The Importance of Place

Written by Janine Kharey

Imagine for a minute that what makes weeds so aggravating is the same as what makes a desirable plant resilient.

A weed is as a weed does. It is generally agreed that a weed is any plant growing in a place where it is not wanted or considered beneficial. While native plants have a lot in common with weeds, they provide benefits—often unseen and poorly understood, yet integral in maintaining the balance and health of our environment.

The characteristics native plants share with true weeds make them both resilient and less subject to the orderly control humans seem to require. This article presents the reasons native plants are worth the discomfort of unpredictability.

Plants that existed on this land—particularly in the ecoregion including the greater Baton Rouge area we call the Mississippi Valley Loess Plains—have had 8,000 years to adapt to the topography, the soil conditions, and their relationships with every other organism in this special place. Because plants evolved alongside the insects and other creatures, this created a complex food web: a balanced system with checks on populations and ready responses to sometimes dramatic changes. Native plants with local genetics don’t need humans to do much more than ensure they have the conditions to which they’ve adapted. No need to amend the soils, use fertilizers, worry about freezes, or control the insects that have a biological imperative not to kill the plant they rely upon. Give a native plant what it wants and forget about it.

Native plant growth rates can seem unpredictable because of this ebb-and-flow response to patterns in nature: the weather, adverse events, and subsequent changes in the populations of insects and herbivores on up the food chain. I have watched nature in my own yard respond to changes year after year. This is the year Gulf Coast penstemon volunteered in many places in my garden, and other plants bloomed more profusely for the first time. I witnessed these abundant blooms supporting the earliest native pollinators while other plants took longer to return from our late cold snap. Some years ago, spicebush swallowtail butterflies were so abundant they ate my spicebush down to twigs; the timing of the regrowth of new leaves helped the plant survive the summer heat.

When we approach native gardening with curiosity and acceptance, we begin to see that nature is not so chaotic and unpredictable—rather, it’s that we are not the masters of their complex interconnectedness. Our plants serve purposes we are yet to discover or comprehend. If we know how to look, we can see that the rewards are immeasurable. How amazing to set something so awesome in motion by our decision to nurture native plants.

When we stop to watch and to think, we can see order in what we first perceived as chaos and unpredictability. Instead of asking if a particular plant will fit our aesthetic, we ask: Will this plant do well enough in this place to provide the best ecosystem services? How beautiful are the butterflies and the birds that use this plant, versus the possibility that its leaves are chewed or the seeds have spread?

If the lure of being an important part of the health of our planet is not enough to overcome your reluctance to embrace native plants, there is more. The core role native plants play in healthy ecosystems becomes more prominent when you understand that healthy ecosystems are vital to the continued success of agricultural crops. It is imperative we care about native plants if we want to grow food. Companion planting practices are proving this point.

We can do so much good so easily. From tiny gardens in concrete jungles to suburban backyards and beyond, nature can be nurtured in ways that support healthy ecosystems. It is so simple to support nature that sometimes it means doing less—and maybe doing nothing at all.

While we do not have the same body of knowledge about native plants as we do those that have been in cultivation, we can approach gardening with native plants armed with curiosity and the assurance that planting the right plant in the right place is all you need to have nature take over and take care of the details.

Want more access to plants that evolved in the Mississippi Valley Loess Plains ecoregion? Join Wild Ones Greater Baton Rouge to help us grow availability: greaterbatonrouge.wildones.org