Sustainability is a big picture affair where everything is connected- not only you and your customer but your community and society at large. We’re in the business of living in today and caring for tomorrow.

The use of native plants in a sustainable landscape is important because they use less water, provide habitat and replenishment for birds, butterflies. They’re also essential to creating a soil environment with the proper mix of microbes, humic components and all sorts of good stuff. This is true, but it’s not a be-all end-all statement. You gotta put the right native plant into the right native environment. You can’t just pull any plant off the “Canadian Native Plant List” 'cause Point Pelee is not Madoc and Vancouver is not Napanee. You can’t take a Carolinian tree like a sweetgum (Liquidamber styraciflua) just because it grew in our area some 800 years ago. It will grow nicely until January, then it stops. However, coffee trees, tulip trees, yellow wood, black gum, etc. will survive here. I know this because at the Kemptville College Arboretum or at the Dominion Arboretum in Ottawa, there are mature specimens of all of these. There’s even a copper-bark cherry growing happily. You have to find a plant that will blend in; in the same idea as the “built environment” concept mentioned earlier. For example, a native selection might be the Eastern Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana but a better alternate is Juniperus chinenis ‘Spartan’. Same form and function except, it doesn’t lose the bright green colour in the winter and it shows good salt tolerance. Plus the berries feed birds and has a higher tolerance to cedar-apple rust.

By the way, that’s another aspect to sustainability- less maintenance, less pesticide intervention, less work. You should know a plant’s susceptibility to disease, or the probability of it acting as an alternate host. Cedar apple rust will not kill a juniper, and probably won’t kill the alternate host-members of the rosacae family such as roses, apples, hawthornes and mulberry. But it makes them look some ugly which can cause concern on the part of your customer. Another good example is white pine and alpine currant: pine blister rust. The native barberry, Berberis vulgaris is the alternate host for cereal rust, but the Japanese cultivars, Berberis thunbergii are not. Another good example of a non-native plant being the better choice. Again a good business practice that falls into both stewardship of this good earth and sustainability.

Selection of native plants can depend upon urban vs. rural/suburban environment. Switch grass(Panicum virgatum) in the country is a weed. It doesn’t matter how pretty the blue Heavy Metal or red Shenandoah cultivars might be, someone raised on the farm will only see weeds. In a downtown Kingston garden, they can be fully appreciated for their beauty.

You know most of the plants- from asarum (wild ginger) to viola (bird’s foot violet) from amelanchier (saskatoon berry) to viburnum cassanoides (witherod viburnum) from ash (aka emerald borer magnet) to Quercus rubra (red oak). I’d like to mention a few that you might not have come across.

Native bulbs/orchids Did you know that there are at least 78 different native orchids? How about taking your rain collection area, that boggy bit, and slip in one or two Yellow Lady-slipper orchids, maybe a bog adder’s mouth, or a pitcher plant. Don’t forget the wake-robins (trillium.) or a Canada Lily along the drier fringes. Include a St Anthony’s turnip (buttercup) or any of the other gazillion ranunculus available?

What about eastern teaberry, Gaultheria procumbens, also called wintergreen? There are at least 17 native ferns that will thrive in our upper Canada cachement from the delicate maidenhair fern to the proudly upright royal fern
Transitioning from perennial to shrubs, fringe that area with winterberry and viburnum, maybe some grey dogwood or mountain laurel. From shrub to trees, try an Acer rubrum, clump or single stem, a tamarack (Larix deciduosis) or a takmahtak-hemlock (Tsuga canadensis). Consider Vacinnum (blueberry), no sense in feeding only the animals.

Now you have a sustainable fen garden, created on a constructed feature, itself specifically designed for sustainability.
Sustainability: good for us, good for our children, good for business.