Cities around America need to start learning to use native plants as *infrastructure*, not just as horticultural filler. Mitigating flooding, reducing the heat Island effect caused by hundreds of square miles of asphalt that acts like a heat battery, creating habitat for cool birds and a more pleasant and humane landscape for people - native plants provide all these resources, and the natives do it best because they spent millions of years evolving on the land where they grow : the local environ