Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: Two articles from the world of horticulture confirm that demand for locally adapted native plants in gardening, landscaping, and land management is growing dramatically.
April 17, 2018
Garden and Gun (an interestingly named publication of which NPCC was previously unaware), has published an article about a family native seed business in North Carolina. The seed producer is expanding to meet demand from native habitat projects throughout the south. These restoration projects cover a wide range from hunting reserves for quail and other wildlife to native pollinator landscaping, power line rights of way and wetland mitigation.
The diversity of this family’s customers reflects the expanding understanding of the many uses of – and valuable
ecosystem services provided by – locally adapted native plant communities.
The second article, by Allan Armitage, a University of Georgia professor of horticulture emeritus, was published in Greenhouse Grower magazine. It offers a view of native plants and native plant gardeners from the perspective of mainstream horticulture.
Professor Armitage reflects on an article he wrote in 2004, entitled “Invasive Plants Make Us Look Bad”. The focus of that article was to defend the domination of horticulture by non-native plants against the attacks on the horticulture industry by what he calls the “native plant movement”. This Movement, he asserted, incorrectly painted all non-native plants, invasive and non-invasive alike, with the same undesirable brush.
He discusses how his opinions of native plants and the "native plant movement" have changed – or not – in the 14 years since his original article.
