Like butterflies? Enjoy birds? Garden with Vermont plants.
Native plants can help turn your yard into a wonderful wildlife
preserve. They provide butterflies, birds and bees the habitat
and food they need to survive and reproduce, in turn supporting
other forms of wildlife that get energy directly from plants or
by eating something that has already eaten a plant. When land is
converted to lawn or planted with non-native plants imported
from Europe or Asia, native insects have a hard time finding
something to eat because they are adapted to use particular
plant species for food, lay eggs and hide from predators. Insect
diversity and populations drop significantly when native plant
species disappear - gardens with native plants have three times
as many insect species and 35 times as much insect biomass as
those with non-natives. Smaller populations means insects are
not fulfilling the critical role they play in an ecosystem's
food web. Here are a few things you can do to create a wildlife
and insect haven in yo