Throughout all of the preceding month , I ’ve been mull over a symposium I attended at the University of Connecticut on October 3rd . title the “ UConn Native Plants and Pollinators Conference , ” it unintentionally highlight a primal disconnect at the heart of contemporary horticulture .
In the morning , the league sport as a speaker Annie White , a landscape painting architectfrom Vermont who researched for her doctorial thesis the proportional economic value to pollinators of species - type native plants versus “ nativars , ” cultivated excerpt or loan-blend of native industrial plant . White found that sometimes , though not always , the species type plants were far more attractive to the pollinators . I chance that interesting .
Even more interesting , though , was the chemical reaction of an afternoon speaker , a congressman of the University of Connecticut faculty . Dr. Jessica Lubell of UConn ’s Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture lead off by attacking Annie White ’s data , insisting that unnamed studies had encounter that there was no difference in the benefits to pollinators provided by baseless - case native plants and their cultivar . She then went on to accent the importance of moving to the cultivar so that the nursery manufacture could continue to raise the plants – the natives now genetically identical and reduced to neat , heavyset hill – in the same industrial elbow room it has been growing exotics . She also stressed that eliminating the familial unevenness from aboriginal plant and deoxidize their sizing would enable gardeners to adopt them without rethinking at all their landscape aesthetic . To accompany this , Lubell point stacks of chute of emasculated indigene growing as cushions and ball amid the usual sea of bark mulch .
Hydrangea arborescens nativars ‘Invincibelle Ruby’ and ‘Invincibelle Wee White’
Hydrangea arborescens nativars ‘ Invincibelle Ruby ’ and ‘ Invincibelle Wee White ’
It seems to me , given the crashing populations of birds and insects and the tidy ugliness of so many of our suburbs , that a reboot of our gardens is long delinquent . Reducing the genetical variableness of the plants we civilise directly negate the kind of resiliency we need during an age of climate change and introduced pests and diseases .
In little , we badly need to re - test our contemporary style of landscaping . We want to reconsider our desire for predictable uniformness in our plant . We need , above all , to make out to term with born growth and not view our plant life as some metal money of green outdoor ‘ pattern elements . ’
Hydrangea arborescens nativars ‘Invincibelle Ruby’ and ‘Invincibelle Wee White’
Hydrangea arborescens species type ( pic good manners of Rick Webb , PA )
Hydrangea arborescens species type (photo courtesy of Rick Webb, PA)
