There’s power in numbers. That’s what the horticulture team at Stoneleigh, the historic estate turned native-focused public garden in Villanova, Pennsylvania, seems to be demonstrating time and again with its highly creative approach to using woody plants.

Yes, planting a sumac or a viburnum shrub will attract hungry birds in fall. But what if you combined 10 carefully selected species of fruiting shrubs into swaths of songbird thickets, as Stoneleigh has been doing, offering not just a fall feast here and there, but cover and nesting habitat, too?

Elsewhere, hedges and trees are paired with vines to up the beauty and the diversity within their shared footprint—and certain shrubs are planted not one to a hole but as strategically designed clump plantings, with three closely related bare-root specimens positioned together to grow into one mass that shows off all of their slightly different features.

Stoneleigh’s director, Ethan Kauffman, is here to talk about songbird thickets and clump plantings and other imaginative ways the gardeners there are using native trees, shrubs and vines and that we can, too. Stoneleigh opened its gates in May 2018 as a project of the nonprofit conservation organization called Natural Lands. Rather than being daunted by the natives-only ethos they were given, and how to apply that to the formal bones of a grand old estate, Ethan and the garden team have experimented and innovated to great effect, reinventing the plant palette, and using woody plants in particular in wonderfully unexpected ways, all while making a space that celebrates and supports nature and welcomes visitors with its beauty.

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