Choosing native plants for your garden is always a good idea. While you may certainly also consider growing food producing plants, and some other non-native species where you live, embracing the plants that are native to your particular area is always the best strategy. 

Of course, there are a raft of reasons why you should avoid using invasive non-native species. But we should focus on what to do as well as just what not to do in a garden. Here are just some of the reasons why native plants can often be the best choices for your garden:

Native Plants Fill Local Ecological Niches

Plants that are native to your geographical region or specific area have evolved within the local landscape over a long period of time. 

In a natural ecosystem, the plants and other elements within a system reach a stable symbiosis in which everything has its place. Choosing the right plants for the right places is the key to successful organic gardening. 

Native plants are often the plants that slot into the broader systems around them and are most at home within a particular environment – bringing benefits to one another, and in the overall ecosystem of your garden.

Native Plants Are Adapted To Local Conditions in Your Garden

Since they slot into the ecosystem where they have evolved over time, native plants are typically well adapted to the environment. 

The chances that a plant will grow poorly, experience pest problems or succumb to disease are reduced when you choose native species to plant that are truly suited to the setting.

Native Plants Benefit The Wildlife in Your Area

Of course, in any garden, we need to think about the wildlife as well as the plants, since many species contribute to the system. Remember, everything is connected. The choices you make when it comes to planting will have numerous impacts on the creatures with whom you share your space. 

Native plants have not just evolved alongside other plants within an ecological community. They have evolved alongside local wildlife too. Native plants can provide for wildlife (as food sources – sometimes exclusive – for shelter, reproduction or protection...) in ways that non-native species often just cannot do.

Native Plants Save Time and Effort

Native plants are not only good for the environment and wildlife, however. They are good for us too, as gardeners. 

When we plant non-native species, especially if they are not well adapted or well suited to the growing conditions where we live, this can lead to losses. We will have to spend more time and money maintaining a space. 

But by choosing suited native plants for our particular areas, we can save money, since happy and healthy plants won't require external inputs, and are more likely to survive and thrive meaning fewer new plant purchases over time. And we can create low-maintenance garden spaces.

Native Plants Often Offer Us Multiple Additional Yields

When we choose native plants, we can also often discover the yields that can provide for us. Bush-tucker plants, wild medicines, dye and fibre plants... there are plenty of amazing native plants with amazing uses to consider.