As all of us start to plan for spring, I would like to make a proposal to help increase biodiversity in our gardens. I have had the good fortune to garden in Pointe-Claire for over 40 years now. In that time, our garden has evolved from a traditional garden comprised of imported plants to a more natural setting using mainly plants indigenous to our area. It currently remains a “work in progress” and a continuing experiment in using native plants in a suburban landscape.

In the past decade or so, there has been a seismic shift away from landscapes involving extensive lawn care and gardens containing plants collected from around the world. Instead, there is a worldwide movement towards a more sustainable landscape that feeds and shelters diverse native species and engages the human caretaker in an odyssey of discoveries of the natural world, thus improving both mental and physical health for the human and, indeed, benefitting the health of the planet.

Besides being beautiful, native plants are also best equipped to fuel biodiversity. They have evolved with, and their lives are inextricably bound to, the insects and animals of our region. We all know the story of the monarch butterfly, whose life cycle is inseparably linked to the milkweed plant, but do we realize that there are numerous less photogenic insects that rely on a single plant species as well?

Native plants have weathered many storms and can adapt to extremely variable conditions. Bloodroot, for example, will wait to be pollinated for three days, after which it will self-pollinate. Many plants, like goldenrod, are keystone species, feeding and sheltering a remarkable number of diverse insects. By the way, goldenrod is not the plant that causes hay fever (that would be the alien "ragweed"). There are other benefits to these plants as well. For example, most have deep roots which help prevent erosion. By contrast, turf grass roots are only a couple of inches deep.

When you go shopping for native plants be sure to get the straight species of a plant, or as close as you can get. Often, plants are cultivars specifically bred for unusual colours or double petals. Insects cannot always recognize an altered plant.

Small changes can yield big results if we all contribute to native plant gardening at whatever level is possible for each of us. As I indicated in my Pointe-Claire library talk last year, Think Big - Start Small, it can all begin with one plant. Perhaps it could be our purple coneflower, which provides nectar and pollen for insects and winter seed for birds, or even a milkweed, which not only supplies pollen and nectar for bees and butterflies but also feeds very hungry monarch caterpillars all summer long.

The Pointe-Claire library has many great books on native plant gardening. Authors to check out include Douglas Tallamy and Lorraine Johnson. Space for Life /Espace pour la vie (with which the Botanical Gardens is a partner), Canadian Wildlife Federation, and the David Suzuki Foundation have excellent native garden information on their websites. And finally, you can contact me for more information or a garden visit at wildgardenlady17@gmail.com, or check me out on Instagram at @111wildgardenlady.

Happy Gardening!

Kim Dooley-Freeman has lived and gardened in Pointe-Claire with her husband Peter since 1981.