Native Landscaping Ideas

Curious about native plants? Interested in a beautiful, low-maintenance landscape? Concerned about health and water quality? Or did you just stumble on to this page by accident?

Regardless, we welcome you and hope we can satisfy or pique your curiosity. In the pages that follow, we will introduce some basic Concepts of landscaping with native plants, referred to by many as “naturescaping, ” and follow that with Steps you can take to get started. Note that we will use the phrases “naturescaping” and “landscaping with native plants” interchangeably. You may also be familiar with the phrase “xeriscaping” which refers to landscaping with drought resistant plants, though not necessarily native plants.

In the Concepts below, we will discuss:

This is followed by the Steps, which are in turn followed by Designing for Wildlife, Special Considerations (new home, hedges, bio-swales, etc.) and some Examples. … Ready? Here we go!

CONCEPTS

Relearning Landscaping
There is an element of “relearning” involved in naturescaping because throughout most of our lives we have been taught the opposite. We have been taught to remove native plants (often viewed as “weeds”) and to replace them with plants that are common in the nursery industry – plants that we will refer to as “industrial plants.” The industrial include the standard ornamental shrubs and perennials and are promoted based on the function they provide (hedge, groundcover, etc.) and/or the aesthetic they exhibit, yet not for ecological reasons. They are mass produced and distributed widely, the same way consumer goods are mass produced and distributed. As a result, landscapes, whether residential or commercial, typically have the same plants and the same appearance, regardless of where located – Maine, Texas, Oregon or some place in between?

We have been taught through gardening magazines, radio and television programs, newspaper features and nursery advertising that the industrial plants are the plants to use and that if a place (soil, climate, etc.) does not support them, then we should change the place: remove existing soil, bring in new soil, add irrigation, top dress with an ornamental mulch, and use pesticides and fertilizers as needed. The result is a rather sterile landscape that looks the same regardless of where you live. It is also a landscape that unfortunately does not support our bird or benificial insect populations.

Maine? Texas? Oregon?

We have also been taught to have a “weed” free lawn, to decrease biodiversity and to maintain our landscape through regular cuttings and the application of synthetic chemicals. It is interesting to note that radio gardening programs and other landscape “experts” often suggests a chemical solution to landscape “problems.” This practice is driven by advertisers who sell these products. Fortunately, there in an emerging shift towards organic yard care and many good groups are involved in the effort (including some master gardening programs), but there is a long way to go.

Thus, as we approach naturescaping, we have to purge a lot of the landscaping notions with which we grew up and be open to new ones. Some of those new ones are: selecting the plant that goes with the place and not changing the place for the plant; recognizing that we do not NEED all the lawn we have; and realizing that native plants take care of themselves because they evolved to grow in the place you want to plant them. Thus, we can let go of some of the…