Everyone loves the sprawling view provided by suburban lawns and gardens. However, as lovely as the view can appear, the traditional lawn present in a suburban sprawl is horrible for the environment. Worse, it’s rooted in colonialist and classist systems. It’s far better to allow your yard to serve as a slice of the local ecosystem.
One way that you can do this is by adding native plants to your garden and front yard. If you’re not sure if that’s the right call for you, here are 4 reasons that you need more native plants and trees in your landscaping.
1. Native Plants Work Well With Black Thumbs
Are you someone who’s never been able to maintain a garden, no matter how hard you try? Do you have a black thumb that kills every plant you’ve tried to raise? If so, native plants may be the answer to your prayers. Since they grow naturally in your area, you don’t need to spend too much extra time and effort tending them.
2. A Native Plant Garden Improves Biodiversity
One of the worst things about the traditional suburban yard is that it’s a monoculture of grass, lacking in biodiversity. By incorporating native plants, mosses, and grasses into your garden, you can maintain and improve the local ecosystem.
3. Local Plants Harbor and Shelter Local Wildlife
Local wildlife, be it insects, birds, or mammals, have had millennia to adapt to the environment in which they live. If you bring native plants from a local nursery into your garden, you offer places for local wildlife to build their homes, eat, reproduce, and carry on to the next generation. This can allow your garden to serve as a miniature wildlife preserve for smaller, more urbanized species native to your area.
4. They’re Healthier for You and the Environment
Let’s face it: Maintaining a traditional lawn takes loads of fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemical-laden substances. They may look cleaner to the eye, but native plants and trees offer a much healthier yard, both for yourself and the environment. You won’t have to deal with the exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, and you don’t have to pump your yard full of excess water and additives to make it appealing.
A native plant garden provides a much healthier play space for small children as well, preventing them from swallowing fertilizer pellets or other similar substances.
Want to Learn More About Making Your Home a Greener Place?
Planting native plants in your garden can make great strides towards making your home a brighter, greener place. It allows local wildlife a safe place to shelter, increases biodiversity, and reduces the workload you have to take on in order to look after it. It saves the environment and saves you money to boot!
Did you find this article about native plants helpful? If you want to learn more ways to make your home a more environmentally friendly place, then why not check out our blog? We update each day with more helpful and informative articles like this one!
