Natural native landscaping is the only way to go if you want an interesting garden
About 50 years ago, to say that something was “natural” was kind of bad. After centuries of living with the natural, people were excited about having a say.
If for instance, your garden was full of exotic plants from Japan and Korea and if you had to apply all kinds of pesticides and fertilizers to keep them alive, that’s when you felt good about it.
These days, people are beginning to realize that nature is too big to fight. If you try hard to sustain an exotic garden, you’ll pay the price with soil that’s rendered poisoned and useless over time.
Now people only want to go along with nature’s plan and wherever you look, native landscaping is what is cool.
Anyone who has an unnaturally sustained garden needs to worry about looking quite illiterate for not seeing that poisoning the earth makes no sense.
If you could set aside any principles you may have about wanting to go exotic, you’ll see that there are lots of positives in going for native landscaping.
It’s a simple enough concept to decorate your garden with plants that the first settlers found growing naturally when they first arrived in your area. They are plants that have evolved over thousands of years to take advantage of local conditions.
When you go with native landscaping, certainly you can claim better environmental credentials right away. But there are plenty of other upsides to doing it this way too.
Native plants are low-maintenance to begin with. You have to spend less time, money and energy on them. They just take care of themselves.
Since native plants are adapted to the region, you always have a story to tell your children about each plant. Everything about each plant you see in your garden will have a reason why it forms that way.
There is sure to be a particular kind of bird or insect or other fauna that it’s evolved to work in partnership with. There are other plants that you need in the area that it will probably have a kind of working relationship with.
Native plants attract local birds and insects. Your garden becomes a little patch of Eden right away. There’s a lot more for your children to delight in.
Speaking of children, you’ll actually be able to let them go and play in the garden with their pets without worrying that they will get poisoned by fertilizers or pesticides.
