Why a Native Garden?

A native garden helps food too! Natives give beneficial food and habitat to pollinators and all kinds of creatures. Besides those beautiful flowers, those same creatures and bugs pollinate our food plants. We need to keep them around!

Why Garden with Native Wildflowers?

Native plants are adapted to the local climate and soil conditions where they naturally occur. These plants provide nectar, pollen, and seeds as food for native butterflies, insects, birds and other animals. Common horticultural plants do not provide proper nutrition for their visitors and often require insect pest control to survive.

Most insects have certain plants they use for shelter, metamorphosis, and food. Some examples of this are Monarch butterflies and their host plants, the milkweed family; Spicebush Swallowtails, host plant, the Spicebush! 

 

Native plants use less water than your lawn! The beauty of natives is that their root system is so large, and so long, that they reach water well beyond what regular turf can.

Native plants help to reduce air pollution. Besides not needing to use your lawn mower, burning gasoline, and contributing to global warming, they also remove carbon dioxide from the air. The bigger the root system, the more carbon dioxide is removed.

Photo credit: Conservation Research Institute, Heidi Natura