WHAT LOS ANGELES ATTORNEY MICKEY WHEATLEY HATES IN A garden is the big showy blooms that most everyone else loves. So three years ago, right after buying his first house, he set out to uproot the prize roses the previous owners had planted. While neighbors looked on in horror, he tore out the camellias too. In their place he put California poppies, fragrant sage and drought-tolerant manzanita. "Where everything is lush and green, maybe it's appropriate to grow roses," explains Wheatley. "But here it just doesn't feel right. For me it's almost a spiritual thing. The plants in my garden belong to the deserts of this region, and having them here helps me keep some small connection to the wild."
A decade ago, gardeners like Wheatley would have been considered eccentric, if not downright demented. These days they fit right in with the preserve-the- planet crowd and give a new meaning to the term green thumb. The goal of the back-to-natives style of gardening is to blend the landscapes of private homes into the natural world around them. Why should Texans plant daffodils and tulips when native bluebonnets and prairie paintbrushes create such glorious displays? Why should Southern Californians, who are trying to reduce water consumption, plant thirsty impatiens rather than the vivid wildflowers that decorate nearby hillsides? Why should Chicago suburbanites plant petunias and geraniums but scorn the coneflowers and compass plants that once delighted westbound pioneers?
Back-to-natives gardening is driven partly by a desire to get away from the monotonous landscaping that makes suburban lots in Arizona look virtually identical to those in Tennessee. "Our landscapes have become homogeneous," observes David Northington, executive director of the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, Texas, "because they have been painted with an identical palette."
Just as important is the growing concern that typical lawns have become almost sterile -- separate from nature rather than a part of it. Nature writer Sara Stein joined the back-to-natives movement after she noticed the disappearance of fireflies and frogs, butterflies and birds from her five-acre property in Pound Ridge, New York. To bring the critters back, she put native grasses among her perennial flowers, planted a woodland garden, resurrected an old pond and created a wildflower meadow. Author of the new book Noah's Garden, Stein decries "the vast, nearly continuous and terribly impoverished ecosystem" consisting of copycat lawns and gardens from coast to coast. "We cannot in fairness rail against those who destroy the rain forest or threaten the spotted owl," she says, "when we have made our own yards uninhabitable."
The first rule of native-plant enthusiasts is to go for diversity. While a traditional garden may have a dozen species of plants, a well designed nativescape will have as many as 100 species in the same space. This variety ensures a healthier, heartier ecosystem because not all the plant life will be susceptible to the same diseases and pests. As an example of what happens when diversity declines, Dallas-based landscape designer Sally Wasowski cites the beetle-borne fungus that threatens to wipe out the majestic oaks that shade the homes and ranches of Texas hill country.