When you plant California native plants in your garden, you are helping to restore natural ecosystems that are fast disappearing. If everyone planted 50-70% of their gardens in native plants, that could restore our fast declining bird and insect populations.
California is a biodiversity hot-spot in terms of native plants, so we have many different choices for beauty as well as ecosystem benefits.
Calscape.org is a great place to find the plants that are native to your area — type in your zip code and a list of natives will be displayed, and each plant has descriptions of growth requirements, insects and birds that it supports, and nurseries that carry them.
And our own Native Here Nursery is a great resource for very local natives.
As Doug Tallamy, a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware says, “If American’s replanted half of their lawns with native plants, shrubs and trees, we would have more wildlife habitat than all the national parks combined.”
