Getting Wild in the Garden! Cultivation & Cultivars, know your native plants!

My name is Edna and I am a Wild Gardener. 

Wild gardening to me means you mix in as many native plants as you do cultivars. According to Wiki, "a cultivar is a plant or grouping of plants selected for desirable characteristics that can be maintained by propagation." They usually don't belong in the area, humans have replaced native plants with cultivars. Wild gardening is to preserve the native wild landscape and nature. I have golden rod, milkweed and dead nettles growing in my flower beds. The dead nettles are also being used as ground cover and as a natural fertilizer called green manure. {More on green manure later!}

milkweed plants

Make room in your garden for some native species, for those plants that support the natural order around you. Some butterflies and animals have died out because we chose to interrupt nature and plant our own cultivars. They had nowhere to go and nothing they could eat. Most people remember how many butterflies we had in our youth, now they are a rare sight, mostly because we,  in our ignorance, did away with their habitat and food sources by drying up ponds and planting grass. 

Where do you think all the frogs, dragonflies have gone? 

Don't think of native plants and grass as weeds or dry up a natural pond in your yard, embrace the natural surroundings, and find a way to incorporate into your garden.  Natural plants need a place to call home, butterflies need a home to make a family. 
Plant some native milkweed, let the bees have their goldenrod, then lean back and enjoy the sounds of nature. 

{garden photos by me, please share with links}