Native plants are both beautiful and varied. Whether you're a do-it-yourself gardener or a professional, native plants can be a spectacular addition to your landscape designs.

Native plants can save resources. Non-native plants, including turfgrass, often require a great deal of water, fertilizer and human labor to maintain. Native plants, however, when planted in the soils and conditions to which they have adapted, require far less coddling.

Native plants help filter pollutants and control stormwater runoff. Non-native grasses and plants frequently used for lawns and gardens have shallow root systems and don't absorb and retain stormwater very well. Rain mixed with fertilizers and other chemicals sheets off these lawns and other "hard" surfaces -- polluting and eroding our creeks and rivers, and even affecting groundwater used for drinking. In contrast, many native plants have very deep root systems. These native plants can filter out pollutants before they reach our creeks and drinking water supplies. And because native plants can absorb and store great amounts of stormwater, they play an important function in preventing flooding and erosion.

Native plants provide food and shelter for songbirds, waterfowl, butterflies and other wildlife. Our native flora (plants) and fauna (animals) evolved in interdependent communities. As more and more of our landscape is altered by humans, it becomes increasingly difficult for many native species of animals to find food, cover and nesting sites and material. When we landscape with native plants, we begin to recreate these natural communities.

Native plants preserve genetic, botanic and biological diversity. The genetic diversity of the natural world -- which evolved over billions of years -- is an increasingly important resource for our planet. Native plants carry a part of this rich, complex and continually evolving genetic heritage. In contrast, non-native plants, sold mostly as cultivars, tend to represent a very limited pool of genetic material, bred for uniformity and consistency. Many of these non-native plants also create problems as they interact with native ecosystems. Using native plants, especially those known as "local genotypes," can help in two ways. First, these plants help maintain the genetic "databank" of the regional landscape. Second, these plants avoid the problems associated with non-native garden "escapees" such as purple loosestrife. These "escapees" diminish diversity by taking over huge areas in the native landscape, forming monocultures that destroy the rich mix of plants and animals normally found there.

As more and more of our landscape is developed, native plants are losing their "native" habitats. Either we intentionally use native plants in human-altered landscapes, or, we risk losing them altogether -- and all of the benefits that they provide.