Dune and swale habitat for wildlife.

Hello again. I'm looking for more dune and swale plants from the Great Lakes besides bearberry, prickly pear cactus, lupine, milkweed, bluestem, cordgrass. I'm looking for the top ones to aid wildlife for food, shelter and resting for migration. I wanna also use the plants for food and medicine in case things go belly up. If anybody is from the Calumet area of Chicago and Indiana, please drop in to share some ideas and stuff to help restore my gardens back to they once were in the ancient days. Other than that, all the audience is welcome to chat and stuff on my native homeland. Much love to all!

I'd say things like buttonbush, northern Bayberry, great lakes sand cherry & cranberry would all be good bets for places like that. I don't have any to give you, but I was able to get buttonbush from Prairie Moon Nursery, Northern Bayberry from Etsy, the sand cherry from Leaves for Wildlife & wild cranberry from Hobby seed. Hopefully, someone can help you out with full plants for some of these.

How about prickly pear cactus, lupine, bearberry, puccon, beach grass, butterfly milkweed and others that tolerate drier conditions of the dunes. Could sedges and bulrushes work in Swale areas as well as sawtooth sunflower and others?

I don't see why not, so long as the sunflowers are ones for an open area instead of forest cover. All the grasses & bulrushes should be good too. We have a crap ton of the horsetail rushes along the railway. Seems like those things will take just about anywhere. Inland Sea Oats might be an excellent grass for the dunes. The Atlantic Sea Oats do really well on the coastal beaches.

What about wool grass and cattail? Aren't these good bird habitat for ducks and others? I've tried to locate cattail for wildlife and human use a few years ago, but nothing worked.

Only thing I know about cattail in terms of wildlife is the Ioway call those something that translates directly to "wildcat cub hiding place." The Native ones are pretty good eating, though, if you can guarantee the safety. I tried a cattail shoot a couple weeks ago. Ground nesting & waterfowl seem to really like the habitat Buttonbush provides, though, so I've heard. Have yet to get a chance to see it in action, since none of my buttonbushes have sprouted for whatever reason.

I'm growing an Ioway garden this year to remember their time in my community a miles away from the Little Calumet river centuries ago when they were with the Ho-Chunk before they got split off to go to Iowa. You had cattail gel for healing? I never used cattail for nothing before, but I like to try it to reduce my visits to the drug store every day.

No. I've never tried making it & had no idea it had any medicinal uses. All I heard was people using it in place of milk for cornbread.

Speaking of buttonbush, I wanna find out if I could create a hedgerow from it. Are there others that could make a perfect hedgerow such as red osier dogwood, elderberry, winterberry, willow, sumac and others that could deal with moist or dry conditions of dunes and swales?

I missed the notification for this one before. Honestly, I'm not sure, though I don't think Sumac would work for that situation. The trees have a tendency to spread out a  good bit & grow straight up.

Are there anymore nectar bearing plants for butterflies and birds for dune and swale? I'm looking to draw migratory songbirds to my plot this year. How. I create dune and swale habitat and what soil conditions I need to make that happen?