Why Native?
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- Planting a native plant garden is one of the “greenest” things you can do for the planet!
- Native plants are adapted to their environment and generally require less maintenance once established, assuming you’ve placed the plant in close to its native conditions.
- The caterpillars of both butterflies and moths have specific food plants and can’t eat foreign plants. More than 80% of the plants sold by nurseries and planted in people’s yards are foreign.
- No caterpillars = No butterflies. Butterflies add beauty to the world.
- Caterpillars and other insects = bird food. Birds add beauty to the world.
- Planting native plants in your yard helps to restore some of the habitat loss that threatens many species of birds, butterflies and other pollinators.
- What is “native”? It depends on who you ask. It can mean native to Chapel Hill, native to North Carolina, native to the Southeast, native to the eastern US, native to the US, native to North America. Most of our plants are native to the Southeast, but not all are native to North Carolina. Four of our plants are not native – butterfly bush and lantana (because they are so popular with the butterflies), rosemary (because it helps to keep the deer away), and blue mist shrub (because we mixed it up with blue mistflower, and then kept it because the butterflies and bees love it.
Sustainability
Our garden is designed to be a long term resource for the Chapel Hill community. In order for it to be sustainable in the long run, it needs to be easily maintained with low ongoing demands for resources, including water, fertilizer, pest control and weed management. We tried to incorporate these principles into our design as follows:
- We have selected predominantly native plants that will be drought tolerant once established. These plants are adapted to our natural rainfall cycles and after their first year should require little supplemental water.
- In the area of the garden that tends to flood and stay boggy, we have selected a different set of plants adapted to those conditions. Choosing the right plant for the right spot is very important.
- We have planted perennials and shrubs that should last for many years. Many will reseed themselves, although we chose those that would not be a nuisance to our neighbors in the rose garden.
- We amended the soil before planting with sufficient compost to supply adequate nutrients to our plants for this year. They may require the addition of more compost each year, but this can be done inexpensively with natural leaf compost from the Orange County recycle program. The plants’ own shed leaves will also act as compost.
- We mulched around our plants to hold moisture in and thereby decrease water requirements, and also to decrease weeds. The plants have been placed so that with time they will fill in with little space between them for weeds.
- We believe in Integrated Pest Management – using the least toxic, most natural way to control pests, usually involving their natural predators. By avoiding the use of chemical pesticides, the natural insect predators such as lacewings, leatherwings, preying mantises, and predatory wasps should be able to control the caterpillars in our garden so that the plants are not destroyed but some will survive to become butterflies.
