If you’re a gardener who would enjoy watching butterflies flitting about your property, birds nesting in your trees and shrubs, and lizards enjoying a sunny spot, then you could benefit from a landscape plan that includes native plants. Birds, butterflies and other native wildlife species appreciate properties landscaped with native plants. The food chain that feeds native animals begins with native plants. The second step up the food chain is often insects that eat plants. It’s all one big web of life dependent on native plants.
If you’re lucky enough to live near native oak trees, you have likely experienced the constant serenade of spring migrating birds in the treetops as they feed on insects that are munching on oak leaves. The birds are doing their part to keep the web of life in balance.
For the past 30 years, Missouri Wildflowers Nursery has been providing native plants that beautify landscapes as they attract and feed that “web of life.” Their plants are propagated from seeds that have a genetic origin within the state of Missouri.
While there are many cultivars of native plant species on the market today, Missouri Wildflowers Nursery sells only one. Cultivars are generally selected by plant breeders with the idea that the plant will be more attractive to the customer without regard for wildlife benefit, and the wildlife benefit is compromised the more a plant is changed by plant breeder selection. Missouri Wildflowers Nursery wants part of the beauty in a landscape to be butterflies and birds that are best attracted and fed by the plants that these animals took part in selecting.
In big cities and suburbs people (including children) miss a lot of wildlife action because the native plants are missing. Most native plants in these areas have been replaced by plants from other continents, plants often referred to as exotic species. Our native insects, the second step up the food chain, usually don’t recognize exotic species as being tasty, or in the case of bees and butterflies there is little nectar or pollen available in cultivar flowers.
You can obtain genuine native plants at Missouri Wildflowers Nursery. They have plants for sun, shade, and everything in between, including perennial wildflowers, trees, shrubs, and vines.
Missouri Wildflowers Nursery is a retail nursery located at Brazito, MO, 12 miles south of Jefferson City. To learn about their plant sales in your area or to receive a copy of their 2014 catalog, email mowldflrs@socket.net, visit www.mowildflowers.net or call (573)496-3492.