HOUGHTON — There can be more to a garden than strawberries and petunias, it’s an ecosystem that may need a little re-working.

Enter native plant varieties.

“This is what we call gardening for life or a joint venture with nature. Where the garden is not only for our enjoyment but is to create habitats for all the life form on the planet,” Neil Diboll said. “This is a true revolution and it’s a quiet revolution.”

Diboll is president and senior ecologist of Prairie Nurseries. He has spent his life trying to shift gardening focus to native plants and spoke Thursday at the U.J. Noblet Forestry Building.

The primary benefit of switching out something like Cannas for Black Eyed Susans is food sources for native wildlife. There is a strong link between native plants and insects, Diboll explained. They adapted to each other, often with insects unable to eat all but a few varieties and bugs are a base of the food chain.

“No bugs, no birds,” he said.

Other than increasing wildlife, the insects coming in for the native plants often balance other insects out removing the need for insecticides, Diboll said.

“You don’t need them (insecticides) and you don’t want them,” he said.

Additionally, native plants are low maintenance and bring in native pollinators like butterflies and bees.

“When you plant native plants you don’t have to fertilize them, you don’t have to water them…Even on sandy, rocky soils,” Diboll said. “Pick the right plants and you can let them do the work for you.”

Diboll began this push for native plants 30 years ago and is starting to see attitudes change.

“You can imagine what it was like trying to sell these plants 30 years ago when each and every one was a weed,” Diboll said.

Names like sneezeweed and butterflyweed weren’t helping matters.

“Now people have begun to realize there are some wonderful applications for these plants in our gardens.”

Gardeners have the chance to bring back the habitat and food sources lost with development and bring native wildlife to their yards.

“It is our responsibility as gardeners to pick up the slack because nobody else is going to do it for us,” Diboll said.

Diboll will be speaking on gardening with native plants Saturday at a free conference at the Carnegie Museum. The event will run from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and include other speakers addressing invasive species and pollinators.

Tomorrow: Key plants and strategies for native gardening.