- Native plants provide benefits to gardeners and to the environment
- Some notable plants native to Michigan are purple prairie clover, butterfly weed, spring beauty and prairie smoke
There may still be snow on the ground in Michigan, but soon native plant sales will be popping up alongside spring wildflowers.
Some have already arrived. Gardeners across the state will seek out the plants, which come with many benefits.
Native plants are uniquely qualified to be in Michigan because they’re from here.
“This is where they evolved, this is where they grew up,” said Carolyn Miller, president of the Wildflower Association of Michigan.
Being from here means native plants sometimes provide special services to the insects they “grew up” alongside (think monarchs and milkweed), but it also means they learned how to adapt to their environment.
A lot of Michigan native plants came from prairie land, where they had to sometimes endure months without rain. As a result, they commonly developed long roots.
“Some of these root systems go down nine feet,” Miller said. “So they can tap into the water, the moisture, that might be down that far.”
Those long roots help hold soil together, creating channels for rainwater to flow downslowly, which mitigates flooding, and they can actually store carbon and help cool the climate.
In addition to providing benefits to the environment, native plants can help gardeners out, too. Once established, many are drought tolerant, which can make them easier to care for.
