Earth Day Starts with Native Plants
Native plants have an important role in fighting climate change and in ensuring that we have a planet to travel in the future.
The TL;DR
If you want to help the planet this Earth Day, start with rewilding your backyard.
Rewilding (in part) means bringing back those native plants that belong to a region.
Native plants are survivors, better at resisting insects, require less water, and produce more oxygen.
They are also the friends of native wildlife.
It’s Earth Day—the earth tried to kill my plants the last two nights.
On Tuesday evening, the temperatures dropped below freezing and we had three inches of heavy, wet snow. Three inches. In April. Wednesday was snowless, but still freezing.
No one wants to lose their flower buds, vulnerable plants, and trees to sudden freezing temperatures and crushing snow. My gardens, after all, have been crucial to my mental health during the pandemic. More than that, my plants, and especially my native plants, are helpful for the survival of the birds, bees, butterflies, and moths that share this small piece of land with me during the year.
So what can I do in a sudden Spring deep freeze?
Read my newest at The Daily Beast, “Leaving the U.S. is Easier Now—It’s Getting Back That Could Be the Problem.”
Freezing April temperatures in Ohio are not uncommon, and usually occur right when spring flowers are about to be in full bloom. I do what a lot of gardeners might do: I rush out to cover the most-vulnerable plants with whatever I have available — pots, tarps, tarps over pots, or bins. I usually need just enough to get them through the night, but two days is a bit much. This week, I crossed my fingers and hoped that the snow will insulate some plants before the temperatures drop, and then I waited to see what happens.
It is the native plants that have the best chances of survival.
Why? They evolved in this area and during its shifting weather patterns.
Many of our greenspaces, whether in towns or at our homes, are often filled with non-native plants, frequently in favor of something exotic and beautiful. But this is conforming the land to our lives, rather than the other way around. It is gardening focused only on composition and it can have a detrimental effect on an ecosystem.
Rewilding at Home
This loss of native plants has prompted a growing movement to rewild our greenspaces. It is the belief that we are better off when we have restored our grass covered, water-guzzling lawns and our water wasting cement playgrounds with the flora that belongs to a region.
The right plants can draw the animals and insects that make up a healthy ecosystem.
Milkweed, for example, is not a very showy plant, but it is crucial to the survival of monarch butterflies and it is native to North America. When it is removed in favor of so-called butterfly bushes, the gardener is not helping North American butterflies survive. A butterfly bush is unhealthy for monarchs and its original habitat is actually in China, where there is an ecosystem fit for it.
I’ve observed this firsthand at home when we removed our initial butterfly bushes and began restoring native plants like milkweed and native wildflowers. Monarchs returned in force, as did the birds that rely on the seeds of certain native flowers. That wildlife then propagates (for free) those species of plants that are fit for our ecosystem by carrying the seeds elsewhere on their feet.
A good example of this rewilding is found in Isabella Tree’s book, Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm. Tree tells the story of her rewilding project at Knepp in West Sussex, where an unprofitable farm became an opportunity to restore native species to the land and bring back wildlife that had disappeared due to habitat loss. The return of native flowers and grasses and seeds, for example, helped provide a place for the threatened turtle doves that rely on them. Those turtle doves, which had been disappearing from England, had now found at least one spot they could return to each year for breeding.
Why Native Plants?
Native plants require less water over time when they are in the soil they know. Their defenses are also built for the insects that belong to that region, so they do not rely on pesticides, and this reduces not only soil pollution, but also fossil fuel production. Plants are most likely to be bigger producers of oxygen when they are in their native habitats, and this makes for fresher and cleaner air.
Related: “Why Forest Bathing Should Not Be Limited to the Privileged.”
So, native plants are better for the planet.
I’m not gonna lie: even though my home garden gets more native every year, I still have plenty of plants that aren’t originally from this region (like lilacs). This is partially because they are strongly adaptive for this zone, or were here when I bought the place, or sometimes they get accidentally planted by birds — or, as is most often the case, I just have trouble parting with them.
Yeah, I’m still a work in progress.
Still, I keep trying to improve my little quarter acre of Perrysburg, Ohio, because happy plants make for happy people, animals, and insects.
Ever year, Earth Day is a reminder of the facts: global temperatures are rising, ice is melting, and species are disappearing. As depressing as that news can be, it is also a good reminder that we can and should do something about it: if you want to save the planet, you can start with your own backyard.
What’s in your garden? Tell me in the comments.
Hi, I’m Brandon Withrow. I'm a freelance travel journalist—stranded by the pandemic. You’ll find me in places like The Daily Beast, Business Insider, and Sierra Magazine. Follow me on Twitter or Instagram or visit brandonwithrow.com.
