Non-native plants and a Nurseries Obligation

I’m reading Doug Tallamy’s new book, How Can I Help?.  It’s an interesting format, roughly 350 pages of Q&A. Reading it has sparked some thoughts about being a nursery and our ethical obligation to, ‘doing what’s right’ regarding invasive species. My staff and I think very highly of Doug and sell his books at the nursery.

In reading the chapter on invasive plants, which he does a great job explaining just what ‘invasive plant’ means, it instilled the need for nurseries to take the responsibility to educate and inform the public of how a particular plant or plants will impact our native ecosystem if it escapes your yard?

When a customer comes to our nursery looking for Japanese barberry, our nursery staff tell them we do not sell, we explain why and give them alternatives. If they have their minds made up they go shop at another local nursery and find the plant. We not only lost a sale but it’s very possible when the same customer is shopping for more plants at a later date, they will visit the nursery that sold them the barberry. A conumdrum for some of us that chose to do the right thing.

I use the Japanese barberry as an example because of an experience on many hikes in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore where I found barberry coming up everywhere. This plant is becoming a problem and deer don’t browse it as they do almost all native plants. Our forest are changing and losing diversity. After seeing this plant repeatedly, I came back to the nursery, threw all our barberry in the dumpster and we haven’t sold one since. That was 15 years ago. This plant is still being sold in local nurseries and I realize each nursery needs to sell plants to stay in business. However, at some point nurseries need to do their homework and understand that this plant has no place in our landscapes and there are substitutes, maybe not native but plants that aren’t invasive.  

If all our local nurseries and this includes boxstores, are sending the same message I feel we all benefit and so does our local environment. Nurseries are selling plants; living, breathing entities that use animals, including insects and birds, and wind to move their seeds and fruit around. None of these vector’s care if the plants they are moving around are native or not. A bluejay will move an acorn three miles from the mother plant with hopes of finding it later - If it can actually remember I want some of its memory brain cell so I can find stuff!  Our profession is so unique because we sell living things so first and foremost our obligation is to educate, the sale will come.

There are a few plants that may be getting the invasive species label. Burning bush is one, a plant that has graced our landscapes for over 100 years and more recently is popping up everywhere. I have a theory why it’s become so invasive but that’s for another paper. It is a great plant and quite beautiful year-round if gardeners can keep their shears in the garage. But we can’t have it inundating our forest like barberry. The other plant is butterfly bush. The problem with this plant is gardeners don’t cut it back in the fall leaving the seed heads for birds to move around. This plants with its large fragrant late blooming flowers is truly a magnet for butterflies and many other pollinators. We advise all purchasers to cut it back hard in the fall, removing old flowerheads but that’s as far as we can go. It’s not a mandate, just a suggestion we hope they listen to.

Jeri and I talked this morning about removing these two plants from inventory. We were both in agreement to do so with a caveat. Both burning bush and butterfly bush have been researched extensively to find sterile plants and they have been successful. These sterile species we will consider having for sale. I still need to research this more. We want to do what’s right.

We have a local organization to help educate about invasives and there are links on that website for the curious mind.   https://www.gobeyondbeauty.org/all-gbb-species.html