by Patty Mann
I would like to begin with a quote from the Audobon Society.
“Over the past century, urbanization has taken intact, ecologically productive land and fragmented and transformed it with lawns and exotic ornamental plants. The continental U.S. lost a staggering 150 million acres of habitat and farmland to urban sprawl, and that trend isn’t slowing. The modern obsession with highly manicured “perfect” lawns alone has created a green, monoculture carpet across the country that covers over 40 million acres. The human-dominated landscape no longer supports functioning ecosystems, and the remaining isolated natural areas are not large enough to support wildlife.
Native plants are those that occur naturally in a region in which they evolved. They are the ecological basis upon which life depends, including birds and people. Without them and the insects that co-evolved with them, local birds cannot survive. For example, research by the entomologist Doug Tallamy has shown that native oak trees support over 500 species of caterpillars whereas ginkgos, a commonly planted landscape tree from Asia, host only 5 species of caterpillars. When it takes over 6,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees, that is a significant difference.
Unfortunately, most of the landscaping plants available in nurseries are non-native species from other countries. These exotic plants not only sever the food web, but many have become invasive pests, outcompeting native species and degrading habitat in remaining natural areas.”
Many of us have found ourselves in recent years observing ecological disaster after ecological disaster. Climate change, pollution and habitat loss have led to a global mass extinction, and in turn, extinctions lead to more environmental changes that reinforce the original problem. Many of us older folks can easily remember a time when we saw more butterflies, more fireflies and a wider variety of birds. Some of the most shocking reductions have occurred in just the past few years.
Many of us are familiar with the relationship between Monarch butterflies and milkweed. Monarch caterpillars feed on milkweed, and only milkweed, so if there is no milkweed in the landscape, there are no Monarchs. What many of us fail to realize is that this is true for every butterfly and moth. There are a few plants, maybe only one plant, that their caterpillars can eat. And those plants are always native plants.
Suburban homeowners are in a unique position to do something to reverse this extinction trend, as we each own a piece of land that could be managed to become part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. By growing native plants that feed native insects, and by extension, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, and by clearing invasive plants from our yards, we can each to a small part to combat extinctions and encourage biodiversity. And by attacking this problem as a community, we can achieve exponentially more, as individual small plots of land join up and become a larger ecosystem. Every piece of land is potential habitat, and every suburban yard with a lawn and a few non-native plants is habitat lost. So many of the plants we rely on as ornamental landscape plants like daffodils, forsythia, and pachysandra, offer little to no wildlife value.
But growing these plants is not a selfless act. There are many practical benefits for the homeowner and the wider community as well. It is simply easier and cheaper to garden with natives. Native plants require less water to maintain, no fertilizers or pesticides to speak of, and don’t need to be protected from extreme weather, because they have evolved to live in our area. Furthermore, by attracting and supporting native pollinators, they provide pest control for our vegetable gardens.
Native plants also serve to protect our watersheds. Manicured lawns lead to compacted soil that does not absorb water well, and rain washes over the land, pulling away topsoil. It runs into the sewer drains, into our rivers and eventually our oceans. The longer, more vigorous roots of native plants dig deep into the soil, carving channels for water to percolate down into the soil and eventually into the groundwater. As the plants die back, the roots then decay, adding organic material into the soil, which improves soil quality, encourages important microbial life and sequesters carbon.
I have provided a handout with a list of resources to learn about and acquire native plants and a list of plants that I have found to be deer resistant in our neighborhood. I encourage anyone interested in gardening, wildlife or the environment to spend a little time poking around online as there are countless YouTube videos to watch on the subject.
What plants should I plant?
It is best to plant a variety of plants that are found in your ecoregion. Good resources to find out what plants are native to your region are as follows:
You can also start by visiting a local native nursery. We are lucky enough to have one right on our doorstep, https://www.cottagecreekgardens.com/ in Valley Cottage.
If you are travelling upstate, make sure to visit https://catskillnativenursery.com/ in Kerhonksen.
Rohslers nursery in Allendale, NJ has an excellent selection of native plants https://rohslers.com/
Van Houten Farms in Pearl River is always improving its selection of native plants https://vanhoutenfarmsny.com/
The Native Plant Center at SUNY Westchester https://www.sunywcc.edu/about/npc/ has an amazing native plant sale every spring.
My favorite sources for native plant seed online is Prairie Moon Nursery https://www.prairiemoon.com/ and Everwilde https://www.everwilde.com/
Deer resistance
In our neighborhood we have a particularly heavy deer presence. Many plants in our nurseries will be labeled as deer resistant but still be quickly consumed by our deer. Even worse, deer in different areas tend to eat different things. Here is a list of the most deer resistant native plants in my Upper Nyack garden and those I have observed Hester Haring Cason Preserve. The list is not comprehensive.
- Mint family plants: Pycnanthemums (Mountain Mints), Monardas (Bee Balms), Hyssops.
- Milkweeds (Aesclepius).
- St Johns Wort (Hypericum)
- Silver Wormwood (Artemisia ludoviciana)
- Sneezeweed (Helenium Autumnale)
- Sedges (Carex species)
- Most native grasses, including little bluestem, big bluestem, switchgrass, prairie dropseed, blue grama, muhly grass and purple lovegrass.
- Bonesets (eupatorium)
- Rattlesnake Master (eryngium yuccafolium)
- Most goldenrods and asters.
- Antennarias – Pearly Everlasting and Pussytoes.
- Alliums: Allium cernuum (Nodding Onion), Allium canadense (Meadow Garlic/Canada Onion), and Allium tricoccum (Wild Leek/Ramp)
- Blue Flag Iris
- Juniper
- Spruce
- Tickseed (Coreopsis)
- Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) and Coneflower (Echinacea)
Upper Nyack Green Committee 