GETTING STARTED WITH NATIVE PLANTS A Look at the Brandywine's Approach to the Landscape
Throughout the Brandywine's campus in Chadds Ford, visitors encounter beautiful gardens featuring wildflowers and plants that are native to this region. These gardens serve as a living representation of the organization's mission to preserving and promoting both art and the environment. Beyond their aesthetic value, native plants provide many ecological benefits—they are more sustainable, require less water, filter pollutants from stormwater, mitigate soil erosion and provide critical food and habitat for local wildlife. In the following article, learn more about the evolution of the Brandywine's garden program and why you should consider using native plants in your own landscape. When the Brandywine Museum of Art first opened its doors to the public in 1971, the
landscape that greeted visitors consisted of a rather meager display of non-native, conventional landscape plants. There were espaliered crab apple trees and low-growing shrubs from China, complemented with oil-filled tiki lamps flanking both sides of the entrance walk to help visitors find their way after sundown. Just a few years later, in 1974, the overall design of the campus landscape shifted in approach to focus on plants that were indigenous to the area. So much of the artwork created in the Brandywine Valley and on view in the Museum had been inspired by the regional landscape— and with native plants providing a substantial portion of that inspiration, it quickly became a natural fit to start incorporating these plants into the campus landscape. As native plant species are, and always will be, inseparable components of both the visual and ecological integrity
of this region (as they are within all other regions), they were the perfect choice for physically representing the sensibilities of an organization devoted to preserving, protecting and sharing the natural and cultural history of the Brandywine Valley.
Why Native Plants? By simple definition, native plant species are those that have inhabited a specific geographic region for many thousands of years. Through the process of evolution, they have become increasingly better at thriving within the environmental factors that summarize the region in which they grow. Without any additional assistance, these plants have successfully adapted to local growing conditions and soil types and more easily survive the seasonal patterns of rainfall, flooding, drought, humidity and temperature extremes. Once established, they typically do not require supplemental water or fertilizer.
For a myriad of reasons, native plants have also become co-dependent with the region’s wildlife. Every living creature directly or indirectly derives its life from plants—and, typically, not just any plants will do. Monarch caterpillars, for example, have an essential need for milkweed plants or they will not survive. Other species of pollinators also have similar requirements with different plants. Using native plants in the Brandywine’s designed landscapes directly fulfills wildlife needs while also involving less human intervention and maintenance than is often required with non-native plants that have evolved within other ecosystems. 15