How to choose native plants for your yard
Native plants — plants that are indigenous to a particular region — do wonders for local wildlife, supporting insects, birds and other creatures with food and shelter. As gardening season ramps up with the Memorial Day Weekend, experts say the best way to begin incorporating natives into your yard is to simply give it a shot.
“The most important advice I can give is just give it a try and do your research as much as you can,” said Spencer Campbell, the plant clinic manager at the Morton Arboretum. “You'll be surprised what you learn along the way.”
Much as with any plant, Campbell said, the first step to choosing natives is to ask yourself how much shade your yard or garden has and what colors you like.
From there, he encourages gardeners to think about their space through the lens of all four seasons: You can include plants that flower early in the spring, plants with long summer blooming periods that you can build around, plants that undergo foliage changes in the fall, and plants with unique branching structure to provide some winter interest.
Another lens through which gardeners can view plant choices is biodiversity. In his own garden beds, Campbell strives to have equal parts grass, flowers and trees or shrubs.
Reaching that balance is an important when creating a space that is interesting year-round, and it also promotes a diverse habitat that can support many different wildlife species.
Campbell said starter native flowers include shooting star and woodland floss for the spring; cream and white wild indigo, butterfly weed and pale purple coneflower for the summer; and sky glaciers, white purple prairie clover and any blazing stars in the late summer.
Beginner grasses include switch grass, prairie dropseed and june grass, while Campbell recommended Pennsylvania sedge and eastern star sedge as starting sedges.
For shrubs, Campbell suggested winterberry and elderberry, and for trees, he recommends white oak, red oak and bur oak.
The environmental benefits of adding native plants to yards and gardens are due primarily to their support of local birds and insects. The same can't be said for foreign plants, such as the turf grasses that cover most of our lawns, because animals don't know how to benefit from them. Thus, these plants don't play a role in the overall local ecosystem.
“Native plants are part of a network of species that have evolved together for a very long time and they need each other,” said Andrea Kramer, the director of restoration ecology at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “In areas where the native plants are missing, all of the wildlife that need them cannot be there.”
Perhaps the most well-known example of the relationship between native plants and wildlife is milkweed and the monarch butterfly. The plant is the sole food source for the monarch caterpillar, and without it, a monarch cannot complete its full lifecycle.
Most insects have a similar story, each one depending on a network of native host plants. In turn, insects perform a necessary ecosystem function by decomposing organic matter, acting as an essential food source for birds and driving the production of seeds, fruits and vegetables through pollination.
“We're kind of lost without them,” said Holly Peterson, a perennial expert at Pesche's Flowers in Des Plaines. “We're not going to have the gardens that we envision without insects. Everything is cyclical: If you want birds in your yard, birds eat insects and all birds feed insects to their babies.”
Petersen's own garden is certified as environmentally friendly through the Conservation Foundation's “Conservation@Home” program. Planting with natives allows people to realize the impact they can make in their own yard or even apartment balcony, she said.
“A healthy environment can be tiny. It can be a couple milkweed plants or a couple of other native plants that encourage other native pollinators,” she said. “We sell tons and tons of milkweed, which makes me happy because that's a really good jumping-off point for people. Seeing butterflies is an outward and visible sign that you can make a difference, and that's a great way to introduce kids to nature.”
Biodiversity is also good for human health, Kramer added.
While it's well-known that green spaces improve both physical and mental health for humans, a recent study found that plant and bird species richness benefit mental health.
Kim Pesche, a manager and horticulture educator at Pesche's Flowers in Des Plaines — a third generation, family-owned business that's celebrating its centennial this year — said nurseries can offer a variety of native plants and many are grown at Pesche's.
“We feel very strongly that we should promote more sustainable gardening. We really like to try and combine having something that's aesthetically appealing as well as wildlife friendly,” she said. “We try to sell native plants that are going to require less water and be more drought-resilient during the summertime and won't need as much maintenance, that won't require that input of fertilizers and pesticides. The No. 1 thing is growing plants that are pollinator-friendly — plants that will promote butterflies and bees and any other wildlife.”
Pesche added that gardeners should start small and go from there.
“Don't feel you need to transform your whole yard,” Pesche said. “Even just having a handful of native plants in your garden will make a big difference already. Not everything needs to be switched out. There's a learning curve.”
• Jenny Whidden is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.