Why Create A Roadside Native Plant Project?
Texas has had 70 years of experience in roadside wildflower cultivation and has attracted mil-lions of tourists who have spent millions of dollars viewing their beautiful highways and by-ways. Festivals and other wildflower events are now widespread. Texas has found that litter is reduced by 29%, as many people are loath to throw their trash in "flower beds". Texas and Georgia have found that wildflower establishment in normally mowed areas saves the taxpayer 25-30% in mowing costs. Accidents are reduced because drivers slow down to enjoy the flowers. Finally, growing wildflower seeds has added a new and rewarding crop for Texas farmers. Roadside wildflower plantings reduce the need for herbicides and pesticides, thereby reducing the hazard to foraging bees, which reduces costs for bee keepers. Bees are also commercially important to farmers as pollinators. Making it safer for bees to harvest the nectar and pollen from roadside and meadow wildflowers prolongs their lives to perform this crucial task. Many other beneficial insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals are injured by pesticides and her-bicides. Wildflower plots do not need them. Wildflowers do not need fertilizers, which cost money. Fertilizers in the run-off during and after rains pollute streams causing algal blooms which reduce oxygen. Quails and other game birds, 15 species of perching birds, rabbits and other small mammals are dependent on the type of habitat which can be established in a meadow or on a roadside. These grass-shrub areas are rapidly being lost in most states. North Carolina has an ongoing program to establish grass-shrub areas for both game and non-game birds and animals. Monarch butterflies are dependent on milkweeds for survival. Many of these plants are found primarily on our roadsides. Planting butterfly milkweeds helps ensure that the monarchs will live, and it also provides brilliant splashes of orange along our roadsides. Monarchs are having a difficult time hibernating in their winter havens in Mexico where the forests are being cut. When they fly back to the U.S. and find milkweeds, the required food of their caterpillars, mowed out of existence on our roadsides, many may fail to reproduce. Planting our roadsides with native flowers and shrubs provides a refuge for the flora that once made our country supremely beautiful, but native flowers and shrubs are now being competed out of existence by imported aggressive grasses and weeds, such as kudzu. Finally and importantly, brilliant and beautiful flowers along our highways and rural roads give a lift to our lives that is sorely needed in an over busy world. Mary I. Burks, Project Director
Copyright Alabama Wildflower Advisory Committee 1998.
|
