Supporting Wildlife Habitat Where we Live is Not a New Idea

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!

The few pages I pulled out in the gardening journal I found from the early 90s indicate habitat gardening and native plants were dancing around the edges of my consciousness back then.

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.

Many of the receipts in the journal were for seeds and exotic ornamentals, but there were also plenty of receipts for native plants.

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.

Every page of my gardening journal shows the ways traditional gardeners appreciate both ecology and wildlife. In this small snapshot of the journal I wrote about protecting toads, ordering a worm compost bin, and referenced my regular compost bin.

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!

I was just learning the common and Latin names of native plants when I made this list. I also didn't know about invasive plants - including Japanese honeysuckle on the "cultivated exotic" list!

I found this fairly recent hummingbird list on my computer - it was made before I phased out growing non-native plants that aren't edible herbs.

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.

It's interesting that the only glaring omission in this flyer about wildlife friendly landscaping that could otherwise be written today is any mention of native plants.

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.

The message about restoring nature in our neighborhoods and towns was really at the core of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring written in 1962 (center page). Noah's Garden and Nature's Best Hope build on this message.

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.

We've also known about the lawn problem for decades. According to the 1994 Rice Architectural School magazine, the source for the still often-quoted statement about homeowners using 10x more pesticides per acre than farmers is from a book from 1993 called Redesigning the American Lawn about how maintaining beautiful lawns are contributing to environmental problems facing the world! The reading list for this article also includes Noah’s Garden and Michael Pollen’s book Second Nature: A Gardener’s Inspiration!

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.

Montomery County Maryland’s Department of Environmental Protection is a model of how local government can support residents in creating sustainable and healthy ecosystems.

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.

I live where there are multiple organizations and many people working hard to raise awareness and educate homeowners about more ecological landscape choices, but overall our local government is not consistent with actively supporting the message and seems to err on the side of supporting the needs of development over ecology. My rewilded yard is still an anomaly.

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.

The advocacy and education corner of my rewilded yard includes a little free nature center with educational material for a healthier local ecosystem, a seasonal box with free native plants, seasonal yard signs, and multiple yard certification signs. I'm not sure I would feel the need to be so extra with my outreach if my yard was normalized.

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