Why Native Plants Matter

Why do native plants matter?
As we face the unprecedented, urgent, and entwined challenges of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, native plants grown from seed:

1. Provide habitat that supports populations of butterflies, bees, birds and all forms of life.
2. Make our landscapes more adaptable to future environmental stressors due to climate change, like temperature swings, drought, flooding and pest outbreaks.
3. Signal a region’s unique character, imbuing a sense of place and beauty.

What are Native Plants?
Species of trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, grasses and ferns that grew in eastern North America before Colonial times and coevolved, over millennia, with the region’s animals, insects, amphibians, bacteria and fungi.

More Reasons to Care About Native Plants

In this presentation, Executive Director Heather McCargo covers the many reasons we all should care about our region’s native flora and the importance of bringing these native plants back into our gardens and developed landscapes.