My native plant obsession stems from my husband John’s fascination with insects – specifically in the form of caterpillars. It was during his Master Naturalist training where he learned that many of our native butterflies and moths need a specific plant or family of plants (these are called host plants) for their caterpillars to eat. That knowledge was the key he needed to easily find the insects and larvae that he most wanted to observe.

The garden began with a single plant, Northern Spicebush (Lindera benzoin), the host of John’s favorite caterpillar. He purchased a bush from a local native plant nursery and in less than 3 weeks he had spicebush caterpillars to watch on that plant right in our yard.

In an “if you GROW it, they will come” spirit, he dug an enormous pond surrounded by plants to attract dragonflies (who spend the first 2 years of their lives as aquatic insects) to the yard. Pawpaws were planted to attract the zebra swallowtail, Asclepias syriaca (common milkweed) for monarchs, Liatris spicata for flower moths, monarda for nectar, and on and on. When he stopped mowing a section under the oak trees, rare plants like Indian Pipe and Trailing Arbutus appeared, as well as common ones like spotted wintergreen and low bush blueberries that grow wild under the hammock. Plants we wished we had in the yard (winged sumac, willow oak, and spiderwort) just seemed to show up.

We would spend hours combing the yard looking for insects. John, always with his camera, identifying new species of spider and dragonfly and beetle. Once we watched a thread-waisted wasp dig a hole, leave for a few minutes, and come back with a parasitized caterpillar. It stuffed the caterpillar in the hole, laid eggs on top, covered it with tiny bits of leaves, filled it back in, and camouflaged the hole so well we could never have found it again.

Nearly a decade after he planted that first spicebush, our yard has been transformed into a huge native plant garden with as many different plant species as can fit. As we learned more about the importance of native plants, the purpose of this “yard-en” (as John loved to call it) has changed. What started as a hobby, attracting insects to the yard so John could see them, has become an earnest mission to support as many insects as possible with the host plants they require.

As John often said, a plants’ purpose is food.