An introduction to the impact of native planting
marisamorby.com
marisamorby.com
1. https://iamtravelinglight.com/2012/10/09/the-dark-side-of-bo...
Plant a monoculture of non-native trees with attractive fruit and you'll get a ton of opportunistic wildlife.
Plant a mixed forest of non-native trees with a variety of fruit and habitats and you'll get a lot more wildlife.
Of course in areas that have badly depleted ecologies in the first place, planting native will be most likely to provide niches to the wildlife that is around, and the article is generally great advice. But it's too easy to forget that over time the ranges of species spreads significantly via seed dispersal (which can mean jumps of hundreds or even thousands of miles via the guts of birds).
"Native" for the US very specifically means "existed when western european settlers arrived and cataloged the local fauna".
Where I live, the most abundant non-native plants are suburban lawns. If you're taking this fight home, please familiarize yourself with your HOA bylaws (if you have one). You may be surprised at what qualifies as a "garden", and what you must cultivate in terms of a "lawn". There are practical limits, but there are also workarounds.
The second biggest problem I face is that native plants here have a very bad time standing up to invasive species. Namely, kudzu and about three other species of vines and bamboo. Also native tree species like locust are very good at sending new suckers far into open spaces. So letting my greenspace simply go wild is not enough - a planned and perpetually maintained approach is a must. While it's possible to do all this with less effort than mowing a lawn, that's not a guarantee.
Some areas, like Minnesota, are also introducing laws to preempt cities from banning native lawns, though it's not clear if they can override busybody HOAs. https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/minnesota-cities-can-no...
Usually the HOA legally owns the 'common property', such as retention ponds, club houses, pools, 'parks', etc. If it's a gated community, the HOA owns the roads.
The HOA is legally responsible for maintaining those common areas, mowing, cleaning, resurfacing, and even insuring.
So if the HOA is dissolved, who owns the common areas, and who pays for (and manages) maintaining them?
As I understand it, local government loves HOAs, as they reduce the work they have to do. That tot-lot 'park' is not maintained by the city/county. Those retention ponds are not the counties problem when they go stagnant and have fish-kills.
Some states have laws to restrict some of the things HOA's can restrict. Like solar panels, clotheslines, flag poles, and landscaping. Not enough though...
But anywhere in the humid temperate eastern half of North America, plants are just gonna take over like crazy anywhere, grasses included, and if you don't mow or have a goat, or carefully "curate" what's growing you're gonna just get something... crazy with knee high crab grass, thistles, brambles, and volunteer shrubs of a million kind.
Here (southern Ontario, on 6 acres), if I leave an area unmowed, it'll be covered in staghorn sumac and invasive mulberries within a year. I deliberately let the back half the property go that way, but I absolutely have to mow elsewhere. Urban areas aren't quite the same but the same principle applies: it is often a lot more work to maintain something that looks like a nice "native plant pollinator" garden, so some of the "you shouldn't have a lawn, it's too much work, just let the native plants grow" talk I hear just makes me go cross-eyed "huh?"
I don't seed or sod or fertilize or level or aerate. I just run over the grass with a mower and it just takes care of itself.
A lot of what people hold up as "natural" alternatives to lawns are in fact highly cultivated and maintained patches of aesthetics.
Unfortunately the only alder I see that's native to the SE is 'thicket forming' which probably is not the sort of hobby you're looking for.
Ceanothus is popular in these parts. There's an eastern one (Ceanothus americanus) that I have no experience with but seems to have a habit more like a hydrangea. If it's anything like it's western cousins it will be mobbed by pollinators. So maybe not by your sidewalk...
Some species who are introduced are, at first, considered exotic and often cause problems at the time of introduction. The successful ones are often called invasive (mostly pioneers in their native habitat). After a while, when attempts at eradication have become futile, we start to tolerate and merely try to control them a bit. This can take a long time. Then, something magical happens and suddenly we begin to consider them native plants. When, due to changing habitats, their numbers dwindle we sometimes start to care for them or even protect them. This happened with the sparrow in the Netherlands for example, which was a real pest when first introduced.
The most commonly cited benefit for native plants (and wildlife) is their co-evolution with other species. This makes them very beneficial to the ecosystem as sometimes hundreds of species rely on them as a source of food. It turns out that this process of co-evolution is happening a lot faster than people generally assume, and a vast array of plants that were brought from and to Europe some 200 to 400 years ago are now completely adapted. Ironically, they sometimes harbor even more relations with wildlife than the plants that have occurred in the same habitat before them, but are still considered non-native and even invasive.
I'd like to think of the concept of 'native' as (at its best) an indirect indicator for 'co-evolved' or 'adapted' species, signifying its harmonious place in the ecosystem. A good yet often flawed rule of thumb in the absence of actual knowledge. However, I can't help but think when people use the word that it is also something very cultural, something people just take for granted because someone once drew a line in the sand (time of the settlers) and after that line every newly introduced species is considered non-native. It is interesting to look more closely at this cultural construct of nativity, as it can hide a palette of more substantial values behind a thin facade of ecological benefits. Something like what people mean when they use the word tradition.
Do you have a reference for this? When and how were sparrows introduced to the Netherlands?
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_sparrow):
> One of about 25 species in the genus Passer, the house sparrow is native to most of Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, and a large part of
I do 'encourage' things that are native and that I find interesting, but not clear my interventions accomplish much. But what I know is what's here is alive so much more than the cultivated fields and yards around me. And that's my excuse for avoiding my yard chores.
Because of climate change this area around the north side of Lake Ontario has become a kind of moving target of what's "really" native; every year it seems like more "southerly" plants become established here. Plants whose "normal" home is US appalachia ... sassafras, tulip trees, pawpaws, vitis aestivalis, all plants that only seemed before to only thrive down in the valley closer to the lake ... they're establishing themselves up here above the escarpment. Are they native because they're from the same continent? Where does the boundary lie? They weren't here before....
For the first 10 years japanese beetles decimated my vineyard every summer; this year is the first year I've noticed the birds have decided that they're an acceptable snack and they're not causing me nearly so many problems. I've heard they've been a bit of a 100 year wave slowly making its way north across the midwest and northeast, causing crazy disruption and then settling down to a periodic annoyance.
The vines I grow in my vineyard are hybrids with native north american species; and yet those same native vines growing along the fencelines and edge of the woods don't have problems with the beetles at all. The shelter of the woods probably housing birds and other insects and fungus that make quick work of the beetles.
In the end, we're all just "Becoming Native to this Place" whichever that place might be https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/becoming-native-to-t...
They did have twice-a-year sales, although I can't really tell from this site if they still do.
If you're in bay area, it's a great way to get ideas for native gardens. It is so fun to watch the pollinators flock to our flowers. Plant native!
After reading Tallamy's books last year, my wife and I were surprised at just how much effort is involved in planning a native garden. Although not the point of their post, the authors section about getting started highlights this.
I've been building https://planting.life to try to reduce this friction. It helps discover native plants by US zip code and shade/moisture conditions, along with planning and sharing gardens.
It's a fascinatingly deep area to dive into!