Bringing Nature Home

Since I am a public speaker covering backyard habitats, it is very important that I keep up on my reading about environmental topics. There are few books which have influenced my husband and me as much as Douglas W. Tallamy's "Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants."
This book is my bible now and I often mention it during my presentations. I can attest that we detect more and more insects in our yard, the more native plants we are planting.
Professor Tallamy discovered that our native insects cannot digest alien plants. Alien plants are any plants which were, accidentally or on purpose, introduced into the United States. These "aliens" often bring with them alien insects (e.g. the marmorated stinkbug as a recent example). Alien plants do not provide any host plants for native insects, and thus are not part of the natural food chain.
A large part of the book focuses on plants you should plant to create a healthy habitat. The back of the book lists the plants by geographical area.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gardening.