One of my favourite ecological thinkers, Benjamin Vogt, has written a beautiful piece that describes perfectly how and why my own style of gardening has changed and matured. I may never completely banish non-native beauties from my garden, but this quote resonates keenly:
A garden will never be wild, and the best it can do is echo or invoke the memory of what wildness is in our world of shrinking pollinators, songbirds, grasslands, and clean water. But every time I grow a native seedling – a Liatris, goldenrod, aster, or milkweed – I know something more: that my slow work in transforming my garden into an all native garden is a protest. It is a protest to all the ways in which we use this world and know are ethically wrong. For me, my garden has become a moral imperative, just as so much human art has been.
Read, and bookmarked for safekeeping, Benjamin. Well said.
The Ethics of Native Plant Gardening
POLLENATRIX 