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For the next five days, I'm going to copy what I wrote for a website I designed for a class a few years ago. The site was called Native Plants for your California Garden. The only changes I expect to make are to remove any references to the photographs that were on the site.

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How many times have you been out for a walk through nature and said to yourself "How beautiful, I need to get out and appreciate this more often?" Do you realize you can create something like that in your own garden? Although suburban landscaping is seemingly defined as being limited to lawns, shrubs, and ivy, your options reach beyond that. You can remove the ivy, reduce the size of your lawn or even eliminate it altogether, and instead choose native plants that require no fertilizers, no pesticides, little or no supplemental water, and little or no maintenance. In exchange, you'll have a more natural looking outdoor space that can evoke feelings of that last hike you went on.

You can choose how far native you want to go - it's certainly not an all or nothing proposition. Around my house, I will always make space for double impatiens as they were my mother's favorites. Just keep in mind the differing needs of our native plants, and you can start adding an exciting new element to your garden!

There is also flexibility in gardening with natives. Through proper selection, you can have a formal clipped garden using native shrubs instead. Some have a more formal growth habit that is easily maintained. So don't feel that by growing native you are limited to a wild, untamed looking garden. Or you can have both: a formal looking front garden that will please even a homeowners' association, and an informal backyard that looks like a nature walk!

It's great to go green as more and more people are tuning in to preserving our precious ecology. And we can each start in our own gardens. California has been called an 'Island' for its unique geography, settled between various mountain ranges and the ocean, forming a large part of what is known as the California Floristic Province. Yet every region of the United States can benefit by gardening with an eye towards preserving nature. Ideally, every region of the world would garden this way. We can all tread a little more lightly on the earth, and still have beautiful gardens!

With all of the fantastic information about native plants available now, there is no better time to begin your native garden makeover. It's actually fun and satisfying to bring back some of what makes California unique. You'll just be turning over a lot of the work over to nature itself; the native plant garden, once established, requires much less supplemental water (if any), no fertilizer, and lets the birds and beneficial insects take care of the pests. By eliminating the use of pesticides, you'll be giving nature (including us humans!) a break.