Wait, before you plant that holly fern, azalea, or marigold, or lay in a St. Augustine lawn, consider something that actually thrives in, and speaks to, central Texas.
Native plants offer three huge advantages over the mass-produced cultivars that glut the marketplace: they are adapted to our environment; they support our local wildlife; and they provide a Texas-proud “sense of place.”


Being adapted to our geography and climate is critical. Native plants have had tens of thousands of years to adjust to our precise soil components and weather patterns: from the dark heavy clays of the Blackland Prairies in the eastern half of Travis County to the limestone of the Edwards Plateau in the western half; from balmy winters with sporadic freezes to oven-baked, rainless summers.


Adaptation means that natives will actually thrive, blossom, and reseed in conditions in which other plants merely persevere. Adapted to long periods of dryness, natives will use much less water, once established, than non-natives. Given the increasing pressure on water use in the Southwest, this in itself, strongly recommends the plants. But adaptation implies many other attributes. Having built up resistance to the insects and pathogens of our region for eons, native plants don’t require pesticides and can fend for themselves with only minimal damage. With an ancient lineage in our soils, they also need no artificial fertilizer; in fact, fertilizers often make them grow lank and scraggly.


Consider, by contrast, the non-native St. Augustine grass lawn. St. Augustine is a tropical grass native to the Gulf of Mexico, the West Indies, and western Africa. It is used extensively as a turfgrass in southern states, and throughout Austin, on account of its fondness for warmth and its partial tolerance of shade. However, it requires fertile soil and lots of water – and we’re often shy of both. For a St. Augustine lawn to flourish, you need about 1” of water per week (560 gallons per week per 1000 sq. ft. of lawn), plus fertilizers, especially on alkaline soils. Since the grass is prone to chinch bugs and various fungi, pesticides are also frequently needed. Finally, a thriving St. Augustine lawn will need mowing at least once every other week. Add up the costs of water, fertilizer, pesticides, and mowing…and you’ve got quite a layout of expense, to say nothing of the toll that the chemicals take on the environment.


Native plants are also adapted to our wildlife. All trees and shrubs offer some sort of shelter and nesting sites for mammals and birds, but only the natives offer provisions that our specific wildlife use. For instance, the endangered golden-cheeked warbler only uses bark strips of one native tree --the Ashe juniper (aka cedar) -- to construct its nest. As for food, the natives win hands down. Shrubs such as the beautiful Texas persimmon or evergreen sumac offer fruits that are the delight of raccoons, ringtails, and opossums, while yaupon holly and possumhaw attract birds throughout the winter with their brilliant scarlet berries. You’ll note that many of our birds avoid the fruits of non-natives, many of which are unpalatable to them.


The list goes on and on. Hummingbirds are wildly attracted to our native Turk’s cap, crossvine, and scarlet sage, some of which are timed to bloom as the hummers migrate through our area. Mockingbirds greedily devour the chiltepin pepper, which, incidentally, is the ancestor of all modern peppers and has kicked up the local human cuisine for centuries. Even school children know that monarch butterflies rely on milkweeds as larval host plants. Simply plant one so-called butterfly-weed in your yard, and you’ll find out soon enough. The stunning tiger swallowtail butterfly equally depends on our Mexican plum, and the brilliant orange gulf fritillary is crazy about our passionflowers. You won’t see a single butterfly visiting a begonia, petunia, or pansy –or any other of the hundreds of other horticultural varieties—because decades of breeding for showy flowers have left them sterile for wildlife.


But the real clincher for native plants is that they provide us with a unique sense of place: they help to make Texas look like Texas. We all instinctively recognize how the pine-clad hills of say, Oregon, differ from the deciduous woods of Pennsylvania, how the estuaries of Chesapeake Bay look nothing like the desert-scapes of Tucson. So, why when it comes to our front yards, do we all acquiesce to a one-size-fits-all attitude? Our vast stretches of clipped lawns with foundational plantings of shrubbery hark to a 19th-century British landscape that is not only out of place in America, but especially won’t work in Texas without considerable expense. Given the astounding variety found in nature, our front lawns end up looking monotonous and homogenized. Where are the prickly-pear cactus, the red yuccas, the bluebonnets, or lovely native bunch grasses, such as Lindheimer muhly, in our lawns?

Where to start?

Where can you get more information? Central Texans are lucky to live in a place rich with native plant resources. First, the City of Austin runs the Grow Green program (www.ci.austin.tx.us/growgreen), a comprehensive landscaping program that discusses gardening basics and design and for central Texas. The downloadable native (and adapted) plant list provides the thumbnail basics for any beginner. Available in booklet form as Native and Adapted Landscape Plants, the primer is free to Austinites at most local nurseries.


The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center hosts two annual all-native plant sales (April and October) where hundreds of natives, many available nowhere else, can be purchased. Their website ( www.wildflower.org) contains searchable lists and photos of thousands of native plants, as well as lists of suppliers, landscapers, and plant recommendations by region.


And be sure to check out the Austin chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas! We have monthly meetings where you can meet others interested in everything from growing natives, to participating in plant rescues, hikes, and restoration projects. Our website (www.npsot.org/austin) also has a good list of central Texas nurseries that regularly carry native plants, as well as lists of plants for special purposes (for instance, attracting butterflies and hummingbirds).

Be sensible.
Be generous.
Be a Texan.
Grow native.

BY MATT TURNER

Matt Turner is the current President of the Austin chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas and author of the soon-to-be-published Remarkable Plants of Texas (Univ. of Texas Press, Fall 2008).