Excerpts

On writing another native plant book: I walked to the library and drove to local bookstores to find books about native plants. From field guides to publications about the simple love of wildflowers, well-written and well-illustrated books were plentiful. Most were written by outdoor enthusiasts with far more knowledge than I, and most were written with a trail and backpack in mind, to satisfy the inquiring mind and help us better appreciate nature. Now that is all well and good, and I too enjoy the thrill of walking a mountain path and coming across a colony of galax or blue cohosh. Makes me feel a little like Meriwether Lewis even though I recently breakfasted at Bob Evans. My problem is this: when I see such magnificent populations, I want them in my garden. I cant help it. It may be a genetic flaw, but thats the way it is. While I do enjoy hiking to those lovely drifts in the mountains, I would rather hike to my garden bench, mug of coffee in hand, and see such colonies beneath my beloved oaks. This book is not written for extreme native plant enthusiasts. In fact, I suspect the right wing of the "Native Party" will not particularly like this book. Those purists are the ones who believe that all exotics are bad, and that all natives are good. Rather, it is written for my daughters, Laura and Heather, and their friends and gardening buddies, who would love to try some native plants but dont know where to start. On what plants to include: the dilemma was not what plants to include in this book, but which to omit. Wonderful native plants are mentioned by botanists, native enthusiasts, and conservationists, but many are so difficult to find that I did not include them. Availability to mainstream gardeners became one of the main criteria for both inclusion and omission, based on my research for each genus. With this in mind, I omitted such taxa as Ageratina aromatica (small-leaved white snakeroot), the ditch-loving Coreopsis nudata, Helenium vernale (spring helenium), and on and on. Other plants begged to be included, but I couldnt find anyone selling them. Another criterion was potential for the future. Perhaps, with the native plant movement continuing to gain momentum, I can include many more in the next edition. Certainly the question of availability became highly subjective. I included many taxa that will never see a garden center but can be found with a few clicks of the mouse. Laura and Heather will not spend days on a computer looking for a particular plant, but they will spend an hour or so. The list of available natives is greatly expanded: if true gardeners want a plant badly enough, they will find it. Teaching and traveling are also wonderful ways to test availability. I use my garden and those of others in our community as living laboratories for teaching herbaceous plants. Of the hundreds of plants I teach, a significant portion are natives that these everyday gardeners have planted over the years, plant Excerpted from Armitage's Native Plants for North American Gardens by Allan M. Armitage All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.