Native gardens are on the rise.
Local wildlife, especially bugs and birds, benefits from native gardens, which provide a habitat that complements their natural environment. These gardens also need less water and fertilizer since the plants are familiar with and adapt to their native environment.
Evansville resident Amy Tankโs native garden journey began seven years ago in the East Side backyard she shares with her husband, Bob.
She took Master Naturalist classes at Wesselman Woods, learned from the Southwestern Indiana Master Gardeners Association, and read โeverything I could get my hands on,โ she says. She also relies on the Indiana Native Plant Society Southwest Chapter, local Purdue Extension office, Goldfinch Native Plant Nursery, and New Harmony Native Trees and Shrubs.
Her backyard features purple coneflower, wild geranium, deciduous holly, elderberry, bald cypress, dogwood, aster, black-eyed Susan, serviceberry, and six types of oak trees. These plants attract local and migratory birds like cardinals, bluejays, and robins, plus the occasional woodpeckers, Carolina wrens, titmouses, and chickadees. Pollina-tors also include bees, moths, and butterflies.
โThere are things Iโve let grow that people consider weeds,โ Tank says. โI donโt care about having a perfect lawn.โ
Elizabeth Gaddis, an operations engineer at SABIC, relies on an Excel spreadsheet to help her East Side native garden bloom from April through October.
โI mapped it out before I started planting,โ Gaddis says. โEvery season, I have different flowers pop up.โ
She enlisted the help of INPS Southwest and Ancient Roots Native Nursery in Poseyville, Indiana, to sort out her front flower bedโs original โmish-mash.โ Gaddis and Tank agree that itโs difficult to purchase native plants locally as there are not a lot of local nurseries that sell natives.
Gaddis highlights the โgreat communityโ as a major benefit of native gardening.
Gaddis has 20 native plant species in her garden, such as sand coreopsis, blue vervain, turtle head, blazing stars, compass plant, and swamp mallow. Her milk-weed plants attract Monarch butterflies in summer, and her garden sees goldfinches, hummingbirds, caterpillars, moths, bees, and wasps.
โIf you take care of the little animals, it takes care of the big ones,โ she says.
