow the widest variety of plants. Here gardens have the benefit of a temperate coastal climate and are able to support plants that may not grow successfully just a few miles inland. For example, in Bristol, Warren, and Swansea, the Mimosa or silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) grows quickly into beautiful, mature specimens. But in North Rehoboth, about 10 miles inland from the bay, the tree is frequently damaged by slightly lower winter temperatures, resulting in smaller, weaker trees.
The greatest challenge to growing plants in this belt may be dealing with fungal disease on plants. Conditions are right for an explosion of fungal disease when moist fog settles in. The most likely plants to have their foliage damaged by disease include summer flowering garden phlox, lilac, roses, aster, and beebalm. To help avoid this problem, select disease-resistant varieties.
Whether your home is on the coast or set back from the water, you need to take the distinctive features of your location into account as you garden. When you do, you’ll be able to spend more time enjoying the seaside views and less time addressing problems in the landscape.