Excellent Presentation Today - Functional Landscapes

11 years ago

This afternoon I drove up to Frelinghuysen Arboretum for a wonderful presentation by Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke, co-authors of The Living Landscape, on how our yards should not be apart from nature, but a part of it, in order to sustain the web of life that sustains us. Excellent, thought-provoking, important information.

Exploring the topic in depth, they covered some of the very specialized relationships in nature and how we can - and why we should - create biodiverse home landscapes that are beautiful as well as functional in supporting local food webs that enrich and support us.

For the past few years, I have been gradually adding more native plants to my small, suburban home landscape and already have noticed a dramatic increase in the quantity and diversity insects, birds, and amphibians.

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Comments (3)

Ioannis
11 years ago
Super! Agreed! What's a good resource for a list of Native plants/shrubs/trees for my Zone 6 home?
agardenstateof_mind
Original Author
11 years ago
There is a lot of good information on the Native Plant Society of New Jersey website - www.npsnj.org. There are photo galleries, lists; click on the "Native Plants" tab for some of the resources - plant lists, nurseries that carry native plants. There are two lists of native plants - one sorted by scientific name (this way they're grouped by species) the other by common name.

You will also probably find native plants at your county's Rutgers Master Gardener spring plant sale, if they have one. If not, check neighboring counties. Also check out the Rutgers plant sales; they have a great one Mother's Day weekend.

Tallamy has an excellent essay (link below) online and at the bottom is a link "What To Plant", listing woody and herbaceous plants and the number of butterfly and moth species they support.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gardening for Life - Why Plant Natives
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loris
11 years ago
There was an article last week in the New York Times "Asking More of the Landscape" which quotes Tallamy again. He is a hero of mine.

Here is a link that might be useful: New York Times article quoting Tallamy among othes