Planting Native Plants For The Wrong Reasons
A s part of a well intended effort to convince more gardeners to incorporate native plants into their gardens (or even to rip out all non-native plants and replace them with native), a very unhelpful marketing trend has taken place. Instead of focusing on the individual virtues of specific native plants, there has been a somewhat lazy blanket philosophy pushed that native plants in general are easier to grow because they are already adapted to the local conditions and will need no care after planting... This makes me cringe. Let's back up and look at some broader points to create perspective. Why do some invasive plant species invade and displace native species if native species are better adapted than non-native? The simple truth is that plants from all over the world have adapted to all manner of growing conditions and when they are moved around, they sometimes end up in locations which allow them to grow just as well, and sometimes even better than they were able to in th...