One thing we have a lot of in Gwinnett County, and I am very proud of us for this, is plant nurseries. As you know, there is a lot of money spent on ornamental plants. Many of us can’t help ourselves.
And it is up to the industry to propagate and source large quantities of the popular specimens we want in our home landscapes. You can imagine how many hundreds of trays of begonias might rest side by side in a greenhouse until they’re ready for the market. And what do you call it when you have nothing but one type of plant? You call it a monoculture. And these are always problematic.
Why? Because it defies nature. But what I mean by this is that it unbalances the miniature eco-system present in each and every backyard. The buzzword that is “biodiversity” can be summarized in this way: you have plants that attract the aphids, but you also have plants that attract the lady bugs. The lady bugs manage the aphid population so that the aphid population doesn’t completely and ruthlessly manage your summer snapdragons. There is more to it than this, but you get the idea…