Wild City

Why Grow Native Plants

Native plants host a dazzling array of soil organisms, fungi, and insect species. This complex soil ecosystem sequesters carbon, keeping it safely in the ground instead of in our already-overloaded atmosphere. Native plants are also the basis of the food web, feeding insects, birds, and mammals which in turn feed other predatory animals. This incredible diversity of life–which is dependent on native plants–is one of Earth’s key stabilizing systems. Native flora and fauna work together to engineer resilient ecosystems that can better withstand the extremes of our climate. These resilient ecosystems are also more productive, creating more food, cooling our immediate climate, cleaning our air and water, producing humidity and rainfall, retaining groundwater, consuming and filtering waste, and pollinating our food crops. These are all ecosystem services without which we could not live.

Although, introduced or non-native plants from another state or continent may be beautiful, they did not evolve over millennia together with the particular insects, fungi, and animals here to form our local ecosystem. These introduced species do not function as part of a resilient ecosystem, but rather tend to degrade it. Areas dominated by introduced plants—including turf grass lawns–are ecological waste lands which are neither resilient nor productive. Living in a functional ecosystem is a human right. We can all play a small, but incredibly meaningful role in restoring our own area’s ecosystem by planting native species and caring for them on as much land as we can spare.

“There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.” - E.O. Wilson