East Quogue Native Garden Is a Haven for Wildlife

It’s said that in a perennial garden’s first year after planting, it sleeps. In the second, it creeps, and in the third year, it leaps.

The East Quogue Native Plant Garden is in its leap year.

Located at East Quogue Marine Park, fronting Shinnecock Bay, the garden is the work of the East Quogue Beautification Committee, a nonprofit sister organization of the East Quogue Civic Association. It’s designed to serve pollinators while also beautifying the park and educating the public about the value of native plants.

Native plants are those that are indigenous to the area. They did not come over with early settlers of the East End, and they were not brought over — whether intentionally or unintentionally — by the nursery trade. They have not been selectively bred to enhance traits that humans want in plants at the cost of their important ecological services. Native plants co-evolved with native insects and birds, and as a result, they are vital food sources, host plants and habitat for wildlife.

“People always say, well, native gardens are great, but they don’t flower, and they don’t look that pretty. And I have to disagree. I think it looks really, really pretty right now,” said Marissa Bridge, the president of the East Quogue Beautification Committee, during a recent visit to the garden. “There’s a lot in flower, and I think it’s just really important for people to know that they can do this in their homes as well. … You can do a really beautiful native garden.”

The plantings are diverse, with various heights, forms and colors. They also have staggered bloom times, so from early spring to late fall, something is always flowering.

Brown-eyed Susans are popping off with yellow petals around brown buttons. The swamp rose mallow, with its large, bright pink flowers, looks like it could be a tropical plant but is, in fact, a native Hibiscus. The cardinal flowers are spikes of red that attract hummingbirds. The Joe-Pye weed is tall with pink dome-shaped flower clusters. The prickly pear cactus is a low-growing cactus that also flowers.

The plant list continues with blue vervain, mountain mint, high-bush blueberry, purple lovegrass, swamp milkweed and orange milkweed, each adding another element to the diversity of the garden and providing sustenance for different insects and animals.

The milkweeds belong to the genus Asclepias, the only genus of plants that monarch butterflies lay their eggs on. When the eggs hatch, the monarch caterpillars that emerge can only survive if they eat that milkweed, which contains toxins cardiac glycosides that the caterpillars sequester in their bodies, making them unpalatable to predators.

During this visit, two monarchs flutter around the flowers, landing to collect nectar.

Bridge explained that the idea for the garden came about after Al Algieri, the group’s former president, suggested finding an initiative that could bring the East Quogue community together.

“It’s been a divided community for a long time because of Discovery Land, that big golf course project,” she said. “Half the people were for it, half the people were against it.”

Neighbors were fighting with neighbors and it was really an unpleasant situation, she said.

Then in January 2021, in the throes of the COVID pandemic, Bridge was walking her dogs at East Quogue Marine Park at the end of Bay Avenue when the idea for a native garden dawned on her.

“There was nothing here. This was shabby. There was no pavilion,” she recalled. “It was really badly kept at the time. And I just thought this would be a great spot, because it’s right up against this deck, and it wouldn’t interfere with anyone’s walk space.”

Algieri agreed it was a great idea, and Bridge got to work.

Bridge said she had been learning about native plants from the Westhampton Garden Club and asked Joy Flynn from the club to come check out the site with her “and decide whether I was crazy or was this a good idea.”

Flynn thought it was a great idea.

Bridge approached Southampton Town Parks Department and Jamie Bowden, the town’s community organization specialist. Bowden helped the beautification committee receive a hamlet services grant, with approval from the Town Board. When the beautification committee initially planted out the garden, the town provided a list of native plants for Bridge to choose from, all Long Island natives.

“And I am not a garden designer or landscape designer, but I cobbled together a basic idea,” she said.

Susanne Jansson, the chair of the Westhampton Garden Club Conservation Committee and a Master Gardener, helped Bridge plan the garden: Plants that would grow the tallest in the back and the shortest up front. A mix of early bloomers, summer bloomers and late bloomers for continuous color and interest.

Another beautification committee member, Kate Rummel, helped narrow down the plant list. The plot was cleared, soil was delivered, and the plants installed.

“Since 2021, we’ve gotten a grant every year,” Bridge said. “We’ve leased this property for three years, and I have to renew the lease come September for three more years.”

The beautification committee is responsible for the insurance costs and cleanups — not the town. The committee has also held educational programs at the site, including a talk by Rummel on native plants, and has held two annual native plant sales so far.

“They’ve been a huge success,” Bridge said. “It’s to support the garden and also to educate people, and this year, we bought double the amount of plants. We sold everything we got, and we have great support from the community.”

The garden has twice been on garden tours hosted by the South Fork branch of the Suffolk Alliance for Pollinators, and the beautification committee partnered with the Southampton Trails Preservation Society on a hike of a Nature Conservancy trail during which Rummel spoke about landscape plants that escape cultivation and become invasive in the natural world.

The group refrains from removing any plant material from the native garden until 10 days after the last frost of spring, to give the native insects that overwinter in spent plants and leaf litter some time to emerge.

“We leave the leaves,” Bridge said. “There’s leaves underneath this pine needle mulch, and we try to do everything as best we can for the insects and for the environment.”

The pine needle mulch came from Long Island Natives, a nursery in Eastport.

Wood chip mulch can be a lot of different things mixed up, like pallets, that you don’t necessarily want in your garden, Rummel pointed out.

They don’t cut down plants in fall because, Bridge noted, because many insects nest in plant stems.

“The Joe-Pye weed has these beautiful, long stems that, in the winter, they hollow out, and insects actually live in there,” she explained.

And when plants are left standing, the seed heads become winter food for birds.

Bridge said that refraining from cutting back in fall also adds another dimension to the garden — winter interest.

“And we find a lot of bird’s nests in the spring, because it’s a really great cover for the birds,” she said.

This fall, the beautification committee will partner with Eastern Long Island Audubon Society for a birdwatching walking tour.

“We’re trying to branch out and partner with other conservation organizations, and do stuff that’s fun and educational for our community,” Bridge said.