Native Species in Design Standards

Item 3.4 under Sec III Design Standards in the Site Plan Approval Regulations reads, "The site shall be landscaped with native tree, shrub and grass species." Native plants are, in a word, local. They are plants that have been growing in a particular habitat and region, typically for thousands of years or much longer. Also called indigenous, they are well adapted to the climate, light, and soil conditions that characterize their ecosystem. Within this system, they have evolved tremendously important co-evolutionary relationships with the other plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria present, and these very complex relationships keep that particular ecosystem stable.

In Massachusetts, we consider all the plants that grew here prior to European colonization to be native. They had the tremendous advantage of being able to evolve and adapt to evolutionary change at a relatively slow pace that supported their continued survival and that fostered ecosystem stability. Native plants were used extensively by Native Americans, but their environment did not yet include the larger scale disruptions that began after European settlers arrived— introducing non-native plants from other continents, rapidly clearing much of the landscape to introduce new agricultural practices, manipulating the genetics of plants through cross-breeding and now, through bioengineering.

For information on species native to the Westminster area, please click here.