Welcome to the Native Plant Garden

The Carlisle Conservation Foundation shares the concerns of many regarding the decrease in bird, pollinator and other insect populations. Declining populations have been attributed to a loss of habitat and a loss of the food sources provided by native plants. What can we do?
Step 1: Remove invasive plants from our properties.
Step 2: Increase the space dedicated to native plants and wild life.
Two excellent books that discuss this topic by Douglas Tallamy are Nature's Best Hope and Bringing Nature Home.

The Carlisle Conservation Foundation has begun removing many invasive plants within this meadow area of our Spencer Brook Reservation (the first property acquired by CCF over 60 years ago!) and re-establishing numerous native plants. This garden area serves as both an example of the beauty and usefulness of native plants and as a seed bank that will, over time, help spread these plants throughout Spencer Brook and perhaps beyond.

Native plants are extremely important because they contribute much more to the local food web. The local flora and fauna co-evolved here over long ecological time periods. Many specialist species of butterflies, moths, bees and other insects survive only by using one or two specific native plants as their food source! A large percentage of bird species raise their young by feeding them insects. And insects eat and/or get nutritionally complete nectar only from native plants. Non-native plants tend not to be so richly integrated into the local food web, thus decreasing the food supply to raise baby birds.

At CCF, we are inspired, and hope to inspire others to increase both the land area dedicated to wild-life habitat, and the quality of that habitat. We need our native plants! Watch out for plants you see in a nursery or catalog that sound like natives (e.g. Blueberry), but have a "pretty" name after the common name. These are not natives; they are cultivars and will not support native pollinators (e.g. Blueberry - Vaccinium corymbosum "Bluecrop").