Plants That Chomp Can Be Easy And Green

Eric Kunz was 10 years old when he came across his first pitcher plant along the Carmans River in Yaphank, and carnivorous plants have been his passion ever since—first as a hobby, then as a livelihood.

Now Mr. Kunz, owner of Seemore Carnivorous Gardens in St. James, has taken to spreading the word about flora such as the green and purple pitcher plants, the sundew and, of course, the Venus flytrap to schoolchildren, interested organizations and anyone else who will listen.

The 53-year-old Setauket man will take his presentation on what he considers to be the most interesting and environmentally friendly plants one can grow in the home or garden to the Bridgehampton Community House at 1 p.m. on April 26 as part of a guest speaker series organized by the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons. His talk is called “Carnivores in Captivity.”

“Everyone has always seen these plants as a novelty, but I saw them as a perfect addition to a home or green garden,” Mr. Kunz said last week at his greenhouse at the Hitherbrook Nursery in St. James.

“Carnivorous plant gardening is all about green gardening: Mother Nature provides everything that these plants need, from the sunlight to the water to the insects that they eat,” he said. “So it’s pretty easygoing gardening.”

Mr. Kunz, who has been operating a carnivorous plant greenhouse at Hitherbrook since 2011, described the plants as a “black-thumb gardener’s delight,” because they require very little care and are all but impossible to overwater, which is what has kept him interested in growing them recreationally and professionally for the past 40 years.

“I love all plants; I just don’t like taking care of them,” he said. “That’s the thing, life’s short, I’ve got lots to do, I don’t have to go home and worry about watering my plants. These guys run themselves.”

Found primarily in swamps, bogs and near freshwater, there are several types of carnivorous plants native to Long Island, Mr. Kunz said. Most are varieties of pitcher plants—tube-like plants that fill up with rainwater, attracting insects which get trapped inside, then slowly digested.

Sundew plants, on the other hand, have long, stem-like leaves with tentacles that produce a sweet enzyme, which resembles morning dew and attracts insects. When the insects land on a leaf they become stuck and eventually are broken down and digested.

Perhaps the most well known carnivorous plant is the Venus flytrap, which has multiple heads, each containing small, hair-like triggers that, when touched by a fly or other insect, cause the head to close around it. A plant owner might be tempted to brush the hairs and trigger the trap to close, but Mr. Kunz said this can actually be detrimental, because it causes the plant to expend a great deal of energy without getting any food in return. Each head can only open and close three times before dying. “Each gets three meals—breakfast, lunch and dinner—and that’s it,” Mr. Kunz said.

He also cautioned against feeding the Venus flytrap “human food,” especially meats, which can’t be broken down because of their fat content. Once flytraps strip insects of their nutrients, the traps open up, leaving just a carcass that eventually blows away.

Because these plants gather their own nutrients through eating insects, they don’t require fertilizers. Since they remove insects such as flies, yellow jackets, moths and ants, they can also help a property owner cut back on the use of pesticides, Mr. Kunz said.

“They’re Mother Nature’s bug zapper,” he said. “You’re not going to get them all, but for each one it traps, it eliminates all its offspring.”

The key to growing these plants residentially, Mr. Kunz said, is mimicking their natural environment as much as possible, primarily by keeping them saturated in rainwater. “If you harvest rainwater, you’ve won the game,” he said. “That’s it, that’s all you need to do, and it’s a great way to conserve resources.”

At next week’s presentation, Mr. Kunz will explain the process of setting up a rainwater collection system as well as ways to make carnivorous plants a prominent feature in the home garden.

Horticultural Alliance for the Hamptons board member Janet Ollinger said the alliance decided to bring Mr. Kunz on as a speaker because the group likes to expand people’s knowledge of both native plants and green gardening.

“There are actually a lot of native carnivorous plants, and we’re always interested in native plants and our relationship with them,” she said. “These plants can be used inside and outside.”

Ms. Ollinger, the chair of the group’s workshop committee, said the alliance has been in existence for 25 years and frequently hosts workshops, each of which typically includes between 12 and 20 participants.

After a brief introduction to the plants and his history with them, Mr. Kunz will explain how they “eat” and how they can be implemented into a “green” garden. He will sell some of his plants, with 10 percent of the proceeds going back to the Horticultural Alliance.

With a degree in greenhouse management from the State University of New York Farmingdale campus, he has owned his own landscape design business for the past 30 years, originally under the name Common Ground Designs. For the past eight years the business has gone by the name Seemore Gardens as a nod to the character Seymour in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” which features a giant bloodthirsty Venus flytrap.

Much of the knowledge Mr. Kunz has accrued over the years has come, by his own admission, from extensive trial and error, but now that he has built up a wealth of wisdom, he’s eager to share it with as many people as possible.

“It’s a passion and I’ve been able to learn a lot and I’m very free with the information,” he said. “I want people to enjoy these things.”