Native Plant Design is not Always an Easy Sell
The interest from potential clients in a native plant design has never been higher. Many homeowners are hearing the calls for native plants in neighborhood designs to provide sustenance for insects, birds and other critters that live in our suburban landscape. For the first time it seems as though the general public has grasped the fact that they can help the problem with our loss of biodiversity and contribute in their own way by converting their yards from a barren wasteland to actual ecological habitat.
For the clients that are all in on this concept the designer/client interaction can be exhilarating because their thirst for knowledge in this new field combined with the designer’s need to inform can result in a collaborative product where the homeowner is more a part of the process. By the end, the client feels a connection with their new native plant installation and truly understands the significance it represents to the local ecological community.
The harder clients to convince are the ones that don’t really know what they want or they are simply not real knowledgeable about plants in general. In these cases the client will usually rely on the skills and knowledge of the designer to give them a visually pleasing aesthetic while using plants that fit the microclimate and meet the requirements of sun/shade areas. Many times when the designer is given creative freedom it is the perfect chance to load the design with native plants, groundcovers to maintain the quality of the soil and do all of this while still filling the wants of the client. A good designer will at least have some native species in the plant list since they are the main group of people that have to be behind implementing this change.
Some designers will fill the page with ornamental specimen plants that look nice and fill the requests of the client but provide no nutrients or benefit to any living creature around it. The main thing new designers in the field need to understand is that it is up to them to teach and encourage these plants to their clients because if they don’t, who will?
At times it can be challenging because a customer will want specific requirements that are hard to fill using native plants. You hear the same thing from many clients – low maintenance, no trimming and nothing that gets bigger than 3 feet tall. These specs limit the designer to mainly dwarf varieties because most native shrubs do not stay that small and there is also the issue that non-plant people like compact plants that are simple and maintain their shape.
I have had many clients tell me that the plant looks to furry or does not have a consistent form. People have been conditioned to like a certain look with modern plants and many times it simply does not include natives. In these cases we, as designers, have to do the best we can and consider it a win if we can get some native pollinators included or a native evergreen that caterpillars can feed on. Although, you might not want to mention that last part to the client.
All in all it should get easier over time to convince clients to go native when re-doing their landscape or planning the design for their newly built home. We can only hope as designers that people educate themselves on the importance of maintaining habitat for local insects, birds and small mammals in our ecosystem. If they don’t, we must take it upon ourselves to inform the public of these important issues because once again, if not us then who will it be?