Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Updated and Expanded

“If you cut down the goldenrod, the wild black cherry, the milkweed and other natives, you eliminate the larvae, and starve the birds. This simple revelation about the food web—and it is an intricate web, not a chain—is the driving force in Bringing Nature Home.” —The New York Times

As development and subsequent habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. In Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife—native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals. In many parts of the world, habitat destruction has been so extensive that local wildlife is in crisis and may be headed toward extinction.
 
But there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference.

• The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden
• Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes
• The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife
• Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change
• Pollinators of Native Plants: Attract, Observe and Identify Pollinators and Beneficial Insects with Native Plants
• A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future
• Native Plants for New England Gardens
• Native Plants of the Northeast: A Guide for Gardening and Conservation
• 100 Plants to Feed the Bees: Provide a Healthy Habitat to Help Pollinators Thrive
• Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Forage Guide