Non-Gardeners Can Nurture a Habitat Yard

Every wildlife friendly yard contributes to changing the landscape culture. The more rewilded yards there are the more accepted an ecologically informed landscaping aesthetic will become. This shift is slowly happening but right now, it's anchored by native plant gardeners who tend to be older educated white female homeowners with time to spend in their yard; not younger homeowners who will be the ones around when there aren't anymore butterflies or bumblebees if things don't change soon.

Vibrant, rewilded landscapes filled with native plants are the way for homeowners of all ages to support biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem.

Most people in my neighborhood ignore my rewilded yard and walk right by all the wildlife activity that might include hummingbirds on native buttonbush flowers (Cephalanthus occidentalis); gulf-fritillary butterflies laying eggs on native purple passionflower vines (Passiflora incarnata), a rare American bumblebee sipping nectar from scarlet beebalm (Mondarda didyma); fledgling bluebirds and their attentive parents; tiny Southern pink moths on bearded beggarticks (Bidens aristosa); a cartoonish Eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar eating black cherry tree leaves (Prunus seratona); fuzzy pink strawberry oak galls on the lower branches of an oak tree; goldfinches getting seeds from dried seedheads of evening primrose (Oenothera biennis); or a noisy flock of red-winged blackbirds and grackles scavenging for food in the winter. Some people even cross the street when they get to my sidewalk even though it’s kept clear.

A habitat yard is full of life - all photos taken in my small, rewilded urban yard!

What I find more interesting is I’ve had more than a few young neighbors tell me how much their parent, who is a hobby gardener, would love my rewilded yard. I’m encouraged by the acceptance of my landscaping choices but it’s odd that they don’t think it affects them in any way. They often feel compelled to tell me that they’re not gardeners or they like the look of a “traditional Southern yard” which I think means a big lawn, meatballed shrubs, and exotic ornamentals such as azaleas, crepe myrtles, camellias, and gardenias that are native to Asia. In my wealthy neighborhood, they will also tell me they have landscape crews that take care of their yard, so this is not something they need to do. To this I share how we fired the mow and blow crews almost 20 years ago because of the damage they were doing to our landscape. These interactions remind me of a scene in an otherwise forgettable (and regrettably cast) movie where the founder of a struggling company says to checked out employees “You think this meeting is for me? No…it’s for y’all…See, I’m going to be all right…Y’all are f#*@$d”. 

Raising awareness about healthy yard practices is difficult when younger homeowners see a yard crew, an expansive lawn, and a tidy yard devoid of life as some sort of residential status symbol. The reality of the biodiversity crisis happening in real time means this idea needs to change sooner than later.

If rewilding was about gardening, I’d spend my days puttering in my yard instead spending free time researching, networking, writing, speaking, and making my yard an example of what a biodiverse and healthy yard ecosystem can look like under the umbrella of my non-profit Nurture Native Nature. I wouldn’t need to bother thinking too much about having best practice ecological cues to care such as a Little Nature Center box, educational signs, yard certifications, or professional looking plant labels. 

I added a little nature center to my yard as a small way to raise awareness for anyone interested in learning how to support a healthier yard. I seasonally put out free native plants at the base of the nature center.

The cultural shift in landscaping needs to include younger mission aligned homeowners who are at the exact stage of life when time is precariously balanced between work and family. They don’t need to be gardeners. Most homeowners are weekend gardeners at best anyway - and the home and garden industry caters to their ignorance with shelves overflowing with insect and life-killing yard chemicals; and neonicotinoid treated, sterile, and invasive (or potentially invasive!) exotic plants. This is a key point because what needs to change quickly is how we take care of our yard which is where rewilding ultimately has an advantage in terms of time, money, and skill.

A major benefit of having a rewilded habitat yard is raising the next generation of homeowners who will follow a tradition of coexisting with nature instead of trying to fight it.

 Maintaining a yard to look exactly as it was when it was planted is a crazy making yard maintenance cycle the landscaping industry has convinced homeowners they must participate in. This is why shrubs that would naturally grow 20 feet tall are inexplicably planted in front of a home and pruned into meatballs or squares for the rest of their life to stay four feet tall. It’s why seasonal throw away annual plants (think snapdragons in spring, petunias in summer, mums in fall, and kale in winter) are sold in flats to ensure that every season looks exactly the same every year.

Atlanta's tree canopy is rapidly dwindling from overdevelopment, but we still have more canopy than most cities. Yet in the fall the only evidence of the season is not fallen leaves (or dried plant stems!) but non-native exotic ornamental mums plunked down in a bed of dyed mulch along with other non-native annuals that will be pulled up to signal fall is over and replaced for the winter with decorative kale that will never be eaten.

The grass maintenance cycle is peak landscape gaslighting:

• Synthetic fertilizers are sold to make grass grow rapidly.

• Fungicides are sold to stop what naturally happens with grass not growing in the right place (as in the wrong continent).

• Herbicides are sold to keep grass a dominant monoculture Insecticides are sold to keep insects from impacting the aesthetics of monoculture grass

• Gas-powered lawn equipment is sold to make grass look uniform when it grows because of the synthetic fertilizers making it grow faster

• Inhumane poisons and services are sold to keep critters that belong in our ecosystem from disfiguring the uniform look of the grass (e.g. moles are a beneficial part of a healthy ecosystem)

  

  In addition to costing an enormous amount of time and money for the senseless goal of a perfect looking lawn, the lawn culture has created insane ways to kill life. I had to look up what these bizarre looking devices all over a neighbor's lawn were and was horrified to learn they're a barbaric way to kill moles to maintain the pristine appearance of a lawn. I have no words.

  
  

Ecologically informed landscapes still need to be managed, but once established, the time and resources are nowhere near the inputs a typical lawn centered landscape requires. For example, around 5% of all air pollution in the U.S. is from gas-powered yard equipment which makes sense when 2% or 40 million acres of the U.S. is covered in lawn. Around 30%-60% of all outdoor water usage is used on lawns which is why they are now banned in places like Nevada where water is scarce.

Inputs are the resources used to maintain a landscape and include water, fertilizer, and labor. Lawns need immense input and are not sustainable. This photo is a mow and blow crew using three leaf blowers in a 1/4-acre yard!

I enjoy being in my rewilded yard because in my heart I’m a gardener, but at this point nature is pretty much in charge and little time is really needed to manage it and involves removing pop up invasives before they overtake the native plants; editing out generously growing native plants here and there; adding or moving around new plants when plants don't work out as planned; and keeping paths free enough to walk on.

Keeping hardscapes and natural paths clear is one of the ongoing tasks I need to do in my rewilded yard. The plant communities are dynamic, evolving and fairly low maintenance.

The fact is all yards need to be cared for. Once the initial landscaping is done, it is easier to leave the leaves under trees and shrubs and manage a living mulch of native plants that have adapted to growing in a specific area for thousands of years than it is to spend time and money trying to remove all the nature (called “yard waste”) and maintain a monoculture of resource greedy non-native lawn.

Once established, it's much easier to work with nature and manage a native plant community of living mulch than it is to maintain a static lawn centered landscape. This video shows just a tiny section of native plants in my yard.

It’s only a matter of time before the way I take care of my yard becomes more mainstream and therefore interesting to younger folks still generally unaware that lawns are an unsustainable anachronism from a time when the world had 30% more insects and birds in it. I’m hoping this change happens before the impact of development, pesticides, and landscaping indifference becomes too obvious for even the average homeowner to ignore - because by then it may be too late.

A shift is happening in the landscaping world - I'm just getting anxious that it won't happen fast enough!

For now, I’ll continue to reach out and encourage small changes that can help the natural world - and explain it's not really about gardening.

When new neighbors with kids moved in I gave a backyard nature gift basket. Change happens in small ways and this kind of gift helps make connections to nature for this family.

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