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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am reading more and more about the importance of planting native plants. While I want to support the planet I would like to understand a bit more. It seems like bees are able to pollinate non-native plants too (I mean otherwise the plants would not survive, right?) . What exactly is lost and does this mean I should not plant hydrangea, which seem to thrive here ?[/quote]
If you want a whole story, read this: https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Best-Hope-Approach-Conservation-ebook/dp/B07NMH5GH5
If you want the short story: we need to plant natives because insects, arachnids and birds that evolved with the plants here and they need specific plants in order to feed and reproduce. Have you noticed the shocking lack of birds, butterflies, bees and other things on the wing? It’s because they have no habitat and no food. (In this book he goes on to say that we ALL need to plant natives, a sort of nationwide national park). It’s all part of the food web, we’re all part of it. We need all the pollinators (native bees! Some wasps! Even some flies! Birds!) and they need the natives. Truly, lots of them [i]can’t[/i] eat other plants.

Some people would say that we need to plant all natives and only natives. I hate most natives. I think they look weedy and ugly, but how much of that is because we only ever see them growing in ditches and other interstitial spaces? But next year I am putting in a huge native garden and I’m going to be slowly mixing in more natives elsewhere around my yard.

Because while some are really, really ugly, some are really, really beautiful. Cream Wild Indigo, for example, offers year round interest (gorgeous bridal bouquet type blooms early in the spring when the bumblebees are just emerging, and the whole plant turns black and looks all sculptural all winter), purple love grass en masse literally looks like a purple cloud, and the purple columns of liatris draw so many butterflies that it’s like a butterfly zoo. If you don’t want to commit to all natives, you can get the most bang for your buck by planting keystone species. They talk about that here (and this fact: “Maryland, alone, has 1.1 million acres of lawn which is twice the size of Maryland’s state parks, forests and wildlife management areas.”!): https://www.nutsfornatives.com/post/native-plants-might-your-garden-be-a-national-park

Furthermore, I’m going to be looking into permaculture foods and other ways to build my soil health to sequester more carbon. Those of us with lawns can be combatting global warming because even if we get businesses to stop dumping carbon, we still have all the excess carbon in the air to deal with.

TL;DR: go ahead and plant a few hydrangea - it’s your yard! - but surround them with natives.[/quote]

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