About Humane Gardening - Humane Gardener: Cultivating Compassion

Plants are the solution to everything. That’s the driving concept behind the Humane Gardener website, book, presentations, and probably any conversation you’ll ever have with me (you’ve been warned!). Whether you’re trying to resolve conflicts with wildlife or immersed in efforts to save local fauna, you’ll be more successful if you let plants lead the way.

How It Began: Plants Keep the Peace with Geese

I had this revelation 20 years ago while writing about alternatives to mass goose killings in lakeside communities, a draconian strategy deployed by residents frustrated with geese pooping on their lawns. A number of methods had been laboriously tried, from harassing geese with border collies to oiling their eggs to prevent hatching. The most humane and effective strategy of all also turned out to be the simplest: Plant more plants, specifically native grasses and wildflowers, to deter geese from ponds and lakes.

Geese prefer direct sightlines to water, especially when they’re molting and can’t escape as quickly from predators. Many suburban developments inadvertently put out the welcome mat by maintaining turfgrass along shorelines. Creating vegetative buffers to mitigate conflicts was still a novel idea in 1999. But in the two decades since I first reported on the issue, some progressive waterside communities have embraced the practice.

Evolving Awareness: Plants Brought the Party Back

In the process, these pioneering groups learned that the native plants weren’t just serving as a visual barrier to geese. They also fed bees, butterflies and birds. They provided turtle and frog habitat. They filtered pollutants that otherwise would have flowed into waterways. In short, they played multiple roles in healing the local environment, just as plants do everywhere.

It’s a concept I’ve seen play out repeatedly, including in my own little habitat, where I began growing plants from seed in 2000 with the goal of bringing our two acres of barren turfgrass to life. As the rabbits and deer and moles moved in, so too did the rare butterflies and bees. All were welcome, and none were turned away.

Common or not, each one of these animals is precious here, with a role to play in our mini-ecosystem: As squirrels helped plant more hickory trees, rabbits created habitat for bumblebees who reuse their old nests. Deer pruned dogwoods and sumacs, inviting cavity-nesting bee moms to lay their eggs in the sawed-off tops. We’ve left as many plants as we can for the animals, and in turn the animals contribute in ways we can’t always predict.

Seeds of Possibility: Science and Journalism

I was a journalist before I became a naturalist. I’m not a scientist, and I don’t pretend to be. But science and journalism have a lot in common: critical thinking, a reliance on facts and observation, and a tendency to qualify every statement until something is proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

At their very best, scientists and journalists also share something harder to quantify: a sense of imagination, wonder, and possibility, fortified by a realization that the more you learn about the world, the more you understand how little you really know. But through my work and my personal connections—my husband is a biophysicist, my father is a plant pathologist, and many friends are biologists and ecologists—I’ve watched as increasing specialization limits scientists’ capacity for exploration outside their own fields. And this is where generalists come in: We can make connections and ask questions across disciplines that many specialists simply don’t have time to think about.

In my articles I aim to share that combination of wonder and possibility mixed with carefully researched facts, interviews, and ideas for how you, too, can work with plants to help change the world. The content you’ll find here follows these core principles:

Tenets of Humane Gardening

First, do no harm.

If you’re not sure whether a certain herbicide will harm the life in the soil, why use it? If you’ve read that removing leaves from beds in early spring can wake queen bumblebees up before they’re ready, why do it? If a catbird is nesting in an invasive bush you want to take down, why not wait until the nestlings have fledged? In our quest to create and nurture habitat for wildlife, it’s easy to let long-term goals overshadow the lives of individual animals right in front of us. By acting more mindfully, we can strike a balance, protecting the animals already in our outdoor spaces while gradually making those spaces even more inviting to a broader number and range of species.

Question assumptions, including your own.

Read, attend talks, speak with as many people as you can in your quest to learn about the world around you. Avoid the common trap of believing the prevailing wisdom about plants and animals wholeheartedly and without question. Too many times to count, we’ve seen the prevailing wisdom proven wrong. But once the myths take hold, they can last for decades, even centuries. It’s why we have a nuisance wildlife control industry hellbent on instilling fear of any creature who doesn’t look or act like us, from snakes to raccoons. It’s why we have a landscaping industrial complex unleashing chemically laden havoc across millions of acres each year, bees and butterflies and birds be damned. Don’t believe the hype.

Remember that nature is the world’s best gardener—and teacher.

Let the leaves fall and the seedheads stand. Invite squirrels to plant acorns and birds to drop berries. Have the courage to nurture what you didn’t plant yourself, and learn their names and their personalities. Let the plants and animals teach you how to be a better steward of your land. When I first started creating habitat 20 years ago, I didn’t even know some of the seeds I’d bought were native. It was a caterpillar who taught me—yellow and black and fat, crawling along the ground under a butterflyweed. I wasn’t sure who he was and had to look him up. And I’ve been looking things up every day since.