About Native Plants

Benefits of Choosing Native Plants

Native plant restoration and preservation is a valuable means of retaining the unique qualities of a region’s beauty and natural heritage. Native plants:

Offer Unique Beauty.
Native plant communities offer an extremely dynamic landscape that peaks in midsummer, when many traditional landscaping plants and lawngrasses are at their worst. With a rotating color scheme through the different seasons, native wildflowers, grasses, trees, and shrubs offer a stunning variety of heights, shapes, leaf textures, and colorful blooms. In fact, many familiar and popular landscaping plants such as black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), and dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) are native to Indiana.

Attract Wildlife.
Native restoration and landscaping beautifies the landscape by beckoning the native widllife back home. Native wildlife, such as songbirds and butterflies, rely on the habitat, shelter, and food sources provided by native plant communities. Some species of wildlife even require specific plants to raise their young.

Crowd Out Weeds.
Once established, native plant communities help prevent the proliferation of invasive and unwanted weeds. Due to their particular adaptation to local conditions, native plants outcompete the weeds and keep them out by taking up the nutrients, water, sun and space usually overtaken by undesirables.

Bring a Semblance of “The Wild” to Urban Areas.
Landscaping with native plants brings the unique beauty of natural areas home to backyards, as well as urban, corporate and industrial settings. Native plants may even attract wildlife not typically seen heavily developed and populated areas. Even in areas where large-scale native restoration is not feasible, native landscaping is the logical environmental, aesthetic and economic alternative to traditional landscaping.

Have Cultural and Historical Significance.
Native plants provide an educational link to the past for children and adults. In addition to bestowing the regional beauty of natural areas, many native plants served significant roles in history. For example, Native Americans and European settlers used native plants for medicinal and nutritional purposes, as well as for building materials.

Make Your Land a Recreational Haven.
Native landscaping and restoration remake landscapes and natural areas into recreational havens. For example, in natural areas where invasive species have overrun wilderness understories, with proper management native trees and shrubs crowd out the invasives, allowing for a walk in the woods unhindered by dense walls of weeds. Likewise, native plants turn property previously covered by lawngrasses into beautifully diverse plant communities—areas owners can spend more time enjoying rather than mowing and tending.