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| Doug Tallamy |
I
had the pleasure last week of hearing one of the clearest and most compelling
voices on the intertwined topic of ecology, landscaping, native plants, and
survival of wildlife (including humans).
Then, this week, I heard a second voice… one of someone who just doesn’t
get it.
The
first voice was that of Doug Tallamy. He
spoke at the Harvard Science Center in Cambridge. His talk was given in the building’s largest
auditorium, which seated 500, and every seat was filled with an additional 75 attendees
standing or seated on the floor. The
talk was sponsored by Grow Native Massachusetts, a group with goals closely
aligned with those of the guest speaker.
The audience gave him a sustained standing ovation at the conclusion of
his talk.
Tallamy
writes and speaks lucidly on the environment and how ‘citizen biologists’ can
effect change for the better. He’s a
professor of etymology at the University of Delaware, though I suspect he
spends more time on the road than in the classroom. A few years back, he wrote what I thought was
the defining book on the importance of native plants to support the native food
chain. Bringing Nature Home was
and is a highly readable and thoroughly researched treatise on why we can’t
just plant what’s ‘pretty’.
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| Soft-skinned worms and caterpillars are the most nutritious foods for baby birds |
For
example. oak trees abound with hundreds of species of native caterpillars
which, in turn, are the preferred food for birds, and just about the only
food for their nestlings. Conversely, the
Bradford pear – a Chinese import despite its anglicized name – supports no
native species of any kind. Yet,
homeowners (and municipalities) continue to plant Bradford pears because they
provide a well-proportioned, uniform tree for streetscapes.
Bringing
Nature Home ought to have brought about a revolution
in America’s thinking about what is planted and where. It made an impact, but climate change and
species extinction require more than just ‘an impact’.
So,
Tallamy had written another book, Nature’s Best Hope, with the telling
subtitle, ‘A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard’. Like its predecessor, it is a page-turner and
rife with practical suggestions along with supporting statistics. Tallamy is no prophet of gloom; rather, he is
a self-described optimist. He offers
concrete solutions; not just horror stories.
In
his new book, Tallamy takes aim at the absence of biological ‘corridors’ in 21st
Century America. Wildlife is
increasingly relegated to isolated pockets, and those pockets are not
sustainable. Species extinction is as
much a product of lack of habitat as of climate change (though the two are
linked).
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| Collectively, America's lawns are the size of New England |
The
solution, he writes, is at our feet: the lawn.
The U.S. has 40 million acres of lawn (an area the size of New England),
and it is growing at 5,000 acres a year.
Lawns are sterile, they use 30% of the available water in the East and
60% in the West. Moreover, in our efforts to maintain perfectly green and
manicured lawns, we pour carcinogens on them, and 40% to 60% of those chemicals
make their way into the surrounding surface or groundwater. Lawns are the ultimate lose-lose proposition.
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| The perfect lawn is an ecology desert |
But,
he said, our love affair with turf is not necessarily unbreakable. Once upon a time, everyone smoked. Today, cigarettes are considered filthy and smoking
is banished to parking lots. Coats of
sealskin and other rare furs were status symbols. Today, they’re shunned. All it takes is for public opinion to
determine a practice is ‘bad’. Vast
lawns are a bad habit that needs to be broken.
Once broken, those biological corridors will thrive.
What
should replace most of those lawns is native plantings that will feed native moths
and other insects that will lay eggs that will produce juicy caterpillars that
will feed native birds… the ultimate virtuous cycle.
Which
brings me to the second part of the story; the voice that just didn't get it.
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| Betty teaching |
My wife, Betty, is a Doug Tallamy acolyte.
She has absorbed his writings.
She has put his tenets into practice at our home. And, she packages what she had learned into
talks for garden clubs and libraries.
One in particular, ‘Healthy Lawns and Alternatives’ is a 45-minute
distillation of Tallamy’s observations, aided and abetted by Betty’s own study
and practice.
She
gave the talk this morning to a garden club, and I had the opportunity to
observe part of it. The conclusion of
her talk is a graphic of an average suburban property; a house, a driveway,
some trees and foundation plantings, and lots and lots of grass. She points out the problems: why maintain a
narrow strip of grass alongside a driveway, or where a side of the house is
near a property line. Why not replace
those areas with native trees, shrubs, ground covers, and perennials? No one plays on front lawns, so why not
reduce the space and add to the plantings?
In the back of the house, how about a permeable patio on which to
entertain, and a vegetable garden? In three slides, a property that was 80%
grass became 20%.
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| The graphic that incensed an attendee double-click for a full-screen view |
As
soon as her talk was finished, a hand shot up.
A woman said such a scheme might be workable for some people, but
would be impossible in her own case. Her
husband believes a vast expanse of lawn is the natural scheme of things. I happen to know this woman and I have seen
her property. Her lawn is measured in
acres, interspersed by an occasional perennial bed.
The
woman said they entertain on the lawn and her husband practices golfing
on the lawn. He would never change his
views, she said, and to achieve marital harmony, the lawn had to stay.
Betty
handled the question (there was no question; just a justification for the
woman’s own gardening practices) admirably.
Betty carefully said everyone had to make their own choices. But they should do so with all the facts in
hand; including the ones that point to acres of lawn as creating an ecological
desert. Perhaps, Betty suggested, she
could work from the margins; gradually shrinking the lawn.
Based
on the balance of the questions, I have a suspicion Betty made headway with
most of the audience. She presented not
just a rationale for change, but a specimen list of native plants that have all
the glory of the sterile ones she wants to replace. She came home to an inbox filled with
additional questions.
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