WHY JUST NATIVE?

“…’Nature’ can be defined as the plants and animals in a given area and all of the natural phenomena that made them as they are. Through eons of evolution by natural selection, living things adapted to their physical environment and the organisms around them in ways that enabled them to survive and pass their genes on to future generations. These natural processes worked well within the ancestral setting that created them, but we humans have changed that setting drastically – and almost instantly, when viewed on an evolutionary time scale. The plants and animals in today’s world have had no time at all to adapt to these sudden changes and so are still operating under the rules that worked before humans took over landscape management. The end result is that without direct intervention by the humans who have placed them at risk, most organisms will not survive under our rules.
We have allowed alien plants to replace natives all over the country. Our native animals and plants cannot adapt to this gross and completely unnatural manipulation of their environment in time to negate the consequences. Their only hope for a sustainable future is for us to intervene to right the wrongs that we have perpetrated. In order to let nature take its course, we must first recreate nature.”

Douglas W. Tallamy
in Bringing Nature Home

 

There are numerous excellent sources of information about the importance of “native plants” including many books and organizations. Here are two short lists of some of these sources.