Lately I spend more and more time visiting arboretums and public demonstration gardens exploring and photographing the flowers and trees. It’s not just a great way to take in the beauty but also observe nature.

Gardens serve many different purposes. An obvious one is personal food production and feed for livestock. Another is to draw in and support local wild, such as food plots for hunting and pollinator gardens that encourage and support local wildlife. I’m less thrilled about people bringing in non native species for purposes of beauty. Even if species are non invasive, you’re still playing with the forces of nature, posing a risk to local ecology just for a frivolous purpose. It’s one thing if it’s just to be eaten but beauty alone to disturb ecology seems troublesome in my mind.