Bringing Nature Home to California
By Laura Camp
On February 1, 2018, Doug Tallamy opened the triennial California Native Plant Society (CNPS) Conservation Conference as the honored plenary speaker, thanks to generous support from Susan Gottlieb of The Gottlieb Native Garden. Tallamy, entomologist and author of Bringing Nature Home and 3 related books, delivered an imperative: we must re-nature our developed areas with native plants.
I have been involved in this cause of planting natural habitats since 1996, and yet I was astounded by the power of Tallamy’s message. His riveting presentation was filled with scientific research, compelling birds and other critters, and more caterpillars than you can shake a stick at. Tallamy has counted more than 700 species in his own yard in Pennsylvania.
We have often talked about all the myriad reasons to plant native plants – beauty, saving water and resources, live our California heritage, etc. But many speakers at the CNPS Conservation Conference, including Mike Evans, Dennis Mudd, Jodie Cook, and Frederique Lavoipierre, distilled this message down to one important point: California native plants are part of our local food web, and non-natives are relatively inert here.
Tallamy’s research documents how infant birds, more than adult birds, depend for survival on caterpillars that live only on specific native plants and not on exotic plants. The populations of insects, and the birds that depend on them, are collapsing worldwide, and the wild areas remaining are not enough to support their sustainable existence.
Everyone understands how monarch butterfly populations depend on their caterpillar’s access to milkweed plants. Multiply that example by thousands of different species of butterflies and moths, and then multiply again by the thousands of birds and other creatures that are part of the food web that depends on those caterpillars. It has an exponential impact.
We all know this, but in the whirlwind of day-to-day living we need to hear it again. Honestly, we can get so caught up in smaller scale details that this information can come across as a revelation, even to people in the thick of the natural garden movement. Doug’s talk, available on YouTube, and other speakers at the Conservation Conference renewed my focus. This is the message we need to take to heart, and to repeat wherever we have the privilege to speak to friends, or to groups, or write about native plants. We must take every opportunity to support native landscaping of our developed spaces. Our very lives as well as the lives of the creatures of our awe-inspiring natural spaces depend on our success.
We can be part of an important revolution in the way we landscape our homes and parks. We can spread the word in California and elsewhere. Here in Southern California, we are far, far away from significant penetration of natural gardening into the general consciousness. That needs to change. Luckily, we are capable of great change!