Hybrids and aliens

In a previous blog I talked about native plants, as opposed to ‘hybrids and aliens’. I want to use this post to elaborate a bit further on that.

Many of the ‘garden plants’ that have become popular in recent years have been specially bred to produce particular characteristics, such as bigger flowers or different coloured leaves. This is designed to make them more attractive to gardeners, who then spend a fortune on them in garden centres and nurseries.

Often the breeders started with a native plant and then ‘improved on it’ to make it more attractive to gardeners. The trouble is, the genetic changes introduced through this process may make these plants less useful to wildlife.

Garden centres also stock many plants imported from other environments, often because they have a striking appearance. These plants haven’t evolved in tandem with our native wildlife, so they lack the interrelationships that are fundamental to a healthy ecosystem.

I’m not obsessive about this and do indeed have quite a few hybrids and aliens in the garden; they were there when we bought the house and some of them are quite attractive. Some even support wildlife by providing nesting sites for birds – rhododendrons and azaleas being obvious examples. They’re not as good as native hedging (which I planted soon after moving in) but it’s all about balance and compromise.

Some of these alien plants have been here for so long that we often think of them as native and some are even beneficial (Buddleia is a good example, imported from China in the early 1900s) but in most cases a few decades in our gardens can’t compete with thousands of years of evolution. 

The same goes for ‘alien’ animals. I quite enjoy watching the grey squirrels (shock horror for grey squirrel haters). I would prefer to see red squirrels but that ain’t going to happen. I also quite like the ring-necked parakeets that have recently appeared to add their voices to the morning and evening choruses of birdsong – and they are far from being native species.