There are a variety of great reasons to embrace native plant gardening — including supporting pollinators and your local ecosystem, having a relatively easy-to-maintain garden where everything exists in harmony, and not having to deal with the headaches posed by non-native plants.
One of the most enticing reasons is that native plants entice local wildlife to come visit you. Sometimes, that means having delicate, colorful songbirds circle around you while adorable squirrels and chipmunks frolic at your feet like you're a Disney princess. Other times, you get to see an opossum. Both options are great.
Posting in the r/NativePlantGardening subreddit, one such native plant gardener recently posted a surveillance video of an opossum carrying around nesting materials with its tail.
"Opossum carrying nesting material with prehensile tail," the poster wrote. "My neighbors caught this on their bird feeder camera. Thought it was pretty cool."
The other members of the forum agreed that the opossum was pretty cool.
"Whoa! I had no idea they could do this. Just another reason to love opossums even more," wrote one commenter.
"I've observed this from a tree stand in the early morning hours. As it entered its burrow, it let go of the plug of material and created an insulated door for his home. Pretty smart!" wrote another.
"I love possums so much! We had a mama and her babies come by the other night looking for a snack. They are so cool! We get them and armadillos in our yard," another commenter chimed in.
While there are certainly those among us who think that opossums are weird or disturbing, you will clearly not find those opinions among the ranks of the forum dedicated to native plant gardening.
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Every day 🥗 Gardeners may even recognize the opossums for the unlikely benefits they provide.
"[Opossums] have been regarded as nature's clean-up crew — feasting on a myriad of organic matter less desired (or suitable) by other furbearer species," the Furbearer Conservation wrote. "Gardeners tend to encourage the presence of opossums as they feed on detrimental insects such as slugs and foraging beetles."
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