It’s heartbreaking to do presentations about the importance and value of planting native plants and to know that people will leave the presentation excited but having an impossible time finding native woodland plants for sale at nurseries. These plants take such a long time to grow…they are precious beyond words.
At the same time, woodland sites are being destroyed left, right and centre for development, and the plants they harbour are bulldozed, treated like garbage.
While participating in a plant rescue this spring, all I could think was that somehow we need to fix this.
It simply must be a regular feature of the development process that plants are salvaged and distributed to public projects.
Hundreds of the delicate spring ephemeral toothwort, a native woodland plant that is rarely available at nurseries and yet that many gardeners would love to plant, would have been bulldozed if they hadn’t been rescued at this site.
I know that some people worry that something like this would encourage more habitat destruction. Folks, it’s already happening and the pace is relentless.
If a site can’t be saved, its plant bounty should be, at the very least.
I’m not sure where to start with this, or who else is working on a policy to fix this madness, but I feel a project brewing…
A drop in the bucket…