Native Gardening In The South: The Joy of Gardening with Indigenous Plants in the Southeastern U.S.

They say “Third time’s a charm”, and I do hope that is the case with this third edition of Native

Gardening in the South. So many new discoveries and game-changing events have occurred since

this book first came out in 1992, and I really felt compelled to produce a 3 rd Edition based on this

fact alone. I also wanted to do a more thorough job of presenting the information. I’m not exactly

sure of the number of plant species treated in this edition, but I’d guess it’s somewhere north of

500 -- substantially more than the 1 st Edition’s 160. In fact, every part of this 3 rd Edition has been

heavily beefed up.

Here we are 19 years after the publication of the 2 nd Edition of this book, and so much has changed

in such a short time. Foremost has been the resurgence of interest in gardening with indigenous

plants, wrought almost single-handedly by University of Delaware entomology professor Doug

Tallamy and the publication of his two native-gardening-based books, Bringing Nature Home

(2007) followed by Nature’s Best Hope (2020). Both of these books were based on experimental

results that revealed the tight mutual connections and survival strategies existing between native

plants and wildlife – both of which are presently declining as humanity continues to look after its

own interests. So, Doug and his students are now proving what longtime native plant and wildlife

advocates have been speculating for many years prior. This speculation about the importance of

native plants began in the southeastern U.S. with Caroline Dormon and Elizabeth Lawrence in the

early twentieth century, and continued on in drips and drabs into the beginning of the twenty-first

century.

In my own life, this constitutes the Third Wave of native gardening interest here in eastern North

America. And now with the aid of the digital revolution and social media, certainly the biggest

wave. Today, people are actually planting wild plants all over the place, as opposed to merely

appreciating them and learning about them in their wild habitats, and merely looking on from the

sidelines at the tiny percentage of those who were growing, designing, and planting wild plants.

Today, it looks like we’ve finally got some traction.