A Controversial Plant Opinion.

It's not the end all to planting none native plants.

Our gardens can be both native and non-native plants. Its fine. It is not evil to plant non-native plants. Avoid invasives and noxious weeds but many non-native plants are good and fun.

• Not all natives are the Worst Ever or completely useless for pollinators  the way many people claim BUT they do lower genetic diversity if cloned and not seed bred. This is more an issue if you are trying to reestablish a wild area or preserve a species, less so if you are landscaping your suburban house

• Not all non native plants growing wild need to be eradicated or are horribly invasive, especially if they are growing in disturbed areas that we created. Hesperis matronalis for example grows places like roadsides, train tracks, and areas where invasives have already choked out natives.

• Invasive plants are a symptom of a problem, not a problem themselves. They are not evil. It does not do any good to assign moral worth to plants. Native plants are not "good". Invasive plants are not "the enemy" They just are. They are filling a niche that our society left open for them.

• If you are going to remove invasive plants en masse, you have to have a plan for whats going in its place. Garlic mustard, for example, tends to build up in population and then decline in number... unless the population is disturbed in which case it starts back up again.

• Given that climate change is a possibility and the fact that we have changed the environment on a micro level by putting in dams and streets and neighbourhoods with lawns and shopping centres.... most definitions of native plants are bogus. The idea that traditional native plants are better adapted to our local environment is no longer true. The winters are getting colder, watersheds are changing all the time, and your new development with all the topsoil shaved off in the baking sun with so much deer pressure even deer resistant plants don't stand a chance... the native plants are not native to that environment.

• Oh, the problem is capitalism btw. Our infrastructure and livelihoods depend on creating environments where invasiveness thrives and natives cannot.

• Individuals can help on a very small scale by planting their yards in an environmentally friendly way but if a highway project and new industrial center is going in down the street... nothing is going to help the local environment except lobbying and supporting conservation organizations

NOTE: That being said: Movements like "Food not Laws" and "Save the Bees" frankly do far more harm than good because the real answer is education, research, individualization, and localization ... Not one-size-fits-all macro-solutions and buzzwords. When I go off about anti-lawns - its always about creating a proper environment to the climate the you are in! I will be making a post about 'Save The Bees' because it's pollinators not bees | THANKS!

If you're interested in this absolutely do some reading about novel anthropocene communities because it's fascinating and if you're not in North America then for goodness sakes check what's a problem where you live before you get rid of it all because a lot of the North American invasives are native species in the UK and some are actually under decline. Our perceptions of nature as having a default 'pristine' state to aim for are flawed because humans are not separate from nature. We've been influencing it for as long as there have been humans. So when we think about what we should aim for in restoration we need to make a decision about which point we restore to.

It has to be an active choice and this works both ways! Just because we only remember a damaged ecosystem doesn't mean we can't attempt to restore to something better.

Don't let shifting baselines make you forget what we could have.