For too long the lawn care and pest control industries have normalized meaningless, divisive terms like “overgrown.” We need to take the language back.
If you have a turfgrass lawn on most of your property, your yard is not pristine. It is undergrown.
If you or your lawn service company apply herbicides, insecticides, or synthetic fertilizers, your yard is not immaculate. It is contaminated.
If you regularly mow down whatever strip of land you may have under your purview, you might think you’re keeping up with your human neighbors. But you’re killing your wild neighbors.
Industry portrayals of what constitutes “normalcy” have infected our culture for so many decades that they’ve become the unquestioned default. The perfunctory use of terms like “overgrown,” “messy,” “damage,” “pest,” “nuisance,” “weed,” and “aggressive” is so ubiquitous that I’ve spent the past dozen years dismantling this outdated vernacular in my presentations and conversations with reporters. Our tendency toward binary thinking has long divided the natural world into false dichotomies like “pest” vs. “beneficial,” a construct that immediately sets up any insect not deemed worthy in agricultural settings as suspect at best.
Those same black-and-white divisions make their way into the journalistic lexicon, where they’re often stated as fact, without reflection or exploration. When my sister Janet Crouch’s successful battle to save her vibrant wildlife garden from an overreaching HOA was featured in the New York Times, I was surprised to open my daily Times email digest to this biased synopsis of the piece: “A couple wanting to keep their yard overgrown ended up changing state law.”
That was clearly the word choice of the email writer, who had not seen the Crouches’ garden. Nowhere in the original, thoughtful article by Times reporter Cara Buckley did Janet or her husband, Jeff, say they were nurturing an “overgrown” yard. Buckley herself described the garden as a thriving, beloved sanctuary filled with butterflies and birds. As she noted in her narrative, only a single complaining neighbor had used the negative, vague term in his arguments for smothering the whole community in turfgrass.
As a former newspaper journalist myself, I thought the writer of the Times newsletter, German Lopez, might appreciate a sincere note about the mischaracterization, so I emailed him the following message:
Hi German,
Thank you for your work on The Morning newsletter; I always appreciate seeing the snappy synopsis of the news when I get up each day.
Last week, in a link to the article on Janet and Jeff Crouch by Cara Buckley, “They Fought the Lawn,” you described the Crouches as having decided to “keep their yard overgrown.” I’m writing with the hope that you will consider using different language if you ever need to describe such a story or situation again. The word “overgrown” is perpetuated and recycled repeatedly to try to besmirch any kind of landscape that isn’t mowed turfgrass. It unfairly normalizes turf and makes ecological gardens seem like aberrations when in fact they’re completely natural (not to mention ever growing in popularity).
The word has long been a pet peeve of mine because it is steeped in cultural, manmade biases. And though I have a personal interest in this story (Janet and Jeff are my sister and brother-in-law), natural landscaping is also my profession. My sister’s garden is filled with life and much more sustainable than the surrounding yards. If you’re interested, you can see more photos in these articles: Butterflies: 1, Bullies: 0 and Busting the Property Values Myth.
Thanks for reading, and thanks again for your work!
Though I never received a reply, I hoped that Mr. Lopez would take more care with his language in the future. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be long before another reporter went on negative autopilot when describing wildlife-friendly gardens, this time in White Plains, New York. In an otherwise fine piece titled, “Neighbors Fight Over No Mow May: ‘What in the World Is Happening in This Place?’ ” the Wall Street Journal’s James Hagerty described the bees buzzing in the “mosaic of aster, native roses, blueberries, milkweed and monarda” in LeighAnn Ferrara’s suburban eco-landscape. Not leaving well enough alone, he went on to refer to Ferrara’s garden—shown in photos as a lovely place of winding paths through flower beds and trees—as an “unruly plot.”
If something is “unruly,” there must be a ruler to defy; in this case, the implication was that the gardener ruled supreme, and all of her fellow inhabitants were merely hers to subjugate. As with so many words ingrained in lawn-obsessed culture, “unruly” has frequently been invoked as a way to denigrate and punish women, children, and enslaved and disempowered people; a Dictionary.com definition—“disorderly and disruptive and not amenable to discipline or control”—gives this example: “Kate tried to control her unruly emotions.” Webster’s talks about “unruly children” and “a mane of unruly hair,” while the Cambridge Dictionary mentions “an unruly class of adolescents” and “an unruly mop of black hair.”
Terms most often used to describe crew-cut, pesticide-drenched lawns, on the other hand, have a historically classist connotation that our society associates positively with the clean fingernails of someone who doesn’t making a living by sinking her hands into the soil. Dictionary.com offers this example of the use of “manicured”: “a peaceful neighborhood with tidy, well-kept houses and manicured front lawns”—an implied tranquility that belies the deafening machinery deployed to maintain the standard lawn aesthetic.
Cambridge tells us that “if something, such as a garden, is manicured, it is well cared for …” To which we might respond: What, exactly, is being cared for in this vision of sanitized suburbia? Certainly not the many bees and butterflies who require abundant native flowers and dead wood and leftover stalks and fallen leaves and bare patches of soil for livelihoods. Not the squirrels and chipmunks who need the nuts and roots and branches of trees for their groceries and nurseries. And not the dwindling bird populations who are searching for seeds, berries, insects, nectar and nesting sites that are no longer there.
My yard isn’t overgrown, and neither is yours. In fact, if you’re like most Americans, I’d venture to say that it’s more likely undergrown. There are probably not enough trees, not enough shrubs, not enough wildflowers, not enough seedheads, not enough fallen leaves and logs, and not enough undisturbed soil to absorb rainwater and filter pollutants and provide shade in the summer and wind breaks in the winter, let alone to support your wild neighbors. And there are probably more than enough mowers, blowers, chainsaws, and other power tools in your community to endanger any turtle, frog, squirrel or baby rabbit who just happens to be in the line of mow-at-all-costs rapid-fire destruction committed in the name of pampering a barren expanse of turf.
After New York Times columnist Margaret Roach wrote a piece about my book Wildscape last spring, one commenter chastised me for “placing the well-being of insects, say, above her own enjoyment of playing croquet on her lawn.” He wasn’t just stating the obvious; he was making an arrogant and almost comical assumption about what other people value. For me, choosing to appreciate dragonflies and fireflies over tapping a ball around isn’t a hard choice at all. Croquet, golf, or anything else that involves standing still in scraped land represents to me not only the height of boredom but the absence of everything that makes life beautiful: birdsong, insect song, flowers buzzing with bees and butterflies, trees swaying in the breeze, frogs and rabbits hopping at my feet. I don’t mind if other people enjoy lawn-sport activities—to each his own—but I do mind the massive scale of their encroachment on our fellow animals’ ability to survive and thrive. The all-or-nothing, uncompromising approach that dominates the American worldview is a monoculture all its own, an emotional and intellectual poverty that plays no small part in widespread habitat destruction.
Toward a New Vocabulary
We need a new framework for dissolving extremist labels that burden not only plants and animals but also our ability to truly see and understand them. By preying upon people’s fears and conjuring new ones, the lawn care and pest control industries have shaped how we think and talk. These are just a few of the terms I’d like to see excised from the common parlance of gardening and landscaping:
“Pest/nuisance” (and their reductive counterpart, “beneficial”):
The word “nuisance” is baked into a booming industry of “nuisance wildlife control operators,” most of whom rely on blind acceptance of their characterizations of mammals, snakes, and even many birds as inherent nuisances. This disrespect leads to draconian measures—including drowning, poisoning, and cruel forms of trapping—for “getting rid” of animals who are just trying to live their lives in increasingly human-dominated environments. “Pest” is most commonly invoked by gardeners who perennially seek to divide the world around them into “good” or “bad.” While researching my first book a decade ago, I asked entomologists about the origins of its supposed antithesis: the unfortunate phrase “beneficial insect.” It was simply a marketing term, they conceded, designed to encourage people “to like at least some insects.” Understandable, I suppose, but a laudatory adjective for one group of organisms automatically casts aspersions on all the rest. Under the “pest vs. beneficial” framework, animals are considered “guilty” and worthless until proven otherwise.
“Weed”:
This word is so pervasively misused that the only solution I’ve been able to come up with is to try not to use it all. In the wildlife gardening and landscaping movement, we have enough trouble helping people learn about plants without throwing toxic terms into the mix. As I detailed in The Humane Gardener, I initially assumed that many plants volunteering in my yard—such as common milkweed and jewelweed—needed to be removed, partly because of their unfortunate common names but also because mainstream sources declared them noxious. It wasn’t long before my eyes were opened, and since then I’ve taken care to put special emphasis on maligned plants that nurture wildlife and show up here all on their own: violets, goldenrods, sumacs, black cherries, milkweeds, bonesets, broomsedge, nimblewill, and many more.
“Aggressive”:
What right does our species—with all its bulldozers, tractor mowers, guns, poisons, and traps—have to label anyone, plant or animal, “aggressive” or to describe them as “pursuing one’s aims forcefully” (the Dictionary.com definition of the term)? If the otherwise peaceful, flower-visiting, insect-gathering bald-faced hornet is “aggressive” toward a human, it’s out of necessity; she needs to defend her family when predators get too close to her nest. If the black rat snake is coiled up and jutting her head at a beloved pet dog, that snake is not aggressive; she is scared. If mountain mints or ragworts like where they live and start spreading, we might do better to call them “vigorous”; we should rejoice instead of recoil, expressing gratitude for their help in healing the land.
“Messy/overgrown”:
“Messy” according to whom? And what does it mean to be grown, let alone overgrown? Given the mess we’ve made of the planet, how can we possibly tell the American bumblebee mother, who prefers to nest in toppled grasses left from one season to the next, that her perfect spot for reproduction doesn’t fit our arbitrary aesthetic standards? The guise of neatness is an astounding form of hubris, taking away the fallen leaves where silvery checkerspot caterpillars overwinter and toads emerge in spring and northern flickers forage all year long. “Messy” is not these animals or their habitats. “Messy” is the eroded, muddy, polluted streams in our watersheds, contaminated by the fertilizers and pesticides used to maintain tens of millions of acres of turfgrass across the continent. Messy are the resulting dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Messy are the roadsides filled with invasive plants and trash thrown out of car windows and the drained, dried-up ghosts of wetlands where frogs and salamanders can no longer find places to breed.
“Damage”:
There’s a small but growing acceptance of plant-munching by caterpillars who will turn into butterflies and moths and provide nourishment for birds. But even the native plant movement has been slow to accept the plant-eating, nest-building habits of our closest kin among our wild neighbors: the mammals. Rabbits, groundhogs, and deer are routinely called out as near-criminals for eating native species, even though they, too, have evolved with these plants for millennia. Squirrels, chipmunks, voles, moles, and armadillos are trapped and poisoned for digging holes to forage and nest, yet humans leave much larger scars on the land to build our own houses and plant our own crops. And we too often forget how animal activities collectively nurture the ecosystem by planting seeds, tilling soil, spreading mycorrhizal fungi, controlling plant-eating insects and creating nutrient-rich substrates for more plants to spread. Humans do far more “damage” to the lands around them, and the least we can offer our wild friends in return is a chance to help us repair it.
“Undeveloped/unimproved/vacant lot”:
The 9-acre woodland two lots down from me is an “undeveloped parcel” to the real estate agent trying to sell it. The parklands in my county that lack trails and toilets and ball fields are called “unimproved.” As far as I can tell, these places are fully developed by nature already. And the only improvements needed are those that could be provided by animals like beavers, whose ecosystem engineering would repair the wounds left in the land when people filled in the marshes, cut down trees by the streams, and created erosion problems that send runoff directly into waterways. Likewise, lands advertised as “vacant lots” and squeezed between commercial centers of our communities aren’t vacant at all; they are last refuges of growing, breeding and feeding grounds for milkweed and goldenrod and monarch butterflies and migratory birds who need habitat wherever they can find it.
“Specimen”/”ornamental”:
I grew up hearing words like these every night at the dinner table, where my dad told stories of his workday as the head of the florist and nursery crops lab at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. My aversion to “ornamental” hadn’t registered yet back then, but in my adult life I find it reductive, casting plants as existing for own pleasure and our own use. And its companion, “specimen,” fills me with loneliness—I feel lonely for the tree treated like a single organism instead of a connected being sharing space and nutrients and sun and shade and all the stuff of life with her many neighbors above and below ground. None of us are single bodies, least of all trees; we are collections of countless organisms. In my garden I might admire the branching of a smoke tree or the deep color of a chokeberry, but I know they don’t carry these traits alone—that the parts of a whole aren’t divisible the way our language implies, that they are ever-shaped by the winds and waters and all the other life in their midst.
A dynamic landscape that changes with the seasons isn’t overgrown; it’s simply grown in, striving to reach its full potential. But our cultural mindset toward our wild neighbors is undergrown, stunted into perpetual stagnation. We would do well to retrain our brains, focusing on nurturing our empathy and senses to leave more space for the rest of the living world to grow in peace, instead of being chopped to pieces under the heavy weight of our biases and the sorrow of our collective turning away.
A superb and superlative piece that fully captures my way of thinking in ways that I could never express half so well. Should be required reading for every human being on the planet. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ms. Lawson!
Amen!
Thank you! I’m so happy it resonates for you. <3
You have inspired me to keep soldiering on in the turf lawn wars. Thank you for such an informative and inspirational article.
In CA we called the two kinds of parks passive and active. Passive was more natural, without ballfields, picnic areas, etc. Of course you could say that the passive parks were more alive with critters being active.
Oh, that’s so interesting – yes, another incredibly humancentric choice of adjectives!
Beautiful commentary! Well stated.
And very good for me to hear as I prepare to move to a community of traditional (old) gardening standards. I will need to arm myself with realities, justifications and explanations as I remove the existing invasive/exotic plants from my small space to replace and expand with native plants that will benefit the critters and all nature around me.
Thank you! And I hope you don’t encounter too many hurdles and end up having neighbors who are curious and happy about your changes.
I would add “traditional” gardening to the list of words to reconsider. Whose tradition, and for what purpose? Is other gardening “nouveau”, in contrast? I’m not sure what word to use. I like living with nature as a start.
I loved your article and would like to report that the common area in the middle of our townhome complex now has five native plant beds and a rain garden. There are also a few grassy areas that are watered with an irrigation system during the summer. We got a grant from the County government to begin this effort and the HOA is very supportive. While not as lush as your natural sanctuary, we have something for everybody to enjoy.
Thank you! That’s wonderful! It’s great that you have support from both the county and the HOA.
It is difficult to overcoming the conditioning that we have recieved from the “world”. As a child I attended “Nature Camp” where we had classes about the natural world. My grandmother was the first president of the Charlottesville,Va garden club. She helped to instill in me a love for our natural world. I am not one to “go along to get along”. I am trying to develop a naturalized yard…by working with the native plants that were here & adding others suitable for our area & conditions. It’s difficult to learn which herbaceous plants can withstand heavy leaf cover. Some of the leaves are gathered & shredded…others in the woodland area are left alone. To delineate between the two areas I place fallen limbs to make it look purposeful.
I love the natural look of fallen limbs as special divisions and of support for wild creatures and even of other plant life…but we have neighbors who insist on the removal of every branch, twig, and fallen leaf. And they can be outspoken in their views of what is acceptable. I find myself constantly looking for places to hide the branches I want to leave for beneficial purposes (behind large shrubs and old garden walls), and trying to give a graceful and almost sculptural look to what can’t be hidden.
It can be a distraction from what really matters. Still, every little space that is given over to nature is a worthy achievement!
Why give in to their bullying by hiding? Be open about who you are!
You’re right, of course, JT, and for the most part, I am the neighborhood rogue in terms of landscape. Still, I feel a need to be civil, and I need to live with these people…I am treated to a wild and brilliant array of flowers, leaves, butterflies, bumblebees…from spring through summer, and I relish the look and feel of barren, snowy landscapes in winter. I don’t think it’s too much of a compromise to take care with fallen branches as a way to show respect for the views of another person…yes, even if I disagree with him…a stick is a stick, a neighbor is a human being whose life edges up on my own. I choose to avoid easily avoidable conflict…I prefer peace and friendship – both of which often come with a cost. This cost is quite minimal!
why care what your nosy neighbor thinks? Your yard is your domain. By acquiescing too their opinion you enable them and give them too much power to dictate what is valid and worthy. Line your beds with fallen branches if you want – it’s a common method in parks and nature trails.
I hope they start to see the benefits as well as the artistry of your careful work. We love lining our paths with branches and uses tree trunk pieces (proxies for stumps when our neighbors take down trees and donate the pieces to us) as little markers/statues — you could also put flower pots on top. It’s amazing how the woodpeckers will find the wood no matter where it is.
What we learn about nature as children really sticks with us, doesn’t it? I love your way of nurturing plants that area already there while adding more. That is my favorite thing to do here as well. Over time the plants reveal their stories and let us know where they can thrive best. And yay for fallen limbs!
Brilliant commentary!
The lawn mindset is at plague proportions and a blight on the land (and waters). Yes, many of the same pejorative terms applied to undesired (by some) plants are applied to undesired (by some) animals, and with the same arrogant, speciesist mentality.
Sharing, sharing, sharing this. Thank you!
Thanks, Mary! It really is at plague proportions – well-said. I feel like we’ve been talking about these terms for years, but I wanted to get it all in one spot.
Thank you for this beautiful defense of the natural world. “Everything in it’s place” doesn’t mean sculpted, tamed, trained, and evenly spaced; truly, it means a spread of land in which plants are native, and express their happiness in form, color, and movement, and where wildlife is free to wander, nest, eat, frolic, and multiply in the midst of all that leafy, blooming, spiky, seedy, lavish flora that, for eons, has been their homes (until we humans thought we had found a “better idea).
That said, I want to note how very difficult it can be to achieve that “natural state” of things. It’s not just neighbors and neighborhood councils that get in our way, but the terrible gardening plans left behind by previous residents…the winter creeper, the Callery/Bradford pear trees, the various non-native clovers, thistles, ivies, and honeysuckle that are so vigorous as to run over us if we dare to sit down for even a moment! To anyone who has achieved a truly native space – you are to be thanked and congratulated! To those (like myself) who are in the tangle of what feels like a losing effort – keep up the good fight. This really is a crucial step in restoring our planet to its own state of balance and vitality.
Thank you, Nancy, for your encouragement, your wisdom, and your knowledge, and for your delight in sharing this vision of “wonderfully grown”!!
Thanks so much, Cathy, and I completely understand where you’re coming from. Some days, depending on the time of year and maybe even my mood, I look around and see all the BPs that keep coming up, the autumn olives in the edges, the stiltgrass. But most of the time I look around and see how many other plants there are too and how they are holding the ground and even spreading, and how many animals are using them … and then I remember that it’s a long trajectory to help the land heal and evolve.
Oh my! If all of us could only write with such clarity of mind, perhaps our current situation, of fighting hard for wildlife, would be turned around! Write it! Sing it! Talk it up! Open the eyes of those who see no other way! I am on your side and the side of wildlife. I am in your corner and following the path you are laying out. There is no other way for humans to continue unless we all become cognizant of what’s going on here! March on! I will eagerly follow. Love you and your words and ways. : )
Thank you so much, Susie. <3 These things have rolled around in my head and in bits and pieces of my talks and writing for so many years that I guess I needed to hit the eject button once and for all, haha. 🙂 Thanks for being so supportive!
A well written, timely piece, Nancy as we find ourselves continually influenced or simply told how to think. I read a piece a few days ago about how future generations will look back in disbelief at a culture that poisoned their own food and water with chemicals. I have not used pesticides or herbicides for many years after The Back to Eden method of gardening resonated deeply with me after discovering it. My reward was pretty quick. The alien looking praying mantis, bees, butterflies, and in turn, birds were quick to move in. I feel that each of us must do our part, however small to protect our natural world. While I don’t agree with climate change, which began as global warming and had to be renamed once it was realized that our world is actually in a time of cooling, I do agree that if we don’t do better with our extensive use of “poisons” and continue to kill our soil and the life therein, then our world will fail to sustain us. But then critical thinking is out if style, we must conform to propaganda or else. I suggest a return of common sense and the right to maintain our own hard earned space as we see fit.
You talk about the lack of critical thinking while denouncing the 99% of climate scientists? That’s… sad.
And so it begins. Just as soon as a comment is made that doesn’t align completely with “our way of thinking”, one feels the need to call it “sad”. You may call it whatever you choose, JT. And likewise, so may I.
I hope you keep investigating the topic of climate change, and if you want to avoid the changing terms, simply look into CO2 and methane rises…look into how little atmosphere there is enveloping the planet, and you might come to a realization that the discussion has little to do with beliefs, opinion, or even how the idea is sold. Also carefully monitoring your own area around you might mean you (as I have) start to see substantial change. A beautiful harbour near me was once defined by a beautiful spit of land that I could walk the wild length of…now it is three islands, partially from being overgrown with an invasive plant that eliminated the plant community there before…now the place is three islands.
Numerous plants that were once well behaved garden plants have started seeding and moving out of my garden, pollinator networks are being disrupted meaning pollinators pollinate plants they have no evolutionary relationship with, and the original plants they pollinated now are dropping in numbers from loss of the pollinators and reduced reproduction rates…meaning every other animal they supported has reduced food supplies.
I live in a spot relatively unimpacted by agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, and yet all these major changes are occuring. We tend to want to glom onto single, simple causes for solutions to where we are at…those that are most convenient and less disruptive to our ways of life. So all I ask is that you keep looking…and try looking directly to the scientific literature, and at your local area carefully rather than at news reports and glowing screens full of entertainment…that way you can evaluate for yourself on an on-going basis rather than reject an idea completely. Best, Marian
Marian, thank you for your kind reply. As a 30 year educator and life long learner, I have spent countless hours looking into just this. I have read volumes of material and watched many documentaries. I and many others, including a large number of scientists, ecologists, farmers, and ranchers do actually believe that the “change” we all see in our climate is more of a reaction, a turning on itself reflex, if you will, to the never ending cycles of tillage, pesticides, and herbicides. Extraordinary levels of glyphosate have been detected in everything from fresh fruit to cheerios. Forever chemicals in our public water supply are currently raising red flags around the world. The soil has been called the skin of our planet. Many do not even consider that it is a living, breathing organism. Soil, with all its microbes, fungi, earthworms, etc., must be cared for. With proper management, much carbon can be sequestered by simply caring for the soil. The soil will take care of the plants. The plants will take care of us, whether through organic, nutrient rich foods, or by making our atmosphere healthy as it once was. May I suggest that you research this. Wonderful resources include the documentaries, Kiss the Ground or Symphony of the Soil, among many others. I fully believe that the answers lie in the simplicity of carbon farming and an end to the poisons that have and continue to kill the very thing that feeds us, the soil.
Hallelujah! I am so elated that people are connecting that their individual little 1/5 acre plots of land have a role to play in regenerating healthy ecosystems, sustaining life, capturing carbon, and oh BTW it can and DOES still look good!
Yet, the fact remains that CO2 in our atmosphere has indisputably increased from 270 ppm to 420 ppm in just over 100 years due solely to human burning of fossil fuels. That is, in fact, indisputable.
Thanks so much for reading, Peggy, and for nurturing the life around you. The validation of this type of gardening certainly does come quickly, in the form of returning animals who seem to say, “What took you so long?” 🙂
I think the animals have a right to their space too, so I tend to look at this not as a human property rights issue but as a matter of what we as citizens of the Earth owe to each other and to our fellow inhabitants. As for climate change, we don’t agree on that one, but it doesn’t mean we can’t work together on the many other ills we humans have inflicted on the land.
Regarding mammalian “pests”, part of the problem is that their populations are artificially high because we’ve eliminated so many of their natural predators. In my own garden, I have no problems with rabbits, squirrels, voles, or any other small rodents; we have foxes and hawks that keep their populations in check. But deer are another thing entirely. I like seeing them in my yard but at high population levels they can be quite destructive. I don’t have any solution aside from planting lots of deer “resistant” plants, planting lots of everything in general, and grumbling under my breath when they eat something just as it’s about to bloom.
I keep hearing from persons in my area that “deer are eating my hostas!” Hm, so why do you keep planting them and do you know that “trimming back” can just make them more bushy and full? If you raise your arm and tell the doctor that it hurts when you do that, why would you continue to raise your arm?
I understand the frustration, in that those of us who do garden and plant a lot are naturally the ones who see deer the most in our neighborhoods — for the very reason that we have so much for them to eat. I’ve developed some planting strategies (in addition to caging some of the young plants) that work pretty well here, but it certainly takes time and patience and an acceptance that there are some things I won’t be able to grow. It’s something I’ve written about before but plan to do some updates on, in case it is helpful to others. Ultimately I’d like to be able to have enough to support all the creatures who visit, and I guess I’ve gotten pretty far along, but it would help if I could buy up the turfgrass-covered properties all around me and start growing there too. 🙂
How ironic that those if us with undergrown lawns seek out (and sonetimes pay big bucks to travel to) gardens and preserves where we can wind our way through acres of wild (or made to look that way) nature that we can have that in our very own yards.
That’s such a good point, Arna. I don’t think a lot of people even realize what’s possible.
Thank you Nancy, for this thought-provoking piece.
When I drive by a school that looks like a prison, surrounded by a barb-wire chain link fence, and metal bars, some concrete paved walks or ball courts, and turf grass only, all to avoid liability, I suppose, but also depriving kids of any “environmental enrichment”, I think of bored zoo animals in the cages we used to keep them in, and do not wonder why our North American culture is so deprived of any sort of aesthetic values that relate to nature. Simply comparing different kinds of leaves, gathered from a natural place, and admiring all the ways nature solves living in different habitats is lost. Seeing architecture in ferns is lost. Valuing colour and all its nuances is lost. Seeing possible solutions in any problem other than what one is told to be the right answer within the cage is lost.
Also lost is our awareness that nature is not a Disney film, that some of it can be lethal, but not if respected and understood. Lost then is the ability of a child to evaluate risk and so everything outside that fence becomes risky and unknown, and the child has lost that time to learn to confront adversity or even accept that as part of human reality.
Yes, our language needs a LOT of work, as you have so eloquently pointed out, but so does our aesthetic, and a change in the attitude that we must crush, kill, destroy, and dominate every habitat (if it is green cut it down, if it moves shoot it). Little things like carpenter ants need dead wood, for pileated woodpeckers to survive, and if there is none in your neighborhood, they will go for what is left…your house, where it is unmaintained, and that is the only place they have.
This simplificaiton of habitat to lawns and sidewalks with golf courses and astr0-turf playing fields is species-cidal and suicidal because it makes us lock-stepping morons of us all, missing some of the most important nuances and lessons in life. It also makes us frustrated and bored, more likely to act out with agression.
I as a plant lover, I never understood why anyone could be bored…I can always find a plant, even if it is a tiny moss, and because I find them beautiful, so adapted to surival, and colorful, I don’t need to try to satisfy myself by buying something at a mall or need the latest electronics to be happy. It was a chickadee that taught me that the best things in life are not things…but the living. I begin to feel like the monarch, crowded out of my own world as I see the world descend to a sanitized idea of suburbia and nights without darkness…and the ability to see the universe and be humbled by how much lifelessness there already is out there….
Beautifully said, and I can so relate. Thank you. You are not alone in the barren expanse. <3 Thank you for appreciating and bringing life back to your own corner of it. And thank you to the chickadee!
Great piece! I have long despised the so-called “lawn care” industry for perpetuating the paradigm that every outdoor space must be clean and tidy (or, in my view, yet another environmental dead zone). Our town recently banned gas powered leaf blowers, but it took years of fighting and there are still a few arrogant rogue operators who refuse to comply. It takes a long time and dogged persistence to change the “lawn” mindset. I will be battling this selfish ignorance until the day I die. I recently ripped out my front lawn and am slowly filling the space with natives. I can’t tell you how many people stop and thank me.
That’s so wonderful! Wonderful that your neighbors have taken positive notice, and wonderful that your town has banned gas-powered leaf blowers. We need to do that here, and I would welcome any advice. Sorry about the rogue operators. I’ve read that in DC they have a very effective enforcement system with hefty fines; it seems that’s probably key.
Love this piece! Thanks for articulating the challenges of conventional landscape terms that are totally out of date in this time. We definitely need to expand our landscape diversity, not reduce and “maintain” it.
Thank you! And yes, well-put — we need to be adding more than ever now, not subtracting.
Bravo, Nancy!!! Thanks for putting into words what I have felt for a very long time!!
<3 So glad it resonated with you!
Bravo Nancy on your Masterpiece article! Nobody could have said it better! Thank you thank you thank you for ALL you do in speaking up for wildlife! We appreciate you so very very much!
Aw, thank you so much!! <3 I appreciate you too! I'm happy it is helping people in their efforts.
I wish that this could be shared on facebook.
It can! 🙂 It’s being shared in a lot of places on FB right now. You just need to copy the link of the article and paste it into a post. You can also go to my Humane Gardener Facebook page – there you’ll see where I shared it, and you can reshare. 🙂
Standing ovation to you, Nancy! I’ve tried touching on some of these subjects before in my own writings but never to this extent. It’s also something I would love my local park’s group to read because I can’t seem to get through to them they don’t need to annihilate everything in the park to have a park.
Thank you so much, Misti! <3 I've done this here and there too, but I guess not all in one spot. Part of it was sitting here for so long and I just had to finish it and get it out. You probably know exactly how that is! That's too bad about your parks, ugh!
I will share this article with my garden club. Thank you for giving us the vocabulary to help explain why we grow native plants.
Nancy,
You have once again hit it out of the (rewilded) park. Thank you for your beautiful and wise words that I will share widely with family and friends. Your continued advocacy inspires me everyday to continue with mine, knowing that eventually, with continued persistence, the tide of our global destruction will slowly turn to restoration. Keep up your amazing work.
Liz Crafford, DC Master Naturalist, Rock Creek Weed Warrior
Thank you for calling them Tulip Trees. I’m sure that you know they are members of the Magnoliaceae and not the Salicaceae. I won’t even mention the perjurative name they often go by because I refuse to perpetuate such misinformation. It needs to die.
I won’t repeat what the other readers have stated so well in response to your excellent article, Nancy. Instead, just a few words to express gratitude and best wishes to you in this year ahead. I hope you know your worth and that that knowledge continues to keep the fire burning within you as you use all of your skills to fight the good fight. You are a shining star, lighting and inspiring the way for more and more people all the time! And all the “other” creatures benefit, as they sing, chirp, croak, buzz, and even silently blink their appreciation while finding resources that very possibly would not have been made available, except that “somebody” read your words and cared enough to act on them. Thank you.
Beautifully said!
I consider myself to be fairly careful of the terminology you went into detail here, but as I read, I had “ah ha” moments. Thank you for this piece, I’ll be sure to share and reread in the future so I may “get it right” when I advocate gardening for wildlife. I’d like you to consider a piece on how insane it is to plant for Monarchs and then buy avocados grown in Mexico. Those cheaper avocados come at a great cost to Monarch butterflies, just google Homero Gomez Gonzalez.
Yes! We stopped buying avos unless they’re from CA or Peru. Do you know if organic Mexican avos are also grown in destroyed monarch habitat? I’ll look up this man.
Thanks for sharing the problem of growing milkweed while buying most avos.
More people need to know this in order to make better choices for Monarchs and NOT be a part of the problem!
Thanks, Karen! I meant to write you back earlier about the avocado issue. It would be an important article for sure. I had actually woken up that morning that you made your comment thinking about the avocado issue as well as the destruction of public lands in the U.S. for private grazing. The effects on wildlife habitat are enormous. I’m grateful to the Center for Biological Diversity for taking up the fight to stop this, but they’re up against a huge industry. And I’ve heard people argue that buying organic isn’t any healthier for humans; whether that’s true or not, they are not even thinking about the effects of pesticides on the many other species out there whose lands are being soaked in them. I understand when it is too expensive for some people, but for those who can afford it, it’s so important to make the better choice for wildlife and the environment.
Yes! Buying organic is so important for the environment, not just produce, and isn’t necessarily more expensive. Discount stores like Grocery Outlet often have organic products. Local farmers markets, CSAs, co-ops…we save so much being vegan that even buying organic everything doesn’t mean large grocery bills. Meat and dairy are environmental disasters and expensive to boot. I wish I could find information on whether organic avocados are environmentally better.
With respect to the avocado question, this piece by alexander sammon is an eye=opener.
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/11/forbidden-fruit-avocado-militias-michoacan-mexico/
Sammon does not specifically mention the monarch over-wintering forests, but he does describe the havoc the avocado cartels forcibly taking over the industry produce, eco- and environmentally.
This was a heartbreaking read.
Our individual consumer choices have enormous consequences, so we need to be informed in order to act responsibly. People may have read other info about avocados. The article in the link in Abigail’s message above “tells it all”. Actually, shocking. Really makes clear how naive/oblivious most of us must be when we put items in our shopping carts. Thank you for sharing that, Abigail. I’ve forwarded the link to many friends and personally will not be buying avocados or related products.
We moved into our retirement home 20 years ago, with the thought of keeping 1/3 of the yard in natural habitat, but it sure doesn’t look like the pictures of trails and beautiful green plants that you show. We have row of pine trees, dead limbs and pine cones on the grown and the vegetation consist of dandelions, rag weed and other short weeds and grasses. What would you suggest we do to start making it look better. We did plant a few red bud trees under the pines. Also planted some dog woods but they didn’t survive due to calcium water and camellias; they don’t look healthy either.
Hi Evelyn, some native plants in the ground layer, planted in masses, would provide habitat and also help pull everything together. Do you live in the East? If so, many of the plants in my handout that accompanies the article “How to Fight Plants with Plants” — https://www.humanegardener.com/how-to-fight-plants-with-plants/ — would be native to your area. You can find out for sure by checking Bonap.org or your local native plant society.
Native plants can take longer to become “showy”, but to not give up! Please leave hollow stems standing in the very early spring and remove plants that are not native to your area. There are many helpful book, videos, and groups to join. You will be welcome as we, who are in this venture, know that one cannot do this alone. We welcome you and encourage you to read, watch and learn about native plants for your area. My best to you! Don’t give up! : )