Serviceberry Blossom April 16 Last fall we had the front of our house landscaped with plants all native to our region. There are several reasons I chose to stick with native plants - basically they enhance the environment by providing food/shelter to animals, particularly pollinators, using less water, not requiring fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides. Indiana Wildlife Federation and Indiana Native Plants and Wildflower Society are great sources for using native plants in landscaping for people in Indiana. Our yard is dominated by many large, old oak trees, so the landscaper we worked with wanted to keep with that theme and create type of woodland edge-habitat with the design. You will learn in any Ecology 101 course that edge-habitats are where the action takes place. Because they occur at the boundary between two habitats and provide a variety of heights in vegetation they support a high level of biodiversity. This is something that is easy to replicate in a yard w