Why Plant Natives?

Hummingbird confronts a Monarch Butterfly on a Milkweed Flower.
©2022, Elana Goren. All Rights Reserved.

A Paradise in Your Backyard

Do you want more birds to visit your yard? Native plants will help with that. Would you like seeing more butterflies in your world? Native plants attract pollinators like butterflies and most are perennials that come up every year. Perhaps you are concerned with the decline of bee populations and how that will affect our food supply? Bees are important pollinators so, to attract them and keep them well-fed, put native plants in your garden. And keep it organic.

It doesn’t matter if your garden is a few plants on a balcony or a multi-acre, sprawling landscape, organic native plants will attract pollinators like birds, butterflies and bees which will in-turn help make your world greener and more ecologically sound. And the perks of seeing hummingbirds right outside your window can’t be beat.

With so much concrete, asphalt and grass lawns in our environment, many species are in danger of dying out from lack of available food and shelter sources. The rampant use of insecticides and herbicides also contribute to the tragic decline of our native wildlife. It is up to our local communities to do what we can to replace these ecological ‘deserts’ with organic native plants that will ensure that our birds, butterflies and bees will thrive and survive for generations to come.

Native Plant Spotlight

We will regularly highlight a variety of native plants on our blog. Plants may display attributes such as flowers, leaf-color, berries, shape and texture, which are more prominent at certain times of the year. We will showcase their current splendor at the time that we blog about them. We have downloadable factsheets to give you the specifics to help with your success in putting the plants into your garden.

Our plant factsheets will include light, water and soil requirements along with information on hardiness zones, bloom times, color, garden use and benefits. You will also notice that we include the Latin name along with the common name with all our mentioned plants for a very good reason. Latin names help avoid confusion when looking for a specific plant. As an example there is a native shrub referred to as a Cranberry Bush (Viburnum trilobum) but it is a Viburnam species and not the same as the native Cranberry bush (Vaccinium macrocarpon) that produces tart fruit for our Thanksgiving table. Having the Latin name handy helps the person at the plant nursery find exactly what you are looking for.

We hope that you have found this information useful. Happy gardening and remember to consider putting native plants in your landscape.