Powerful Native Plants for Wildlife

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2022

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are lots of native plants and they all have attributes that have coevolved with wildlife. Powerful native plants are the 14% that actually support 90% of butterflies and moths in a given area. Specific powerful plants that we recommend are anything in the aster family, sunflowers, and goldenrod. What is wonderful is that they bloom at different times providing nectar and foraging opportunities across three seasons. To find out what plants are native in your area, go to https://www.nwf.org/nativeplantfinder/plants Connect with Mary Phillips: Mary Phillips is the head of Garden for Wildlife™ at National Wildlife Federation. Mary will share about why it’s vital to grow native species, reveal the perfect plants for every region, and provide tips on how to cultivate the optimal home for local pollinators. Garden For Wildlife National Wildlife Federation Code GARDEN22 - 20% off wildlife sign and certification Code EPIC22 - 20% off plants and pollinator packages Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code EPICPODCAST for 5% off your entire first order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us: Our Blog YouTube (Including our Epic Homesteading and Jacques in the Garden channels) Instagram (Including Epic Homesteading, Jacques, and Chris) TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back everyone to the Epic Gardening podcast. You know that as I have grown my garden
0:18.3	and my gardening space, the wildlife that's been coming into the garden has been really
0:22.9	spectacular and I have a great guest this week. Mary Phillips, she's the head of garden
0:27.0	for wildlife at the National Wildlife Federation and actually Mary turns out in 2020 we work together
0:34.5	doing a little cocktail, mocktail gardening thing. Yeah, it was awesome and you did such a
0:39.4	great job showing how basic plants that we're all growing can really help pollinators. It
0:45.6	was really great and you can enjoy them in a cocktail mocktail. I think I believe it was a
0:50.0	pineapple sage that did something to us, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know that was a fun project.
0:54.8	So, you know, today we're talking about powerful native plants for wildlife. We spoke about
0:59.2	natives, a decent amount here, of course, natives relative to where you live as you're listening
1:03.6	to this podcast. But, you know, do you have any that you would start someone off with? Sure.
1:10.3	So when we talk about powerful, powerful plants for wildlife, there are lots of native plants
1:17.1	and they all have amazing attributes that they've co-evolved with for really a millennium
1:22.0	that help specific wildlife. And when we talk about powerful plants, there's actually
1:27.7	about 14% of those plants in a given area that actually support up to 90% of butterflies
1:34.5	and moths. They're host plants for them. They help them raise their young. They basically
1:39.8	do devour those plants. They come back every year though. So that's awesome because they're
1:43.9	still beautiful for people to enjoy. And that's what we're really talking about when we're
1:47.5	talking about these powerful plants. And specific, powerful plants that we recommend are anything
1:55.4	in the aster family. So the asters that are native to your area, they come in an amazing
2:02.8	array of colors and a lot in the purples, which is awesome, but white and yellow as well.
2:08.9	And then also sunflowers. They're an amazing power plant as well. And then interestingly
	...

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