Harmonizing with Habitat: Embracing Native Plants in Your Landscape Design

Are you ready to choose the kinds of plants you want to use in your landscape design?

Ornamental plants can be so pretty! They can also create problems all their own sometimes.

Plants that aren’t native can have more disease and insect problems. They can require more pruning.

They can sometimes become invasive. They can require more water. They can provide less food for the

local wildlife sometimes too. For the beauty that ornamentals can provide, we should never forget

about the potential downfalls of them either.

Think of all of the invasive species that people around here battle. There’s invasive bittersweet vine in

many areas that is growing all over trees and choking them and killing them. Other invasive species in

New Hampshire include (but are not limited to):

 Norway Maples (such as the maroon leaved ‘Crimson King’ Maple that was so popular for so

many years)

 Russian Olive

 Burning Bush (Euonymous alatus)

 Buckthorn

 Common Privet

 Purple Loosestrife

 Bradford Pear

 Japanese Knotweed

None of these plants are “Native” plants to our region. They were all brought in from somewhere else

and became invasive. This alone is a great reason to consider using native plants in your landscape

design.

There are many reasons to use Native plants. Native plants have all of these benefits:

 They provide shelter for many local wildlife species. Since they are native plants, the native

fauna naturally are attracted to them for food and shelter.

 They provide nectar for pollinators. We’ve all heard about the problems that this world is

having because of the seeming eradication of many pollinators. Let’s encourage the pollinator

populations by doing our part by providing them with proper nectar sources as well as shelter

from native plants.

 The native nuts, seeds and fruits provide food for the local wildlife. Again, the native plants are

the ideal sources of proper food for the native wildlife. This seems so simple, but if all you’re

looking for is beauty in your landscape, you’re missing a lot of what landscaping has to offer.

There is beauty to be had for sure, but let’s consider helping the wildlife at the same time.

 Natives have better survivability and are hardier than non native species. Of course they are!

They’re “natives”! They have been adapted to our environment all along. Many native plant

species aren’t as ‘fussy’ as non-natives. Therefore, they will generally be lower maintenance

plant choices too.

 Lower maintenance. The native species will require less watering, and less pruning generally

speaking. Just let them be and you’ll have a natural looking environment that is

“environmentally friendly”.

 They save water. Once established, natives require less water because they’re ideally suited to

the local environment. This is very “environmentally friendly”.

 Less pesticides are needed. Non native plant species tend to have bigger problems with insect

and diseases because they’re new to this environment. Think of it. The insects will devour a

plant that has no natural immunity to them. Choose native plant species and you’ll have far

fewer problems with pests and diseases. This is especially valuable this day and age where

pesticides are known to kill pollinator species and there is a lot of concern about pesticides in

the landscape in general.

 You’ll have fun enjoying viewing more wildlife. The local wildlife will use your native plants as

their habitat. You can enjoy beautiful birds that like to eat the seeds. The monarch butterflies

will love you for planting butterfly friendly native plants.

 You will be supporting your local ecology. The word ‘ecology’ refers to the branch of biology

that concerns the relationships between living creatures as they relate to each other and to

their surroundings.

 Native plants are rarely invasive. This is a bigger bonus than you may realize. Remember when

everyone planted Burning Bush? It was everywhere. Admittedly, it is a gorgeous shrub, but

now it is on the invasive species list and has become a huge problem in some areas.

All these plus more! Native plants have a beauty all their own. They will help you achieve a very natural

look. If you live on a waterfront property, you may be required to use native plants in your landscape

design in order to satisfy NH DES (NH Department of Environmental Services) in regard to obtaining

permits.

Think about how much you enjoy walking on nature trails. Think about how much you enjoy the natural

lakeshore areas when you visit them. These types of places abound with native plant species. You know

their charm. It may be a foreign idea to you to have a residential landscape look more like a nature

preserve than a suburban, manicured landscape, but the trend is growing, and it’s growing for a good

reason. I’ve seen people start with native plants just in a small boulevard planting between the sidewalk

and the street. Just a little patch of beauty for the butterflies. More and more commonly, I see people

planting native plants as ‘buffer zones’ along the shores of the lake on their waterfront properties.

These native plant buffer zones are magical. They can even keep the geese away from your lawn! Try

planting some ‘Joe Pye Weed’ and some Myrica Gale along your shoreline. It will look fantastic, and it

will protect the lake from stormwater runoff, and it will help the local wildlife.

I suggest you at least consider one area of your yard for a native plants area. Just give it a try. Maybe a

nice sunny corner of your yard would be a great place to start a garden filled with native plants that are

friendly to pollinators. Maybe you have a low, wet area where we can plan on a ‘rain garden’ which

would be filled with native plants that can tolerate seasonal flooding.

Don’t think you need to do your entire landscaping in native plants. Most people don’t do this. The

most amazing ornamental, flowering plants can still be utilized in many places, but please consider

incorporating at least some native plants.

In this photo, the area between the patio and the lake is filled with native plants that are on the

embankment going down to the shoreline. This is referred to as a “living shoreline”.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, be sure to ask about incorporating native plant species into your

landscape design.