Subject: Native vs Non Native

From: [email-masked] (David A. Sticha)
Date: 16 Mar 1994 00:39:12 GMT

I'm going to insert my $0.02 here.

I am a self described "environmental whacko". I have a large tract which I
am patiently restoring to native species only. I've also spent hundreds of
hours of volunteer time helping restore praries by hand pulling or cutting
noxious weeds, collecting seeds, helping with burns, or more usually on
hands and knees planting hundreds of native seedlings by hand. I've also
served as tour guide through natural areas, attended numerous natural
landscaping courses and seminars, and have tirelessly harangued my friends
for buying invasive non-native species for their landscaping needs. So
much for the credentials.

Now let me say that most of my own landscaping around my home is a mixture
of 75% non-native and 25% native species. Why? Because the non-native
species I've chosen have some characteristic which I determined to be
beneficial or useful. Let's face it, the plant materials sold by nurseries
are culled from the hundreds of thousands available world wide because they
have something outstanding to offer. The same as Europeans who plant
American native goldenrod or flowering dogwood. However, I do draw the
line at very aggressive, or invasive, species. The few cases where I
advocate their use is in areas where their spread can be checked. I remember
well the hours spent controlling vinca by hand pulling in a pretty little
20 acre wooded park which was originally a homestead 125 years ago.

I guess what I'm saying is that I no longer hold the view that all
non-native species are bad. Used with intelligence and moderation for a
specific purpose, they are superior to many native species for landscape
purposes. I used to be very anti non-native, but the turning point came
when I sat in on a natural landscaping course and a little old lady
asked the teacher how to incorporate her prized blue berry bushes into
her design. His answer was "You don't. If you want blue berries in your
landscaping then move somewhere where blue berries are native!"

Again, I believe the "native only" attitude is too extreme. They have their
place. The key is to plan intelligently for all uses that landscaping can be
used for: beauty, maintainability, wildlife, and cost. Then decide based
on those.
-- 
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 Dave Sticha ([email-masked])  'I only work here'
 Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group - Arlington Heights IL
 "...our laws, our constitutions, our very sacred books, are in the last
 analysis mere paper barriers, which hold only so long as there stand
 behind them men and women with the intelligence to understand and the
 character to maintain them."  Lathrop Stoddard 1922
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From: [email-masked] (System Janitor)
Date: 16 Mar 94 18:19:02 GMT

I am the caretaker for Woodburn Plantation, an old plantation house in
upstate South Carolina. The surrounding woods are an open forest full of old 
trees, giant ravines (not erosion gullys), and the ground is almost 100% 
vinca. I think the woods are one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

I recently took up some of the vinca and planted in some woods on the
land I own.

And now I stumble onto this thread. Hmmm, I say, as I pause for thought...

-Mike