By Bridget Shirvell
In the tenth instalment of our series, Advice and ideas on raising kids in the climate crisis, the author of Parenting in a Climate Crisis, Bridget Shirvell, offers advice and guidance on how to help to your child understand the value of native plants.
The cardinal is back. My daughter announces this, loud enough to reach every corner of the house, and requires that I stop what I’m doing to look at the red bird sitting on a branch of the dogwood tree in our front yard.
We planted a native flowering dogwood in our yard two years ago, after a search that turned out to be harder than expected. These days, most dogwoods sold at nurseries near us are hybrid varieties, bred for showiness and stripped of much of what makes them ecologically useful.
The blossoming relationship between the cardinal and dogwood
I was looking for a true native to replace one that had died of old age. And even though native flowering dogwoods are highly susceptible to a fungus that has killed them in record numbers since the 1970s, and those trees have proven hard for me to plant and maintain, our dogwood is almost 10, and beloved by the cardinal.
What my daughter doesn’t know yet is that she’s not just watching a pretty bird. She’s watching a relationship. One, shaped over thousands of years.
The cardinal and the dogwood didn’t meet by accident. The flowering dogwood’s berries are a critical food source for more than 35 bird species, cardinals among them. The tree and the bird belong to the same web of life, and our yard, for one small moment each day, is part of that web too.
Why is native plants so critical for biodiversity?
This is what entomologist Doug Tallamy has spent his career trying to help us see. A professor at the University of Delaware and author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope.
Tallamy has documented what happens when we replace native plants with ornamental non-natives. The kind that fill garden centers every spring.
The short answer: the relationships disappear. Just 14% of our native plants produce 90% of the caterpillars that form the base of our food web. And caterpillars, unglamorous as they are, turn out to matter enormously.
It can take between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars to raise a single nest of baby birds. Those caterpillars need native plants to survive. Without them, the chain breaks.
Take oaks, for instance. Tallamy found that oaks support more than a thousand caterpillar species, compared to other good native plants like tulip trees, which support just 21. A non-native ornamental often supports none at all.
Plant a Bradford pear where an oak could grow, and you haven’t just made an aesthetic choice. You’ve taken something out of the food web.
How to tell the story of native plants to our kids
So what does this mean for the way we talk to our kids about the plants around them? It means we can give them a question that actually works: Is this plant a friend?
For a seven-year-old, this framework is surprisingly intuitive. Kids already understand friendship as a two-way thing — you give, you get, you show up for each other. Ask a child to look at a plant and notice who visits it. A butterfly? A bee? A caterpillar? Those visitors are evidence of friendship. A plant that nobody visits is worth noticing, too.
Storytelling narratives for younger children
For younger children, five and under, keep it even simpler. Find a flower or a plant together and ask: Who do you think lives here? Let them look and guess. It’s OK if you’re not 100% sure either. The goal at this age is attention. A child who has learned to really look at a plant is already doing something important.
Storytelling narratives for older children
For older kids, eight and up, you can go deeper into the chain. Cardinals eat dogwood berries. Caterpillars eat oak leaves. Baby birds eat caterpillars. Every link depends on the one before it. Ask them: what happens if you take away one link?
The best thing you can do this autumn is go outside together and look. Pick a plant in your yard or on your street and spend five minutes watching it. Who shows up? Who doesn’t?
Tools to help you get started
If you want to take it further, the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder or the Royal Horticultural Society’s Plant Finder & Selector lets you search for native plants that best support local wildlife in your specific area.
It’s a good tool for figuring out where to start or what to ask for at a nursery. And when you go to that nursery, ask specifically for natives. Don’t let them talk you into cultivars or hybrids. You may have to look harder than you expect. We did. But when you find one and plant it, you’re not just adding a plant to your yard. You’re adding a link to a chain that needs all the help it can get.
My daughter doesn’t know any of this yet in those terms. She just knows the cardinal is back, and she needs the whole house to come and see.
A discussion between the Founder of A greener life, a greener world, Anders Lorenzen, and Bridget Shirvell.
Bridget Shirvell is a freelance journalist and the author of Parenting in a Climate Crisis. A handbook that explores the challenges and opportunities of raising children in an era of climate change. Her work has been featured in various publications, including The New York Times, Grist, and Fast Company, where she combines personal insights with expert perspectives to inspire and inform readers. Bridget is passionate about raising awareness and sparking meaningful conversations around climate action and the future of the next generation. You can follow her Substack here.
Related
Discover more from A greener life, a greener world
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
