Basically the title. Despite being interested in plants as a teen and trying to germinate exotics under my first grow light, I didn’t get into natives until much later…completely on accident.
I stopped growing anything for like 6 years. Climbed out of the hole I was in and felt the itch to watch a plant from seed the first year in mostly shade. I decided on a variety of impatiens and anise hyssop for the pollinators (pretty much randomly decided on this too, just because)
The impatiens didn’t like it at all when I didn’t water for 2 days and they died. But the hyssop didn’t care at all. Over the course of summer I forgot about them a lot, they drooped some but never died in the summer heat in these containers. I was amazed. Some natives are built different!
When they started to flower it was really cool. But when I saw bees and butterflies buzzing those small plants…it just hit different. It really warmed my heart. I was amazed by how many bugs were attracted to otherwise small and unassuming plants. I was just hooked.
It wasn’t long afterword that I dug a couple of small beds to experiment with other species. I’ve learned so much this year from the failures and successes of all this. It really feels like this is going to last a life time for me. Observing the relationships these plants have with their environment is endlessly fascinating. I wouldn’t have it any other way!
I guess it started with my eco-anxiety. During COVID I started to learn more about climate change and species loss. In order to get some hope I started to read about rewilding and native plant gardening and how some people are doing it even in their gardens so I wanted to do a little something to help.
My path to becoming interested in native plant gardening probably started with me getting interested in mycology. I got super interested in the ecology of fungi and how they interact with the environment/ecosystem, which eventually got me thinking more about how other things like plants interact with the natural world around them, which led me to bring interested in native plants since they’re integral to the local ecosystem.
Part laziness and part love of nature. I hate watering, so anything that thrives in my garden has to be fine with weeks or months of neglect, so natives are the obvious solution. I also got tired of trying to keep exotic grass alive through drought conditions, so I started replacing my lawn with native groundcovers. Then I got into milkweed to save the monarchs and started looking into host plants for other native butterflies. It’s a source of joy to see my backyard alive with pollinators and all sorts of wildlife.
@frogfruit @kurdunkaroo same here!! Well said!
@kurdunkaroo After spending a vacation in the middle of the Belizean jungle and seeing the amazing biodiversity there, I became obsessed with native habitat restoration at home. I live on a small piece of land, but have filled it with gardens of native plants. I have also been working to replace what turf is left with native ground covers. This is the most rewarding hobby I have.
