Picture walking through a landscape of lushness, pollinators buzzing from flower to flower, colorful birds full of song and hummingbirds brimming with attitude and you sitting quietly enjoying nature’s show with a contented smile. I often write about the beauty and marvel to be found in the wilds but as a retired landscape architect who spent much of his career designing landscapes for life, I know the joy of sitting in your own yard and watching the circus of native inhabitants go about their daily routines.
You don’t need a huge yard to create a lush habitat. You don’t need a wealthy relative to pay for the water bill. If you are fortunate to live in a place where the native landscape was left in place, even remnants of it, then you are already many steps down the road to enjoying nature to its fullest. But most of us must create our own native landscape because someone previously didn’t recognize the treasures that they were removing in the name of progress.
Native plants have evolved with the ecology of our locale. They relish the high and lows, the dry and wet times, the soils created here and the natural life that still abounds. By using native plants in your landscape, you are catering to the native pollinators with the food they love and need. Another bonus of a native landscape is that once you start on the path of restoration, nature will often nudge you aside and say, here, let me show you how it is done.
We are fortunate in our locale to have an organization, the Gila Native Plant Society whose members are not only are well versed in the native plants and their needs, but they also promote native plant growers by holding a plant sale. It will be a beautiful drive to Silver City to pick up a few native gems and speak with very knowledgeable people about those plants.
I apologize for not posting the flyer in time to go to the sale this year, but most of the growers do have plants available during the growing season and you can start planning for the “Rewilding” of your yard.
The growers’ who were part of this year’s sale were:
- Gila Watershed Partnership, Safford
- Honey Hawk Homestead, Mimbres
- Lone Mountain Natives, Silver City
- Spadefoot Nursery, Cochise County
- Whiskey Creek Zócalo, Arenas Valley
For more information on obtaining native plants contact:
Gila Native Plant Society – gilanps.org
This article reminded me of the mass decimation of the natural lot next to me in just the past 4 months. My house of 2003 retained the entire front yard in natural vegetation. And I see how many houses of my street and others in the town maintained much of their original vegetation while still building upon the same ground.
Next door is…. flat sand. Destruction at its finest. Oh, the lost wildlife, and lost vegetation, disregarded as if it was useless and disposable.
My landscaping needs work. If and when I get to do that, it will incorporate more Joshua trees, Ocotillo, and Desert Willows than were included before. And whatever native plants I can round up!