At the recent Plant-A-Rama event in Brooklyn, Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, explained why planting natives in our yards is so important to sustaining pollinators and other wildlife. Read the excellent account in the New York Times here.

Tallamy emphasized that being friendly to bees, butterflies and birds does not mean sacrificing beauty. For example, this stunning locally native aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) provided forage for bees in Western North Carolina into the beginning of December!