SHOULDN'T WE USE ONLY NATIVE PLANTS IN GARDEN AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN?

WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO AT THE PAVIOION

GARDEN TALK RADIO SHOW AUDIENCE

A PILIATED WOODPECKER AT WORK

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  52 degrees F on the porch, 48 degrees on the waterfront.  The sky is mostly clear of clouds but hazy.  The humidity has risen to 69% and the barometer is up slightly, at 30.01".  I took Buddy to the beach this morning for a run, and there were a number of small boats trolling off the mouth of the Sioux River, so the fish must be coming in toward shore.  They have to spawn sooner or later.  The lake was dead calm and we had a pleasant outing.
   On Friday I came across a piliated woodpecker busily reducing a tree trunk to wood chips.  I got quite close to him before he stopped his work and flew off.
   The live Garden Talk Radio Show, moderated by host Larry Miellor, that kicks off the annual Bayfield in Bloom season has become a tradition, and I have participated in it each of its twelve years.  It is a fun time, with questions from the audience and from callers around the State of Wisconsin and beyond.  The questions are mostly of the "how to" variety, and our panel of three (myself, Don Kissenger of the State Forestry Division and Extension Agent Jason Fishbach) normally field them pretty well.
   When I was asked what some of my favorite landscape plants are for Bayfield I thought a bit, and said that I appreciated the fact that we could grow hardy azaleas and Rhododendrons here along the shores of the big lake, since they added an extra dimension to our gardens and yards and were quite beautiful.
   Later in the show a caller asked why I was talking about non-native plants on a Wisconsin garden show.  It was such a straightforward, even accusatory question that I felt compelled to give this short, clear answer:
   "Although I have been a proponent of native plants ever since I did a graduate thesis on prairie restoration nearly a half-century years ago, gardening and landscaping, indeed all of horticulture, is not just about growing plants native to a given region."
   "Gardening, in the larger sense, is about growing plants for food, pleasure and other human uses.  Garden design is also about cultural history, beauty and artistic expression;  and using only plants native to a given region seldom provides a broad enough palette to meet the garden designer's
goals."