Looking at "Restoration Landscaping"

I have spent part of my professional life as a restoration ecologist. In that role, it is critical that you understand the history of your property; including the abiotic as well as the biotic forces that shaped it from historical times to the present. Restoration is not simply putting missing plants back into the system. It also requires us to restore the abiotic forces of fire, hydrology, sunlight, etc. When that is not possible, replacing the historic flora becomes futile. Because of that, we are left with to work with what will adapt to our current and future conditions and go from there.
As a restoration ecologist, it is important to use only native species and to restrict our focus to those that historically occurred onsite. Respecting the integrity of the various communities that occur onsite and making sure we don't disrupt it, is a serious consideration. Just as we would not want to introduce an invasive non-native, introducing a native that was never historically present and one that might be capable of spreading is equally as bad - in my opinion at least.
In restoration, it also is important to consider the nativity of your stock. Some species have wide natural distributions. Red maple (Acer rubrum), for example, occurs well into Canada and south to the Florida Keys. Although the same species, trees from the north and those from the south do not "act" the same way in a landscape and NEVER acclimate well to climates they did not originate from.  The term "provenance" is used to define the locale of the plant stock we are using and it can be significant in some restoration projects and less so in others. Either way, it must be considered.
I write this preamble because I believe too many people involved in native-plant landscaping and wildlife gardening confuse their mission as one of restoration when I believe it should be focused elsewhere. I believe that our goal is create habitat for as many species as possible. Given the little space we normally have to work with and the enormity of the ecological problems facing the earth, our mission should be to maximize our individual effectiveness. In a truly living landscape, plants are chosen for their contribution to the overall habitat plan; not for the restoration of some long ago plant community ripped apart by past development practices.
All too frequently, I hear that I should first consider what plant community my yard once was and then restrict my choices to those species that once occurred there. To me, that is sheer lunacy. If my yard had once been a Florida pine flatwoods, how much habitat value would have resulted from me adding mostly saw palmetto (Serenoa repens), gallberry (Ilex glabra) and wax myrtle (Morella cerifera) as an understory beneath a canopy composed of slash pine (Pinus elliottii)? The answer is virtually none. The painful truth is that my yard could not be a Florida pine flatwoods post-development. The soils and hydrology have been irrevocably altered and there is no longer any chance of natural fire in natural fire intervals. My standard lot would still not have been a Florida pine flatwoods even if all of this were still present. It is simply too small and too disconnected to any other natural landscape.  I could create a 1/4-acre approximation of what a Florida pine flatwoods might look like, but it would be little different than if I painted a picture of one. Such a community has to exist in an ecological context with all its biotic and abiotic factors present or it falls short.
My former 1/4-acre landscape was not a restoration of anything and my new one here in Holiday won't be either. To achieve the ecological goals I have, I must mix plants together from different plant communities and I likely will design it to have different types of communities in different parts of my yard. There is no reason why I can't have a wooded area in the backyard and an open sunny wildflower meadow in the front. Within this matrix, I'm also likely to create a wetland where none formerly existed.
From my vantage point, what's important is that each plant play a significant and identifiable role. I don't have enough room for wasted space. Each plant also needs to thrive within the growing conditions present - or the conditions I hope to enhance by enhancing my soil naturally and by shading and altering the microclimate in various parts of the landscape. If I want my landscape to be alive to its fullest potential, I will not use chemicals that might alter the balance that nature is starting to create here. I will most certainly combine plants native to north Florida that are not naturally found in my region of the state. I've used them before to great effect. I may even try to squeeze in a few that do not get this far up the state from their more southerly counties. I've already added a key lime, so I've made the decision also that my yard will not be all natives. When it's all complete, however, I hope it's habitat for the greatest diversity of wildlife possible. It could never reach that potential if I had approached it as a restoration. It will be much more than that, someday.  I will be documenting those changes in this blog.

 A "meadow" of turf grass has absolutely no habitat value except to the types of lawn pests most of us despise and try to eradicate

A natural "wildflower meadow", on the other hand, is diverse, changes with the seasons, and provides habitat for a great many things

My former backyard was a mixture of native shade-tolerant plants from different parts of the state. It was not a restoration of a woodland, but the creation of one that does not occur naturally.