Native Plants Matter

Caterpillar on native plant - Pollinator gardens

Plants allow animals to ingest the energy shining down on us from the sun. Animals can access this energy if they can eat plants or eat something that eats plants. Insects are the best at transferring energy from plants to other animals, who then transfer it to other animals still. Unfortunately, most insects are very picky eaters.

90% of insect herbivores are restricted to eating one or just a few plant lineages that they co-evolved with over eons. Without those plants, and without those insects, the rest of the food chain collapses.

Lawns: Ecological Wastelands

Turfgrass has replaced diverse native plant communities across millions of acres in Canada and the United States. These vast, barren spaces do not support native insects (or the species they support) and contribute to habitat fragmentation.
Canada and the U.S. are the highest water users per capita of the OECD countries. In Canada, residential water use increases by 50% in the summer months due in large part to lawn irrigation, and 50% of the water used outdoors evaporates before serving any purpose! In the U.S., lawn irrigation consumes on average more than 8 billion gallons of water daily. This is more water than is replaced by rainfall in most areas, making this highly unsustainable.
Keeping the turf “weed free” is a toxic endeavour that loads chemicals into our soils and waterways. Homeowners also put roughly the same amount of fertilizer on their lawns as is used in big agriculture. 40-60% of fertilizer applied to lawns ends up in surface and groundwater, where it kills aquatic organisms and contaminates drinking water.

Learn More About the Impact of Lawns
Colonialism and Garden Norms

Lawns originated in the 1500s in Europe as part of aesthetic, managed gardens. Lawns were very distinct from commonly-managed land which tended to include meadows for livestock grazing or forests for foraging. Lawns grew in popularity among the British aristocracy throughout the Enclosure Acts, where peasants were forcefully kicked off of the land during the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The aristocracy then had access to land and a desperate group of people who needed to sell their labour for a wage (the former peasants), many of whom became gardeners and groundskeepers.
The lawn was then tied to the colonization of Turtle Island, with wealthy North American settlers using it to claim land and flaunt wealth. Vast areas of forest and native grasslands were razed for monocultural agriculture and gardens. The turf grass Europeans brought over is actually highly invasive and has little in common with native perennial grasses.
In the 1700s, Thomas Jefferson and other elite Americans copied the landscaping paradigms of rich Europeans, with vast lawns accented with plants from Europe and its colonies. This set the standard that has dominated our landscaping choices ever since.

How Lawns Became a Status Symbol
Habitat Fragmentation

One of the most important ways our lawns and non-native gardens contribute to biodiversity loss is through habitat fragmentation. With ever-expanding urban and suburban sprawl, there simply aren't enough parks and protected areas or spaces with native plant communities to support thriving biodiversity populations, especially as there isn't much connection between those spaces.
Entemologist Doug Tallamy explains that habitat fragmentation makes large species’ populations smaller and isolated from one another, making them more vulnerable to extinction. Species with large ranges will disappear from small fragmented patches of habitat immediately. Others often eventually disappear as their population sizes are no longer large enough to weather environmental changes or population fluctuations.
Migrating species, like the monarch, need access to native landscapes over vast distances. The steady reduction in the native plants they depend on for survival – milkweeds, asters, and goldenrods – have reduced their numbers by up to 96% since the 1970s.
Native Plants to the Rescue!

90% of insect herbivores are specialists. These specialists have coevolved with certain plant species over millennia, but otherwise either can’t subsist on or reproduce using other plants in the ecosystem.
Caterpillars are some of the most important insect herbivores, not only because many become pollinators, but because they are the most vital food source for birds. And the amount of caterpillars that birds need to raise just one clutch of nestlings is astronomical!
A typical nestling eats a full meal 30-40 times per day. Field researchers have counted several species bringing food to the nest over 800 times per day for days in a row. That's thousands of caterpillars per nest!
A 2018 study comparing ecosystem sites with mostly native plants versus introduced and invasive plants found that the sites dominated by non-native plants contained 68 fewer caterpillar species, 91 percent fewer caterpillars, and 96 percent less caterpillar biomass. That’s a whole lot less food for all of the species that depend on caterpillars! All the way up the food chain, the health of our ecosystems depend on native plants.

Bring Native Plants Back to your yard

Native Plants Can Help YOU, Too!

Reduce Water Use

If you've selected the right plants for your site, they should only need to be watered for a month or so while they're getting established - perhaps a bit more if you're planting in the height of summer. After that, rainfall should do it (unless, say, you are experiencing a prolonged drought).
With a new baby and now a toddler at home, I simply did not have time to baby the plugs I planted for the past two seasons. I rarely watered even during establishment, but being adapted to local conditions, they still thrived!

Eliminate Chemicals & Fertilizers

Fertilizers can actually be detrimental for native plants, many of which are adapted to sandy or clay soils. The key is choosing the right plants for your site and letting nature take the reins. Fertilizer production contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, so in addition to saving yourself time and money, you won't be contributing to this industry.

Save Time!

While labour will be involved in designing and setting up your native plant garden, not needing to water or amend soil over the years will save a great deal of time. Once the garden fills in and you have a ground cover layer that suppresses weeds, you won't need to continuously apply mulch either.
What will you do with your newfound freedom??

Plus…

While turf grass roots are quite shallow, native plant root systems can be very deep and extensive. This allows stormwater to be absorbed into the ground and held there rather than remaining on the surface. This means less water is available to flood our urban environments or to carry lawn chemicals and fertilizers in to our waterways.
The plants can actually clean the water, too, through 'adsorption.' This is where pollutants cling to the plants and are filtered out.
The root systems of many native plants are excellent for stabilizing slopes and shorelines and preventing erosion. Erosion not only removes soil, taking away important biota and organic matter, but also reduces the soil's ability to retain water. Native plant communities will provide food and habitat for wildlife while providing ecosystem services like building and holding soil!
'Nature-Based Climate Solutions' are actions that support biodiversity while mitigating climate change. Native plants, as we know, are crucial for supporting local food webs. Additionally, they will absorb carbon, cool local temperatures, and save water! Planting diverse plant communities will not only provide safe havens for wildlife, but will make our landscapes more resilient to changing temperatures.