You're listening to the Joe Gardner Show, the podcast all about gardening, where we cover

everything you need to know to grow like a pro, no experience required.

And now here's your guide, National Gardening Television Host, and the Joe behind Joe Gardner,

Joe Lample.

Hi everybody, it's Joe Lample and thanks for listening to the Joe Gardner Show.

We've been on a bit of a kick here lately regarding outdoor seats sewing, not the typical

conversation around what vegetable seeds to direct so versus starting indoors, but if

you've been listening lately, you may have noticed that we're really focusing these

recent episodes on the things that we can do to create more native habitats wherever

we live.

And certainly an easy and significant way that we can do that is by planting native seeds

of printules and shrubs and trees.

And now it's more important than ever, as I'm sure you know, but what you may not be aware

of is a big reason for that beyond climate change and habitat loss is the amount of

nursery stock coming into landscapes that for various reasons doesn't contain the genetic

diversity needed or perhaps the plant is bred for aesthetics or traits that while it

may make it appealing to us, that tradeoff leads to an uninviting plant for wildlife that

would otherwise use that host plant as a food source.

Next the plant is sterile or access to the pollen and nectar is more difficult than the

native species that wildlife had co-evolved with for thousands of years.

Well times are changing, plant breeding programs in the nursery industry are producing a lot

of nice looking plants, but for every attribute bred into a plant something else is taken

...