A couple weeks back we posted about U. of Delaware's Professor of entomology and wildlife ecology Douglas Tallamy's great new book entitled-- BRINGING NATURE HOME: HOW YOU CAN SUSTAIN WILDLIFE WITH NATIVE PLANTS..............Tallamy has followed up on his book being published with a thoughtful Op Ed piece in yesterdays NY Times discussing how all of us can make conscious choices to enhance the diversity of our yards and neighborhoods by as he puts it-- "admiring and buying plants for what they do; not for what they look like"..............It's all about catapillars as far as our native songbirds being able to effectively feed their newborns this Spring............And our native catapillars are hardwired to feed on the native plants that they have co-existed with for millenia, not the asian and european ornamental plants that most us end up buying at our local plant nurseries........And those exotics are not fed on by our catapillars...............No catapillars, very few birds!!!!!!........So it is paramount that we take this into account and realize that "what we plant in our landscapes determines what can live in our landscapes"............... "Controlling what grows in our yards is like playing God".............. "By favoring productive(native) species, we can create life, and by using nonnative plants, we can prevent it"

click on article title below to read in full OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR In Your Garden, Choose  Plants That Help the Environment BY DOUGLAS W. TALLAMY Admire plants for what they do. Not for what they look like.