Growing Native In Your Garden

A native plant can epitomize the place it comes from. It has evolved there, in that precise mix of soil, water, climate and companions. Because it's suited to the place, it will need less in the way of extra water, fertilizers, pesticides. Southwestern natives such as ocotillo and Mexican poppy don't need extra water. Prairie dwellers such as liatris will rise and bloom after the worst winter, without all the fuss of sheltering them from freezes. If you can't grow apples on the Gulf Coast, you can grow pawpaws, which need no chill time and are coveted elsewhere. Glorious Rocky Mountain wildflowers such as gentians relish the short growing season and high ultraviolet exposure that defeats lowland nursery imports. Such local heroes generally know how to get along with local pests, so there's less spraying and poisoning to do.

You can be a hero, too. The story of Franklinia Alatamaha is one that gardeners like to brag about. This handsome tree, a camellia relative native to the Georgia lowlands, is long extinct (and no one knows why) in the wild. It sets out fragrant white magnolia-style flowers in autumn, when its foliage is showing brilliant red-gold. John and William Bartram discovered the tree in 1765, brought a few seedlings back to Philadelphia and planted them to thrive and be passed along. Later pathfinders and plant hunters searched intensively for the mysterious beauty, but never again found it. The species lives on in gardens and arboretums, rescued by gardeners.

If you live in Hawaii or Florida, you have a mission. The native flora of both states - and of California, almost as threatened - are being pushed to the wall by development and invasive non-native plants. Many of those exotics were let loose on the landscape by gardeners who evidently wanted what they'd seen in the garden books and seed catalogues, mass-produced lantana or pampas grass.

A garden is a great framing device. The Joe-Pye weed that looks so ordinary along the roadside becomes a spectacular background for shorter plants; an ordinary yucca is an architectural exclamation point when set on its own in a raked spot. Choose your palette from plants native to the kind of conditions you have, woods or xeric slope or creekside, as well as your geography.

Locals attract locals, and a native garden can be a magnet for wildlife. I wouldn't plant bearberries and expect bears, but I have planted pipevine in the wistful hope of luring the subtly gorgeous pipevine swallowtail. A corridor of indigenous milkweeds and friendly nectar plants would ease monarch butterflies' astounding 1,000-mile-plus migration, and welcome them back. A California fan palm in the back yard might attract a nesting pair of hooded orioles. Local oaks keep your woodpeckers happy - Lewis', redheaded or acorn - along with dozens of other wild neighbors.

Dozens of states, some Canadian provinces and at least one Australian state have native plant societies. Colleges and public gardens are likely to house cognoscenti, too. All those, plus a knowledgeable local field guide, are good places to start learning what treasures you have, wherever you are. The only general directive about native plants is to learn the particulars, and then grow some.