You can make a difference to the environment and to wildlife very simply… plant native plants.

Read this one book by Doug Tallamy. It will change how you view your garden…

For the past century we have created our gardens with one thing in mind: aesthetics. We have selected plants for landscaping based only on their beauty and their fit within our artistic designs.

Doug Tallamy speaking

Yet if we designed our buildings the way we design our gardens, with only aesthetics in mind, they would fall down. Just as buildings need support structures—girders, I-beams, and headers—to hold the graceful arches and beautiful lines of fine architecture in place, our gardens need native plants to support a diverse and balanced food web essential to all sustainable ecosystems.

To me the choice is clear. The costs of increasing the percentage and biomass of natives in our suburban landscapes are small, and the benefits are immense. Increasing the percentage of natives in suburbia is a grassroots solution to the extinction crisis.

To succeed, we do not need to invoke governmental action; we do not need to purchase large tracts of pristine habitat that no longer exist; we do not need to limit ourselves to sending money to national and international conservation organizations and hoping it will be used productively.

Our success is up to each one of us individually. We can each make a measurable difference almost immediately by planting a native nearby. As gardeners and stewards of our land, we have never been so empowered—and the ecological stakes have never been so high.

~ Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens

Plants are not optional — we can’t live without them. But we tend to take plants and their benefits for granted.

We all breathe, but who takes the time to think about where the oxygen was produced? Even farther from our consciousness? The primary role that plants play in the food chain.

Nearly every creature on the planet owes its existence to plants, the only organisms capable of capturing the sun’s energy and turning that energy into food for the rest of us. Because animals directly and indirectly depend on plants for their food, the diversity of animals is closely linked to the diversity of plants. When there are many species of plants, there are many species of animals.

If you want to create ecosystems with a diversity of animal species, we first have to encourage a healthy diversity of plants. It’s simple: By gardening with native plants — no matter where you live or how small or large your space is — you can help sustain wildlife.

Around 50,000 alien species of plants and animals have colonized North America.

It is crucial to keep noncontributing alien species from displacing the native plants and animals that play a critical role in the ecosystem. This is best done by maintaining a full diversity of native organisms in an ecosystem. A diverse ecosystem has more niches filled by competing organisms and is able to more successfully resist invasion by alien species.

Biodiversity is a national treasure that we have abused. Now that we know the consequences of habitat destruction, we must behave more responsibly toward the plants and animals on which we depend. We must manage our biodiversity just as we manage our water resources, our clean air, and our energy. Fortunately, biodiversity is a renewable resource that is relatively easy to increase. By choosing native plants, we can all contribute.

Q. Why can’t we let nature take its course and just leave the alien plants alone?
A. Unfortunately, nature is not as all-powerful as we might wish. “Nature” can be defined as the plants and animals in a given area and all of the natural phenomena that made them as they are. Through eons of evolution by natural selection, living things adapted to their physical environment and the organisms around them in ways that enabled them to survive and pass their genes on to future generations. These natural processes worked well within the ancestral setting that created them, but we humans have changed that setting drastically — and almost instantly, when viewed on an evolutionary time scale. The plants and animals in today’s world have had no time at all to adapt to these sudden changes and so are still operating under the rules that worked before humans took over landscape management. The end result is that without direct intervention by the humans who have placed them at risk, most organisms will not survive under our rules.

Q. Isn’t habitat destruction a more pressing problem than alien plants in the landscape?
A. Habitat destruction as a result of anthropogenic changes is a huge problem everywhere for life on earth. That is precisely why we can no longer rely on natural areas alone to provide food and shelter for biodiversity. Instead, we must restore native plants to the areas that we have taken for our own use so that other species can live along with us in these spaces. We can start by restoring native plants to our gardens. This is a manageable task for both suburban and city dwellers, with tangible results in a few short seasons as individual gardens begin to attract the birds and the insects that will sustain them. Just imagine the restored landscape that could result from everyone’s cumulative efforts!

Q. My house sits on an eighth of an acre. Is that enough land to make a difference if I use natives instead of aliens?
A. Your small plot is connected to other plots, which are connected to others and others and others. Collectively they are North America. Changing the plant base of all of suburbia is quite an undertaking, but all you have to worry about is your eighth of an acre.

The important thing to remember is that even if you seem like the only one in all of North America who uses more natives than alien plants, wildlife will be better off for your efforts. The effects will be cumulative, and probably synergistic, as more and more people join you.

Yes, you can make a difference on a small plot of land. You can even make a difference if you own no land. If you live in an apartment, you may be able to influence the landscaping habits of your landlord, or the company you work for, or the township supervisors who control your city parks, or your sibling who does own property. If we humans are capable of turning hundreds of millions of acres of rainforest into depleted grasslands, and extirpating millions of buffalo from the plains, and billions of passenger pigeons from the skies and cod from the North Atlantic, we are also capable of returning natives to our gardens.

Revised and Updated Edition for 2009 Now Available in Paperback

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For more information and resources visit these blogs. They are written by teams of people from all backgrounds with one thing in common. We must plant native and visiting these blogs will help you to do that…

 

Beautiful Wildlife Garden