In 2006 Douglas Tallamy, author of the well-known Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (2009, revised and expanded), led a team of researchers who measured how landscaping with native plants affected the avian and lepidopteran communities on six pairs of suburban properties in southeastern Pennsylvania.

LWLA projects served as the study sites with native vegetation, which were compared to properties with non-native vegetation. In the study area, it was observed that landscapes with native vegetation supported significantly more caterpillars and caterpillar species and significantly greater bird abundance, diversity, species richness, biomass, and breeding pairs of native species. It was also found that bird species of regional conservation concern were eight times more abundant and significantly more diverse on properties using native vegetation.

Pub_Recog_2009_Tallamy

LWLA is proud to have been involved with this study, and Douglas Tallamy is an important friend of the firm. Tallamy also serves on the Advisory Committee of LWLA’s educational affiliate, New Directions in the American Landscape.

To view an abstract of the article, which was published in Conservation Biology, click here.