When you look at most gardens you will see plants from all over the world. Humans love flowers and have cultivated different varieties for their beauty. While some invasive plants are damaging to the environment, many non-native or naturalized plants are fine to grow and enjoy; however, there is nothing that beats native plants when considering what is best for the environment. Fortunately many native wildflowers are incredibly beautiful and even better suited to grow in our gardens that non-natives!
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Native Wildflower Garden
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Native Wildflower Garden
Native plants provide important habitat for wildlife – especially pollinators. Pollinators are butterflies, bees, birds, bats, and other animals that spread pollen from one plant to another. This pollen allows the plants to reproduce. Native pollinators have evolved with native plants, and both plant and pollinator rely on one another for survival. In an article in the New York Times, Professor Douglas Tallamy explains why:
Last summer I did a simple experiment at home to measure just how different the plants we use for landscaping can be in supporting local animals. I compared a young white oak in my yard with one of the Bradford pears in my neighbor’s yard. Both trees are the same size, but Bradford pears are ornamentals from Asia, while white oaks are native to eastern North America. I walked around each tree and counted the caterpillars on their leaves at head height. I found 410 caterpillars on the white oak (comprising 19 different species), and only one caterpillar (an inchworm) on the Bradford pear…
Why such huge differences? It’s simple: Plants don’t want to be eaten, so they have loaded their tissues with nasty chemicals that would kill most insects if eaten. Insects do eat plants, though, and they achieve this by adapting to the chemical defenses of just one or two plant lineages. So some have evolved to eat oak trees without dying, while others have specialized in native cherries or ashes and so on.
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Polythemus Moth on Tree
Even a small native wildflower garden can make a big impact on the ecosystem. Biologists have noticed that some butterflies, bees, birds, and other pollinators have been disappearing from parts of their native range. These scientists believe that habitat loss and the increasing use of pesticides and herbicides are a large factor in their loss. For example, the increased use of herbicides are killing milkweed plants that Monarch butterflies need to reproduce. In large part due to this loss of their habitat, Monarch populations have plummeted in recent years. When you grow native plants, you are establishing ecosystems for these important and beautiful pollinators.
Image may be NSFW.
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Native plants can also survive better in our environment than many non-natives and they help improve the soil. Many natives are deep-rooted, which enables them to aerate and anchor soil as well as survive drought, floods, and other damaging conditions better than shallow-rooted plants. The plant with almost no roots below on the far left is turf grass. See the difference?
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Root Depth of Native Plants
The good news is that native plants are beautiful, easy to grow, and many are perennial, which means they will come back year after year! For more information, please check out the U.S. Forest Service’s article, Attracting Pollinators to your Garden Using Native Plants.
