two butterflies sitting on top of a green leaf

Native Plants: Best Choice For Your Garden

When it comes to choosing plants for your yard, the choices can seem overwhelming.

Every gardener, when they first began gardening in earnest, struggled to figure out what plants were the best plants for their gardens.

The variables can appear to be endless: sun or shade; wet or dry; acidic or alkaline; short or tall; perennial or annual; tree or shrub.

There is one choice, though, that is easy to make: native plants are the best plants for your garden.

Of course choosing plants that are well-adapted the particular conditions in your yard is very important, but plants that are native to Maryland play an absolutely essential role in supporting a healthy environment.

Why?

Our wildlife, from birds to bees to butterflies, specializes in feeding on native plants. If you garden for wildlife, native plants are undoubtedly your best choice.

Native shrubs provide more nutritious berries for birds than non-native shrubs do.

Furthermore, baby birds feed almost exclusively on native insects. These, in turn, insects also depend on native plants.

And did you know that the most important plants for butterflies are the host plants for the caterpillar stage, and these caterpillars often can grow ONLY on native plants.

In a world in which accelerating development and global climate change are reducing the wild spaces for wildlife, choosing native plants for your garden is increasingly becoming an obvious part of a moral and sustainable lifestyle.

Herring Run Nursery, the native plant nursery operated by Blue Water Baltimore, opens for retail sales beginning April 9.

We bring together Baltimore’s best selection of native plants with experts, including Master Gardener volunteers, to make it easy to go native.

Come visit and make your garden a better place.

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