Suburban gardening in Rochester, New York: Exotic plant preference and risk of invasion

Horticulture has long been an important source of exotic plant species that may naturalize and become invasive. To analyze the extent of exotic plant species and their possible preference in modern landscaping in Rochester, New York, USA, we inventoried 101 randomly chosen suburban (peri-urban) house gardens. On average, 72% of plants per property were not native to the Eastern United States. Of the exotic species present in gardens, 44% have naturalized in New York State. Additionally, invasive plants were often intentionally planted, such as Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii), which was found in nearly half of the gardens. We also sought to ascertain if garden diversity could be correlated with the age, size, or cost of properties. Although our findings were not as distinct as previous garden inventories, property size and mortgage value correlated positively with species richness. Overall, landscape trends across all property types favored exotic over native garden plants.