{"id":43195,"date":"2024-11-07t18:14:55","date_gmt":"2024-11-07t18:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/?p=43195"},"modified":"2024-11-07t18:16:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07t18:16:18","slug":"native-seeds-mitigate-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/story\/native-seeds-mitigate-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"seeds that know the land: preserving new england\u2019s native plants\u00a0 \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
the seeds of native plants are uniquely suited to thrive in their home ecosystems. sure, planting requires care and attention, but anyone is capable, and not just in specialized greenhouses, but on back porches, balconies, and home gardens; all you need is time, seeds, and soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the reason you may want to: native plants support a greater abundance and diversity of wildlife by providing habitat that directly supports populations of butterflies, bees, and birds. native plants make landscapes more adaptable to future environmental stressors caused by the climate crisis, including temperature swings, drought, flooding, and pest outbreaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in martha\u2019s vineyard, off the coast of massachusetts\u2019 cape cod, the polly hill arboretum has spent decades creating an online record of more than 200 island native plants that you can browse using its plantfinder<\/a> resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n timothy boland, executive director of polly hill, says that planting native plants helps to prepare for the unknowns. \u201cnative plants are uniquely adapted to soils and stressors, and more so have a really tight connection with the animals in an environment,\u201d boland said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n polly hill not only informs, it sells native plant plugs to people interested in adding natives to their landscaping. some of the plants they propagate, like red columbine, which flowers in the spring, have had limited populations on the island, and polly hill has helped to restore them. <\/p>\n\n\n \u201cwe knew it was here and only here, and now we can propagate it. from a conservation standpoint, with an endemic plant, what we\u2019ve done here is kind of cool,\u201d boland said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n orange butterfly weed is its most popular native plant due to its bright orange flowers and attractiveness to monarch butterflies, but boland encourages people to look beyond the beauty of a plant and consider what it can provide to the environment: \u201cwe tend to be enamored with just the beautiful, and don\u2019t understand the functionality of what we would consider a grass. a lot of things have equal value, even though they don\u2019t have the startling beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n