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The influence of English gardens, the Arts and Crafts <br /> movement and Prairie School style in America created <br /> the ideal of a "wild garden" - a cultivated area meant <br /> to embody an idealized vision of untrammeled nature. <br /> By the early 20th Century,Americans were ready to <br /> embrace the wilderness their ancestors despised. <br /> Burgeoning automobile travel fostered the notion of <br /> roadsides as wild P gardens and expressions of American <br /> nature. Popular magazines and books promoted the <br /> restoration of native flora along roads, and roadside <br /> meadows as models for urban gardens. <br /> Rough Blazing Star The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest in <br /> photo by Jeff Shaw %owl native plants, primarily because of their ecological <br /> benefits. "The use of native plants not only protects <br /> our native heritage and provides wildlife habitat," former President Bill Clinton <br /> remarked in a 1994 memo, "but can also reduce fertilizer, pesticide, and irrigation <br /> demands and their associated costs because native plants are suited to the local <br /> environment and climate." <br /> 14 <br />