In Support Of Growing Indigenous Plants

By Rob Reid

One enduring problem conservationists face is how to justify asking sacrifices of people, who are not persuaded conservationists, for an intangible long term good. Much of conservation philosophy rests on aesthetic value judgments which hold little water for the majority of today’s now-obsessed people. Conservation will make no headway in the modern world, against the many human imperatives and pressures aligned against it, if its premise rests on aesthetics alone. Therefore I have tried to formalize the concepts governing encouragement of indigenous planting and conservation, in terms of science and some more concrete human motivations.

No tropical rain forest was ever spared the logger’s chainsaw because it was so much more beautiful/diverse/biologically rich/spiritually fulfilling etc. than the devastated wasteland that the logger leaves behind. There has to be some motivation that the politician, the ambitious city entrepreneur and the hungry peasant farmer can relate to personally.

That is what I have tried to address in this article.

To many of us, the idea of indigenous planting is well founded in an aesthetic concept. The idea is growing in popularity in many parts of the world as people think more carefully about gardening with a meaningful and integrated theme, rather than a haphazard agglomeration of plants from all over the world. Local pride is dictating that people want to showcase their “own” plants in the same way they try to showcase their culture, history and architecture.

So there is certainly, for many people, an aesthetic imperative.

However there is much more to it than aesthetics.

First and foremost, there is an ecological imperative. The total of land in an average city given over to gardens and parks is a significant area, and if that area is planted with flora which has evolved and developed in unison with the local soil and soil micro flora, climate, ground water, insect life and birds and other small animals, they will encourage the maintenance and development of all those pieces of the ecological jigsaw puzzle. There will be better pollination and seed distribution for the plants, less disease and a more robust and resilient garden which may weather tough conditions and unusually harsh seasons. There will be a much richer environment which will become an urban extension of the surrounding natural countryside. You may even be lucky enough to attract a nesting bird, unusual migrant, a Semaphore ghecko or a family of field mice!

Such a garden will be vibrant and full of life!!

Such gardens will lend a great support to the wider ecosystem outside the city, so that cities are no longer islands of aliens and ecological sterility …..places which are at odds with the countryside, but instead are extensions of the surrounding natural systems.

It is, of course, well known that indigenous plants need less care. The principle of water-wise gardening using water-frugal, desert-adapted plants in a desert country is actually too intuitive to require further elaboration! Or is it? Why then, do we plant thirsty foreign plants in our gardens and irrigate them copiously to help them grow? If one considers the grounds of hotels, large commercial developments such as shopping malls, private gardens and municipal parks and road verges, the collective unnecessary water usage can be huge.

But there are other less obvious benefits. Introduction of plants from other parts of the world, into an area where there are no natural checks and balances to its spread, can lead to the unexpected escape of species which become invasive and spread uncontrollably– far outside the confines of the city. Every country has had its bad experiences with the creation of such pests, but once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back!

Then there is the cultural imperative.

In the same way that a people’s architecture, monuments, historical places and traditional built-up environments reflect their unique origins, nature and culture, so does the unique appearance of the landscapes outside urban areas reflect what is distinctive about them as a country and a people. A great part of this is the distinctive natural vegetation which is in evidence to travelers outside the towns and cities, and part of this “local flavour” is the extension of this unique landscape into the built up environs.

What the creators of commercial-scale gardening projects (especially those associated with the tourist industry) need to turn their back on, is the creation of more developments which reflect a certain faceless, homogenized uniformity. This removes any cues to the unique local flavour which could proclaim that you are not just anywhere in the world, but in this particular and special place. I have frequently wondered why it is that it is standard practice in such institutions to reduce each distinctive country, with its special identity, to another tasteless international replica.