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When decluttering a closet recently, I found a time capsule in the form of a garden journal I made in the early 90s. The last entry was May 19, 1995, and our daughter came into our life on May 28, 1995. My gardening obsession took a backseat to the gift of raising my children and making a few corporate moves for the next 20 years. Memory can shift facts so the journal is an eye-opening glimpse into what it was like to garden then versus now. The binder I made was carefully organized and detailed and included sections for journaling; garden plans; seed, bulb, and plant lists; garden plans; resource information; ideas; and receipts from every seed, plant, and gardening item I purchased including an expensive 3-tiered grow light propagation cart!
Receipts from local and mail order nurseries show I was buying both native plants and exotic ornamentals. With a few exceptions such as attracting hummingbirds, I wasn’t concerned about the function of native plants and they were just another kind of landscape plant along with edible herbs and flowers (I belonged to an herb society). and vegetables.
My connection to the wildlife in my yard was the same as it is now – I made a note about finding a toad, breaking a clay pot, and turning it upside down to make a toad abode.
There was a list of hummingbird plants categorized as either “cultivated exotics” or “native wildflowers” (with a longer note about growing native Salvia coccinea). We moved within a couple years of making that list and I forgot about it. What’s funny is I went through the same thought process and made the exact same kind of list decades later when I had more time and started gardening again - but the list was a bit more extensive and the categories became “native plants” and “non-native plants”. In my mind the second hummingbird plant list was one of the reasons for my transition to native plants – but apparently, I was combining memories!
Most surprisingly, the journal is evidence that the idea of creating habitat for wildlife was percolating decades ago. In my resource section was a flyer for a landscape company called Wildlife Habitats that did consultation, design, and installation to “create and protect habitat for wildlife”! There was a note with it (probably from May of ’95!) indicating I had an appointment that I obviously never kept. Since then, more native insects, birds, and plants have disappeared because habitat loss, pesticide use, and invasive plants have continued to destroy the natural systems of our world – even though the path forward was already in front of us.
A scathing editorial in the New York Times in 1994 by Michael Pollen about the natural gardening movement gives the best example of the controversy native plants were inciting in the horticultural world at the time. Pollen injects politics into the conversation and scorches Ken Druse, one of the leading advocates at the time of this aesthetic who wrote the coffee table book The Natural Habitat Garden in 1994. Even though he wrote a testimonial on the back of her book, Pollen references Sara Stein who wrote Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyard in 1993 to make a point about the environmental pretentiousness of natural gardening. Stein's book is at top of my referral list because even though it predates Doug Tallamy’s foundational book Bringing Nature Home by 14 years it’s still offers an equally relevant and compelling call to restore nature where we live. Pollen calls natural gardening antihumanist, xenophobic, ties it to Nazi Germany, and indicates it’s more of an ideology than a science. He uses his gift for clever wordplay to end his piece by advocating for multihortoculturalism. It doesn’t appear his position has fundamentally shifted much in the last 30 years. This is unfortunate because using native plants to help the biodiversity crisis needs to be about science, not politics. Nancy Lawson, The Humane Gardener who is a thought leader in coexisting with wildlife has of course already done a deep dive exploring this issue called Depoliticizing the Wildlife Garden.
Back when I made that garden journal and was just starting to connect the habitat dots and native plants were still a niche topic, we were a young couple living in our first home in Bethesda, MD which in Montgomery County. My front yard was non-traditional and had no grass (we had a lawn in the back surrounded by gardens). This was somewhat unheard of even though the facts about the damage lawns do to the environment was known. My neighbors who had sleepy traditional yards delighted in my efforts and cheered us on when we removed the foundation shrubs, added thousands of bulbs throughout the yard, and turned our yard into a cottage style flower and herb garden.
When thinking about time and place it’s ironic for me that Montgomery County, MD is one of the more ecologically forward thinking counties in the country - they have a Pesticide Law that restricts the use of certain pesticides on private lawns, playgrounds, mulched recreation areas, and childcare facilities; a ban on the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers now; a leaf blower ban on the use of handheld, backpack, and walk-behind gas-powered leaf removal equipment starting in July of 2025; host a reduced cost compost bin sale; and they’re investing in a native plant program to identify, preserve, and propagate local ecotype native plants for natural areas abutting parks, in schools, and for sale to the public. I use this county as an example of how our local leaders can do better to help the ecological health of where we live.
I now live where my rewilded yard sticks out from the manicured lawn centered yards maintained mostly by weekly mow and blow crews that blast away just about every day of the year. My neighbors are not all that interested in the why and how of what I’m doing and with a few exceptions are at best a bit bemused my efforts. I can’t help but think how much easier it would be if I still lived where the local government was actively promoting ecological landscapes using native plants instead of letting the ecological health of the city take a back seat to the money they are making from development.
On the other hand, I also wonder if I would be a complacent gardener just enjoying myself puttering in my own little rewilded paradise (because that is the direction I was going!) if I wasn’t living where pesticides are poisoning our neighborhoods, trees aren’t killed because of fear, and the state I live in has codified the use of gas-powered leaf blowers. Without getting religious or philosophical, there’s little value in looking backwards and wondering what might have been. I’m exactly where I need to be and take great satisfaction in profiling the benefits of rewilding and supporting others who are restoring the natural cycles in their yard. I’m just doing what I can to add to the overall shift towards creating wildlife habitat using ecological landscaping approaches. We can’t really wait another 30 years for this to happen.
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