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Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants
By Douglas W. Tallamy
Rating: 🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳/5 Trees
Genres: Non-Fiction, Gardening, Nature
In his first book, Doug Tallamy clearly, convincingly, and engagingly explains the benefits of using native plants in home landscapes.
Douglas Tallamy has recently become one of the most vocal and influential advocates for incorporating native plants into suburban landscapes. An entomologist at the University of Delaware, Dr. Tallamy has been featured on NPR, in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and numerous other publications and broadcasts. He has authored four books, and this review focuses on his first—Bringing Nature Home.
If you’re on the fence about including native plants in your garden, this book will surely convince you of their immense ecological value. In Bringing Nature Home, Tallamy builds a compelling case for why native plants are essential to preserving biodiversity and restoring habitat.
The premise is simple but urgent: humans and nature must coexist—and more importantly, we can
. Tallamy explains that the steep decline in wildlife populations in the U.S. is largely due to overdevelopment and the widespread use of non-native, ornamental plant species. As wild spaces become fragmented and scarce, suburban yards represent one of the last great opportu
nities to rebuild habitat and food sources for insects, birds, and other wildlife.
<p><p><p class=”” data-start=”1771″ data-end=”2174″>Throughout the book, Tallamy guides the reader through key ecological concepts, laying out why alien plants are inferior to natives, redefining what “native” should mean in the gardening context, and urging us to value biodiversity in our landscape choices. He also shows that native gardens can be just as beautiful and vibrant as traditional, non-native landscapes—while serving a far greater purpose.
One of the most valuable sections of the book is where Tallamy answers the practical question: “What Should I Plant?” (p. 145). Earlier in the book, he introduces the concept of keystone species—those plant species that support a disproportionately high number of other organisms in the ecosystem. These keystone plants are crucial to sustaining food webs, particularly because they host Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) species whose caterpillars are a vital food source for birds an
d other w
ildlife.<
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lass=”” data-start=”2687″ data-end=”3108″>Tallamy identifies twenty plant genera that are considered keystones in eastern North America, ranking them by the number of Lepidoptera species they support. For example, if you want to attract birds and butterflies to your garden, planting oaks is one of the most effective choices—oaks support more than 500 Lepidoptera species. His list is an invaluable guide for gardeners who want to maximize ecological impact.
Tallamy concludes with a powerful call to action:
“Our success is up to each one of us individually. We can each make a measurable difference almost immediately by planting a native nearby. As gardeners and stewards of our land, we have never been so empowered—and the ecological consequences have never been so high.”
If you’re inspired to take part in this movement, we highly recommend visiting his initiative, Homegrown National Park.
Start planning your native garden today!
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