The word naturalistic is very interesting. When I first started 30-something years ago, I considered myself a naturalistic designer. However, I didn’t realize that meant studying nature and bringing that into the garden in somewhat concrete and literal ways.
It just meant to me creating things that looked naturalistic—that weren’t clipped, and overly pruned, and overly formal.
Over the years, I’ve learned that if you really want to call something natural, it ought to have some real connection to what goes on around you in the natural world. That started off by using native plants, or an increasing amount of native plants, and then it turned into in more recent years to understanding that no matter what plants you choose, but what natural processes you allow to unfold or manage in the landscape.
To me right now, that’s really the difference between being able to make these things happen over time, and overcome a lot of the difficulties that gardens have from a maintenance standpoint and an environmental standpoint.
Larry Weaner–awaytogarden.com Interview
Go Native! North Carolina 
There are some very pretty landscapes in the Los Angeles area, but the prettiest are the farthest from what is natural for the region. It is funny that people think that such landscapes bring them closer to nature.
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How true . . . The “unnatural” landscapes are most often the prettiest anywhere, possibly because they are unusual or unique for a given area. Unfortunately, individual plants from these pretty landscapes may eventually escape, and they do little or nothing to provide larval food for native insect development. The pretty landscapes are essentially barren as far as insects are concerned.
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Some invasive exotics become ‘more’ appealing to certain insects or animals, depriving the natives of their pollinators. People think that the swarming monarch butterflies in the eucalyptus groves around Montana de Oro are so beautiful, but all the monarch butterflies that are there are NOT where they should be, pollinating the many other plants that have always relied on them. Now there are ‘environmentalists’ who want to protect the eucalyptus (two main specie)!
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