Gardens thrive on diversity

When it comes to choosing plants to create a garden that’s hospitable for wildlife, you are generally advised to chose native species rather than immigrant ones. I have given this advice myself many times in talks and articles.

The idea is that a plant, particularly a large plant like a tree or a shrub, isn’t just an individual living organism, it’s also an ecosystem. It supports hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other living organisms like insects, spiders, fungi and the birds that eat the insects.

A native Irish plant has had millennia to accumulate its ecosystem. But when a plant is brought in from another country or continent it generally leaves most of its passengers behind and its ecosystem is much reduced. Cultivated varieties of plants also lack the luxury of long periods of time during which other species can adapt to living with or on them.