In Defense of Place

Here in Florida, where I now live, we are besieged by transplants - mostly from New England and the Upper Midwest. Just like me, they arrive with no real sense of what makes Florida special. In fairness, they most likely left their previous home with no real sense of what made that special either. Few of us embrace our nativity when it comes to landscaping, favoring things that seem more "exotic" to us because they originate in far off places or have attributes that seem unique and, hence, more valuable. 
The problem is especially obvious here as the potential plant palette in Florida includes tropicals that give us a sense of living in some exotic getaway.  Real estate developers and vacation salespeople have spent more than a century creating an image of my adopted home state in order to keep the line of gullible innocents coming here. Truth be told, we are neither tropical nor paradise.
These is something powerful in acknowledging what you really are and then embracing it for its uniqueness. This is especially true for landscapes, as nothing expresses the real nature of a place as the community of plants meant to be there. There are a good many reasons to use the plants native to your region, but none possibly stronger than the power this lends to maintaining a sense of place. We may change where we live simply by developing it, but we can replace what was lost with what was once part of our community or we can botch it all up by planting things that were never meant to be. As development gobbles up the world's countryside, it falls upon us to choose which direction our landscapes take.
I have lived in several states now as I've wound my way south from Wisconsin, through Iowa and Kentucky, to what will in all probability be my last resting place here in central Florida. In each, I was able to embrace the unique character of that state's flora - the vast floral diversity of the Midwestern prairies, the boreal forest of the far north, and the incredible canopy of the deciduous hardwood forest. I miss the wildflowers that I can no longer call native. There are a few, like bloodroot (Sanguineria canadensis) and purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) that are marginally native here too because they occur in a few counties along our northern border with Alabama and Georgia, but I had to leave most of my favorites far behind. I miss burr oak (Quercus macrocarpa) and shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) as well as dozens of other trees and shrubs, but I've also learned to appreciate and love what is supposed to be here. I have learned to adopt a new sense of place.
No matter where you live, there are native plants adapted to your region that have their own unique characteristics. Take the time to appreciate them and use your landscape to honor their contribution to the place you call home.