Church Landscapes, Bonus: Plantings

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God is a gardener, and He invited us to be gardeners, too:

"Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. *** The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." 

Genesis 2:8, 15 

“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?  And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?  And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!" 

Matthew 6:26‭-‬30 ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was not giving an ecological lesson, but he was referencing broad truths which anybody could observe easily in the natural world: God has created an orderly world that benefits even the birds and grasses. 

One important ecological mechanism which God used was to weave the flora and fauna of each region into beautifully intricate, interdependent systems. Everything touches on, aids, and relies on everything else. Example: monarch butterflies need and depend on milkweed for nourishing young caterpillars. If there’s no milkweed, there will be no monarchs. Various birds rely on feeding monarch caterpillars to their nestlings. Those birds eat also seeds and distribute them. And so on and so forth. 

When we use plants from outside the region, we ignore, interrupt, and compromise the systems that God created. Non-native plants generally contribute little or nothing to the local ecosystem, and because they are not part of the ecosystem, they might thrive only because the normal limitations from their native ecosystem are absent. For example, burning bush (Euonymus alata) is from China, and Virginia’s local birds and bugs don't know what to do with it. It might seem pest free to us, but to the local fauna and to the larger ecosystem, it is as if we had poured concrete there. 

Big box retailers, and even local nurseries, tend to market what they expect people to buy, regardless of such concerns. It's all about sales, not ecology. By casual observation, about 80% of what you can buy are non-natives. 

The local ecosystem can absorb and ignore a few such interruptions, but there are other risks, too. 

• We can create “food deserts” for the local fauna. The birds and bees have no idea what to do with these non-natives. 
• We can disrupt their natural foraging, nesting, and migrating, as noted above. 
• Many growers make their plants look better for retail by using insecticides (called neonicotinoids) that kill both harmful pests and beneficial pollinators. 
• Some non-native plants tend to escape cultivation and outcompete local flora: they consume nutrients and water, displace native plants on which the fauna rely, and can stress whole ecosystems. Obvious examples are kudzu, English ivy, tree-of-heaven, and Japanese honeysuckle. Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation keeps a list of such plants at https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/invsppdflist. 

This leads to an important idea: 

• Landscaping with plants which are native to the region and which contribute to ecosystem function and stability is a way of cooperating with God's creative work. 

And its corollary: 

• Landscaping with plants which are foreign here runs against God’s creative work. 

Here’s a partial list of plants which are not native to North America but commonly used in Virginia. Some are listed as invasive species and really, really should be avoided. Fortunately, there are good substitutes for each: