LANDSCAPE NATIVE

How to Landscape Your Home with Native Plants

Are you interested in transforming part of your open space lawn to an unique native plant creation? Or perhaps you are interested in a small pond? Or do you just want a landscape native again?

Maybe you have a lot of space (like the photo below) and you want a less maintenance property or you wish to reduce your personal impacts on climate change.

Whatever you would like to create and for whatever reason, we can help you help yourself or we can do it all for you. 

Here are the steps we recommend:

1. Know your space - what is the size of your area in question and is it mostly sunny, shady, or a little of both.

2. Know your budgets - how much time, money and focused energy do you have to put towards this nobel cause?

3. Can you do it yourself - based on the previous questions? To help you consider, see our 'Do It Yourself' page.

4. If you want us to do it - see our 'Garden Menu' page for a sample of what we can offer.

5. Get in touch with us - Email or call us and we can see if we can hel and stay current on trends in ecosystme gardening.

Above: The lawn is gone! But not all the plants are native; you can transition into native plants slowly, or all at once. It's your choice! Native plants in this photo include Purple Coneflower, Boneset, Green Coneflower and Joe Pyeweed. Including native plants in your gardening efforts vastly improves urban ecology.

It's likely that our driveways and urban landscapes won't look like this again any time soon (below). However, some highly biologically diverse (lots of species) ecosystems do still exist and can serve as inspirations to all of us. Get outside and immerse yourself in nature as often as you can.

Top 5 Reasons to 'Go Native' On Your Lawn:

1.Rediscover Local Beauty - quite often the grass looks greener on the other side of the continent - where most people look in terms of the origins of the plants they put in their home, school and business gardens. The truth is that our local treasures are largely undiscovered, overlooked and kept to the margins by the horticultural industry. Keep asking the mainstream greenhouses if they stock any native plants and before long...native plants and all their benefits will be the 'norm'!

2. Climate Change - so many of our personal choices have a huge cumulative impact on the greatest environmental challenge facing us over the past several thousand years. Choosing locally sourced native plants is so important for helping maintain ecosystem integrity, which is crucial for helping maintain ecosystem services - carbon sequestering, erosion control, water purification, tree filled landscapes and so many more. Since most people currently live in cities, improving urban ecology goes a long way in mitigating the impacts of climate change.

3. Children - our future sits right within our midst. Kids learn from us, and thankfully many are now teaching us. Getting kids involved in gardening opens up so many instinctual and natural learning pathways as well as getting them physical exercise. Most importantly you can provide a means to helping them reconnect with nature in a manner the imparts a subconscious respect for all that is life. 

4. Biodiversity - it is often said that biodiversity is the 'spice of life' that provides wonder, beauty and inspires our imaginations. More recently, the phrase 'biodiversity is what sustains us' has been coined. The more diverse systems (see photo opposite, bottom) we have, the more robust they are, the less likely they are to collapse and stop providing us with the 'free ecosystem services' - clean air, water, food and medicinal sources. Ecosystem gardening at home is a great way to increase local levels of biodiversity.

5. Legacy - why would it hurt to be a the beginning of a new, truthful and meaningful trend? Of course it wouldn't! So don't believe everything we say, word for word, do your own research and find out what other experts are saying and if there is a different way, or another more complimentary way to make your difference do it now and leave a legacy!