There are many short admonitions on the internet about ways we can make our gardens more : Leave your Leaves. No Pesticides, No Herbicides, Plant Natives! All of these are fine as far as they go. But when we implement them, we begin to see that there are valuations that must be made in each instance. So we need to look at how we weight the pros and cons. I like to use percentages to evaluate use.
I think that permaculture offers us a structural idea that can help with our analysis. In an ideal world the garden would be a pristine area with habitat or even better, habitats, that are correct for its region. In permaculture they create gradations with the most homocentric section being at the center surrounding the home and the most pristine wild are being the outer zones. So the closest area to the home is the most involved with human interaction. So Zone One could be highly complex plantings such as perennial beds and vegetable gardens. Zone Two might include flowering or fruit trees or shrub borders.The outer zones would be natural woods or fields that only needed a small amount of maintenance.
So in this case if we look at your property, ideally we would like to leave 50-75% as wild or natural. So the 25% surrounding the home could contain native and non native perennials, herbs and vegetables that are nonnative, including evergreen foundation plants.
