It's Time To Move On From "Simple"
Since the publication of Bringing Nature Home , we seem to be stuck in the infancy of what creating living landscapes is really all about. What brought so many to the connection between landscape design and the possibilities of creating habitat for birds and pollinators has now somehow also caused us to be in a state of arrested development in my opinion. Dr. Tallamy's messages are simple. Native plants are better than nonnative ones and some of these - like oaks, are better than others. Insects, but especially the caterpillars of moths and butterflies, form the foundation of the food web and planting the "Top 10" on his list, regardless of species within that genus, is the path to achieving our shared ecological goals. As a species, I think we gravitate towards the simplistic. We want the messages we get to be simple. We do not want things to be any more complicated than needed. The problem from my perspective, however, is that most messages are more complicated th