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Native Plants

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Native Plants - Gardening with Mother Nature... part 3

But the word was spreading inside the trade; there were more and more committed professionals, but the word was not getting out to the backyard gardener. The more I saw and read, the more convinced I became that that was the target audience we needed to reach to have any impact on our biosphere. All well and good that the ASLA and state and federal agencies were going native, but home gardens were where most of the bio-invasives for our area were growing and where the majority of landscaped property lay. Simply crowing about native plants was not the answer; without the retail ready look of the majority of garden plants, natives were not going to get a day in court, let alone a fair trial.

Then a friend put me onto a great book called “Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards” by Sara Stein. Sara told the story of becoming first a suburban gardener, and then, noting the disappearance of the wildlife from her increasingly manicured property, becoming interested in why that was. The answers led her to investigate natives as an alternative gardening form, but here was the big surprise for me; she was willing to give up that manicured look for the wildlife. This was the paradigm I had been looking for; not gardening for the sake of aesthetics alone, but finding that purpose that transcends human need for the sake of the entire biosphere. And Sara preaches with the fervor of the converted. Mowing became a method of preserving paths, not lawns. Plantings became more about wildlife use than color scheme, more about seeds and berries than flowers. Yet Sara is still a gardener, and this is no pasture or swamp, it is a garden, loved and tended the same way you might look after a wild cat; it will survive without the care but it will flourish with it.

Another friend put me in touch with the Missouri DEP, who in concert with their Department of Agriculture, had started a program called “Grow Native”. They had come to much the same conclusion I had; invasive issues were a matter of education and the natives were as positive way to address a negative issue. They provide signage, posters and sales sheets touting natives to local garden centers at cost, and put garden centers in touch with local growers of native plants. They have increased awareness of both invasive and native issues, and strengthened local businesses, both retail and wholesale. The program now goes into schools and other public forums to educate; in a recent impromptu poll I took on the Native Plant Forum on GardenWeb, two of the three Missourians I asked had come to native plants through this program. Wish those were my tax dollars at work…

We are in transition, we gardeners today. Many are upset that state and federal mandates on invasives will take away old favorites (in some cases they are right). But I ask you all to look at this in a different light. We all came to our love of the garden through different channels, but the root remains the same. It is Nature herself that shows the best combos, the finest designs, the ultimate plants (What breeding program could offer a showy ladyslipper?) Give Mother Nature a chance in your back yard. She will reward you in ways we can only guess at. I am blessed with a new (blank) yard. Some will be border, some will be my Japanese garden. But the greatest portion I will give back to the birds and butterflies that were here before me and my yard will be better for it.