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I heard a botanist say native plants are 'unreliable' and it rubbed me the wrong way
I was at a garden club meeting last Tuesday in Louisville and this guy with a fancy greenhouse stood up and said native plants are 'unreliable for show gardens.' He was talking about how they die back or look messy compared to non-native hybrids. I get that hybrids can be flashy, but I think we lose something real when we only go for the tame stuff. My purple coneflowers and milkweed have brought in more butterflies than any fancy petunia ever did. Has anyone else run into this attitude that natives aren't 'good enough' for a proper garden?
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adam_baker7d ago
Did you ever hear what happened to my buddy Mark who tried to go full hybrid after listening to a talk like that? He spent a ton of money on these sterile knockout roses and lily hybrids, and by mid-July half of them had some weird blight that spread like crazy. Meanwhile my patch of bee balm and asters looked a little rougher around the edges but didn't even flinch during that dry spell we had. I visited his place last fall and he was honestly jealous of all the monarch caterpillars crawling all over my milkweed while his garden was just... quiet. There's something to be said for plants that actually know how to take care of themselves, you know?
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That botanist sounds like he’s used to gardens that look perfect for one week out of the year and boring the rest of the time. My yard is full of brown-eyed Susans and goldenrod that get a little wild by August, sure, but the bees and goldfinches go nuts for them. There’s a big difference between a garden that’s just for looking at and one that’s actually alive. Show gardens can be pretty, but I’d take a messy patch of natives full of bugs and birds any day over something that needs constant babysitting.
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