Gardening With Natives as a Moral Act -- Part 2

Between Facebook, email, and this blog, I've received a wide variety of comments and suggestions about my original post. My thanks for the encouragement of those who enjoyed the rant, but I want to address some of the criticisms.

When I said I wasn't holding a gun to your head to plant natives, I meant it, but enough people felt threatened by me that I was surprised -- so I went out and bought a dozen guns. To essentially be called a bigot or racist a few times really made me upset and sad. I wish we looked at plants on more equal terms to humans -- if we did, we might be more sympathetic to each other and actually end bigotry and racism. But since we hate each other so often, many times based on misunderstanding or lack of knowledge, I don't hold out much hope for knowing plants on better terms. Maybe we need a bill of plant and animal rights, but then many more would feel threatened (is this part of being a human animal, a response for survival?).

Culver's root in action.

What I am advocating for is self education -- that once you begin gardening more and more with native plants, you begin to understand the delicate roll of a healthy, balanced ecosystem. You will see how native plants, in general, bring in more insects and a greater diversity. You will begin wanting to know what that bee is on the joy pye weed, and when you discover the life history of the bee, you might be led to what it needs to thrive in your garden. That might lead you to adding additional native plants, hollow stems for bee houses, learning about soil microorganisms, about the wild ecosystem your plants come from, about beneficial predator bugs, about what goes on out there in that greater wild ecosystem that you might want to try to replicate in your backyard. Is this a bad thing? Apparently so, based on some of the irate comments dubbing me a purist. 

So let's talk about purism. In my native plant garden (which is becoming more so, about 80%, since I bought whatever the nursery had when I started out, not knowing much) I'm trying to recreate a semblance of prairie. Why? Not because I believe prairie can exist in 1,500', or that we'll have much luck recreating it even on 30,000 acres, but because the prairie wildlife is still here. The bees. The butterflies. The birds. They developed over millennium to work in concert with the plants native to this region. I will not deny these native creatures like so many of us do in our culture, and so that makes me an outlaw, a purist. Without these plants, the wildlife begins to vanish -- ask a Harris's sparrow or lesser prairie chicken or regal fritillary. If only we could talk to plants and insects how richer our lives would be! (David Abrams, in The Spell of the Sensuous, says we once did and can again).

Bluebirds in winter waiting their turn for a drink.

A garden full of properly sited -- properly sited -- native plants to you locale will never be truly wild. By definition a garden is human artifice, it is art, it is personal interpretation and expression, so herein perhaps is the anger and backlash to my proposal to plant new spaces with 100% native plants. I'm not saying you can't do your thing (and my god, you'd actually listen to me and not do your thing???), I'm just saying do it with natives and see what happens, stretch yourself, open yourself to the ecology around you in new, profound ways. Only in America, it seems, do we feel so threatened of our personal freedoms that knees jerk up wildly -- if only they jerked enough to stop special interest lobbyists from owning our politicians, from allowing 1% of the population to control 20% of the wealth and erode the middle class, to stop pipelines being built through sensitive prairies and wetlands.

But back to landscapes -- to say a native plant garden cannot be formal or Victorian or Japanese or whatever is just plain nonsense. If you believe native plants are "wild" and "messy" and only fit for one design ideal, then your vision as a gardener has yet to expand and grow, and this is one reason I am pimping native plants -- they help you grow in ways a hosta and daylily and barberry cannot. You know what those plants will do, and you know their ecological benefit is momentary and selective. Humdrum. Zzzzz.

A native New England Aster. Call the Plant Police!

When we are deprived of natural places, we are deprived of ourselves. Ecologists, philosophers, and environmentalists have known this for a long time. To not have prairie plants in my backyard is to deprive myself of my city, my state, and my region. I am diminished as a gardener if I don't focus on natives. I can't hope to understand local ecology, flora, and fauna without experimenting with and embracing native plants. If Aldo Leopold were alive he'd tell you these things more eloquently -- shoot, he does, go read this sad snippet from Sand County Almanac.

So this is how I see gardening with natives as a moral act. You may think this sounds superior, elitist, or purist, but to me it sounds like freedom, knowledge, and power -- something Home Depot, Scott's, and Monsanto don't want you to have. Gardening with natives is as much an act of defiance toward those who destroy our natural world as it is a willingness to listen to our deepest selves and embrace the joy and terror of our connection to this planet. Without that mental, physical, and spiritual connection to place through native plants, we are diminished to the point of insanity and despair -- hence the depredations on Native Americans, hence the dust bowl, hence diabetes.

And for the one person who said any article that uses the word "bupkis" is worth a read: bupkis. Now go find plants native to you and help save the planet and yourself! Rock the boat!

Monarch caterpillar at the Lincoln Children's Zoo