I’ve transformed most of my 1 acre yard from lawn to native plant gardens. Native plants support biodiversity!
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Yes absolutely, though I find it a difficult spectrum between pure conservationism vs ecology. I want to plant as many natives as possible, but perfect is the enemy of good, and ultimately I believe creating habitat and restoring a functional ecosystem takes precedence over trying to wind back the clock on colonisation.
I live in New Zealand and am in the process of creating a 35 hectare eco-community which includes 8 hectares set aside for wetland restoration and reforestation, and another 5 of already regenerating native bush. There are existing trusts we could ally with for support, however most of them stipulate planting purely natives, which I don’t believe is practical. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.
Here gorse bushes imported by Scottish settlers spread rampantly on any ungrazed land, and the reccommended approach is to poison them as fast as possible and plant natives in their stead. We’d rather not use pesticides, but there are other options. Gorse is very vast growing and horrendously thorny, but that can actually be a benefit - animals like rabbits don’t like to feed on it, so it can actually act as a nursery for young natives, and it requires full sun, so as soon as anything grows up from under it, it dies back.
Being able to step back and find ways for ecosystems to work together to restore themselves is the only cost effective/sustainable way to do it at the scale and speed we need to.
Yes absolutely, though I find it a difficult spectrum between pure conservationism vs ecology. I want to plant as many natives as possible, but perfect is the enemy of good, and ultimately I believe creating habitat and restoring a functional ecosystem takes precedence over trying to wind back the clock on colonisation.
Reforesting with plenty of fruiting plants, both natives and non-natives that aren’t too invasive, probably achieves the most reasonable balance. The land gets reforested, and you also get food, meaning that you don’t need to buy produce that was grown by deforesting somewhere else.
Does your eco-community have any online presence?
Huh, I’ve hated gorse since childhood (having to walk through it during school camps sucked), it’s interesting to hear that it can actually be used in a way that’s beneficial to our neat native species!
There is a short film about it called “Fools and Dreamers”: https://youtu.be/3VZSJKbzyMc
I try to plant as many native species as i can, outside of a couple food crops. But most of those are native anyway like berries and stuff
I’m planning to do my whole property like a little native plant sanctuary with lots of pollinators for the bees and stuff the local wild life would like, especially the beautiful birds!
Me! We’ve reforested the sides of our ridge with about 12000 native plants. They are a couple years old now so slowly popping up but we’ve already noticed an increase in our birds/manu, especially tui who love the pohutukawa and harakeke
We’ve been working with a landscaper that specializes in native and edible plants. We’ve removed a lot of highly invasive plants that were previously growing out of control (although it’s a constant fight to keep them away) and replaced them with fruit trees and native flowers.
We’ve also been trying to replace the grass in our yard with clover
I think clover can be a good addition when a property is severely lacking in flowering plants, but would encourage you to broaden even further. Where we are, Viola spp., Prunella vulgaris, and Fragaria virginiana are also used to help fill in the green space for our pup to play fetch in while providing forage for our local pollinators.
Since buying my house, I’ve planted over 20 different native species in my yard. Just recently planted 5 each of 2 different native ground covers and are attempting to start a lawn replacement with rhem!
Absolutely! I just added r/NoLawns over to https://slrpnk.net/c/nolawns for a pro native yard :) glad to see other people doing it
