Chances are, you have never thought of your garden - indeed, of all of the space on your land - as a wildlife preserve that represents the last chance we have for sustaining plants and animals that were once common
throughout the United States. That is exactly the role our suburban landscapes are now playing, and will
play even more critically in the near future. If this is news to you, it's not your fault.
We were taught from childhood that gardens are for beauty; they are a chance to express our artistic talents, to have fun with, and relax in. And, whether we like it or not, the way welandscape our properties is taken by our neighbors as a statement of our wealth and social status.
No one has taught us that we have forced the plants and animals that evolved in North America (our nation's) to depend more and more on human-dominated landscapes for their continued existence. We have always thought that biodiversity was happy somewhere out there - "in nature" - in our local woodlot, or perhaps our national parks, or best of all "in the rain forest." We have heard nothing about the rate at which species are disappearing from our neighborhoods, towns, counties, and states.
We have never been taught how vital biodiversity is for our own well-being.
We Have Taken It All
The population of the United States, now nearing three hundred and six million people, has doubled since most of us were kids, and continues to grow by eight thousand forty-six people per day. This, coupled with our love affair with the car, and our quest to own ever-larger homes, has fueled urbanized development that continues to sprawl over two million additional acres per year (the size of Yellowstone National Park). We have connected all of our developments with four million miles of roads, and their combined paved surface could occupy roughly the area of Pennsylvania.
Somewhere along the way we decided to convert most of our leisure and decorative places, both at work and at home, into huge expanses of lawn. So far we have planted some forty million acres in lawn. Each weekend we mow to a one-inch height an area the size of Missouri or Oklahoma, and congratulate ourselves on a job well done.
To make things worse, the little woodlots and "open spaces" that we have not paved over or manicured are far from pristine. Nearly all are second-growth that has been thoroughly invaded by alien plants like autumn olive, multiflora rose, Oriental bittersweet, and Japanese honeysuckle. So far, over thirty-four hundred species of alien plants have invaded nearly two hundred million acres of the United States.
To nature lovers these are horrifying statistics. I stress them so that we can clearly understand the challenge before us. We have turned fifty-four percent of the lower forty-eight states into cities and suburbs, and forty-one percent more into various forms of agriculture. That's right: We humans have taken ninety-five percent of nature and made it unnatural. Most of the five percent we have left pristine is either too high or too dry to support much of anything.
So what does it matter? Are there consequences to turning so much land into the park-like settings humans enjoy? Absolutely. Both for biodiversity and for us. Our fellow creatures need food and shelter to survive and reproduce, and in too many places we have eliminated both. State natural heritage folks estimate that as many as thirty-three thousand species of plants and animals in this country are "imperiled." Many of those that haven't suffered local extinction are now too rare to perform their ecosystem role effectively. These can be considered functionally extinct.
The song birds that brighten spring mornings have been in decline since the nineteen sixties, having lost forty percent of their numbers. Birds that breed in meadows are in even more trouble. Once-common species such as the northern bobwhite, eastern meadowlark, field sparrow, and grasshopper sparrow have declined eighty-two, seventy-two, sixty-eight, and sixty-five percent, in total numbers, and are completely absent from many areas that used to support healthy populations. Evening grosbeaks have declined ninety percent in fifteen years because we are leveling their boreal forest breeding grounds to make junk mail. For most of us, hearing such numbers triggers a passing sadness, but few people feel personally threatened by the loss of biodiversity.
Why We Need Biodiversity
Here is why every one of us should feel threatened. Here is why it matters. Losses to biodiversity are a clear sign that our own life-support systems are failing. The ecosystems that support us - that determine the carrying capacity of our Earth and our local spaces - are run by biodiversity. It is biodiversity that generates oxygen and clean water, creates topsoil out of rock, buffers extreme weather events like droughts and floods, pollinates our crops, and recycles the mountains of garbage we create every day.
Now, with human-induced climate change threatening the planet, it is biodiversity that could suck that carbon out of the air and sequester it in living plants if given half a chance. It is plants that turn sunlight into all of the food that supports life on Earth, yet we continue to reduce complex forests into lawns the world over.
Humans cannot live as the only species on this planet because it is other species that create the ecosystem services essential to our survival. Every time we force a species to extinction we promote our own demise. Biodiversity is not optional.
Parks Are Not Enough
I am often asked why the habitats we have preserved within our park system are not enough to save most species from extinction. Research has shown that the area required to sustain biodiversity is pretty much the same as the area required to generate it in the first place. Put another way: Species are lost in the same proportion with which a habitat is reduced in size. The consequence of this simple relationship is profound. Since we have taken ninety-five percent of the United States from nature, we can expect to lose ninety-five percent of the species that once lived here, along with the services they have provided us.
The good news is that extinction takes a while, so if we start sharing our landscapes with other living things, we should be able to save much of the biodiversity that still exists.
Start Locally: Redesigning Suburbia
Scientific facts, deduced from thousands of studies about how energy moves through food webs, outline for us what it will take to give our local animals what they need to survive and reproduce on our properties: Native plants, and lots of them.
Here is the general reasoning:
• Plants are the source of all energy that supports life. In other words, all animals get their energy directly from plants, or by eating something that has already eaten a plant.
• Some animals don't eat plants directly. They must rely on other animals, which do eat plants, to transmit the energy.
• The group of animals most responsible for passing energy from plants to the animals that don't eat plants directly, is insects. This is what makes insects such vital components of healthy ecosystems. So many animals depend on insects for food (e.g., spiders, reptiles, amphibians, rodents, bats, and ninety-six percent of all terrestrial birds), that removing insects from an ecosystem spells its doom.
If you think back on our suburban landscaping history, getting rid of insects is exactly what we have tried to do. For over a century we have favored ornamental landscape plants from China and Europe over those that evolved right here. Among the reasons for favoring the imported plants has been the observation that they "are not subject to insect infestation."
Research now tells us that not all plants are created equal. Every plant species protects its leaves with a species-specific mixture of chemicals. With few exceptions, only insect species that have shared a long evolutionary history with a particular plant lineage have developed the physiological adaptations required to digest the chemicals in their host's leaves. Insects have specialized over time to eat only the plants carrying particular chemicals. When we present insects from Pennsylvania with plants that evolved on another continent, chances are those insects will be unable to digest them.
We used to think this was good. Avoid insect infestation by planting suggested species, and/or spray and kill all insects that do show up on our plants.
Now we know that an insect that cannot, for whatever reason, eat part of a leaf, cannot fulfill its role in the food web.
We have planted Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa), a species from China that supports no insect herbivores, instead of our native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) that supports one hundred and seventeen species of moths and butterflies alone. On hundreds of thousands of acres we have planted goldenraintree (Koelreuteria paniculata) from China, a tree that supports one caterpillar species, instead of a variety of our beautiful oaks, and we have lost the chance to grow five hundred and thirty-four species of caterpillars, all of them nutritious bird food. My own research has shown that native ornamentals support twenty-nine times more biodiversity than do alien ornamentals. Further, it's unnerving to learn that eighty-two percent of the woody invasives in our country are escapees of the horticultural industry.
Your Garden Has a Function
In the past we have not designed gardens that play a critical ecological role in the landscape, but we must do so in the future. The importance of our doing this cannot be overstated. We need to quickly replace unnecessary lawn with densely planted woodlots in the East and West, and natural prairies in the Midwest; whatever can serve as habitat for our local biodiversity.
Homeowners can do this by planting the borders of their properties with plants native to their region: In the East, native trees such as white oaks (Quercus alba), black willows (Salix nigra), red maples (Acer rubrum), green ashes (Fraxinus pennsylvanica), black walnuts (Juglans nigra), river birches (Betula nigra) and shagbark hickories (Carya ovata), under-planted with woodies like serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis), arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum), hazelnut (Corylus americanus), and blueberries (Vaccinium spp). Our studies have shown that even modest increases in the native plant cover on suburban properties significantly increases the number and species of breeding birds, including birds of conservation concern.
We have also recently demonstrated that homeowners needn't worry that native insects will defoliate their gardens. A diversity of native plants will support a diversity of native insects that, in turn, support a healthy community of natural enemies that keeps them in check. One bluebird pair brings up to three hundred caterpillars back their nest every day. You will be hard-pressed to find any caterpillars in your yard if you create habitat for breeding birds. In a recent study, homeowners who planted natives exclusively found that only three percent of the leaves on their properties were damaged by insects.
As gardeners and stewards of our land, we have never been so empowered to help save biodiversity from extinction, and the need to do so has never been so great. All we need to do is plant native plants.
Doug Tallamy is Professor and Chair of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware and author of the book “Bringing Nature Home.” This article reprinted from the Wild Ones Journal Vol. 22, No. 2.
This fallen log was found behind NWF’s headquarters building in Virginia. Photo by Avelino Maestas.
I recently learned that dead treesprovide
vital habitat for more than 1,000 species of wildlife nationwide. The
two most common types of dead wood you’ll find in your yard, along a
trail or at a park are snags (upright) and logs (on the ground). Despite
their name, dead trees are crawling with life. From the basking lizards
on top to the beetles underneath, the list of wildlife that depend on
logs feels endless. Here’s a sampling of what you may find if you
explore a log more closely. What have you observed on, under or near a
dead tree?
Atop
Summer is a fantastic time to find lizards, turtles and other
cold-blooded species basking in the sun. This behavior is primarily a
matter of thermoregulation, but may also be a means to regulate Vitamin D.
Ants, snails and other insects are often found crawling along a log,
while chipmunks and squirrels may use it as a place to rest.
Broad-headed skink on top of a log. Photo by Dani Tinker.
Inside
Logs provide great cover
for small mammals like foxes, rabbits, bobcats, skunks and raccoons.
Bobcats are known to nap inside logs, while foxes may use it as a
place to build their den. The inside of a log also provides protection
from some predators. The picture below is of a red-tail hawk attempting
to get a squirrel, who cleverly took refuge inside a log.
Red-tail hawk trying to get a squirrel out of a knot hole in a log, where it had taken refuge. Photo by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Cara Litberg.
Under
A nature walk rarely feels complete without flipping at least one
log. The treasures beneath a log may include beetles, worms, spiders,
salamanders, newts or centipedes. What you find on your flipping
adventure will depend on the time of year, weather, moisture, and a number of other factors,
but it’s all worth it. As you flip, roll the log back toward you, using
it as a barrier and giving critters a chance to get away.
This marbled salamander was found by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Nicholas Kiriazis after flipping a log in Illinois.
Beside
Snakes will often use the space next to a log to rest or look for
food. Since logs are crawling with life (prey to a snake), it’s a good
place to find a meal. They might also curl up against or inside a log to
rest and stay hidden from predators. Egg-laying snake species may deposit their clutches in or under a logs to keep them protected.
Danielle Brigida found this snake next to a log while hiking in West Virginia.
Attached To
Moss, fungi and lichen are a few special organisms that can be found growing on logs. The simple structure of mosses (a type of bryophyte)
allow them to grow where other plants may not be able. Dead wood is a
place where many species of lichen and fungi thrive as well.
Whether you explore logs along your next nature walk. or decide to
keep one in your backyard, logs need some appreciation. They provide
both cover and a place for wildlife to raise their young. It’s also a step toward qualifying your yard as an official Certified Wildlife Habitat.
Understandably, not everyone wants or has space for dead wood in
their yard. You can visit a local nature site and investigate the
wildlife that depend on logs near you. Enter your zip code into Nature Find to get a list of parks and trails nearby.
Between
finishing my undergraduate degree back in 2009 (how has it already been
five years) and moving to Walla Walla, Washington this past June, I was
moving continuously from one temporary housing situation to the next - a
year here, three months there. In those five years I lived in four
different states plus a couple foreign countries. All that time, I was
telling myself that someday, when I had a house with a yard, there were
two things I wanted to plant in it: heirloom vegetables (an idea started
by a mild obsession with the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and
native wildflowers.
Well, now I have a yard. The vegetables
were easy enough; I helped my then-boyfriend (now fiance) pick out
tomato and pepper seeds from the Seed Savers catalog last spring before I
even moved in. The wildflowers, however, are a work in progress, and
I’ve decided to share what I’ve learned so far in my first official post
as a contributor to Living Alongside Wildlife.
Benefits of Native Plants
Plants provide both shelter and food for wildlife in a number of ways, and native plants, the ones
that local animals have adapted to make the most use of, are the best
of all. In addition to fruit, nuts, and seeds for food, birds use plants
for both material and sites for their nests. Flower nectar will attract
and feed pollinators (including hummingbirds as well as insects). And
many butterflies can only lay their eggs on specific plant species -
think of the famous relationship between monarchs and milkweed.
White-Crowned
Sparrows (pictured) passed through our yard during the spring
migration, but I’m hoping that by improving the quality of habitat in
our backyard, we can tempt them to stay and nest. Photo by Ingrid Taylar, via Wikimedia Commons
In addition, since native plants are adapted to local conditions,
they can be very low maintenance, requiring less pesticide, fertilizer,
and water to thrive.
But What Should I Plant?
Not all commercially-available “native” flower species are the same
as their wild counterparts; many are hybridized varieties that have been
specially bred to be prettier or easier to grow. Actual wild-type
plants may be a little harder to find, but not only will you be closer
to recreating a true native landscape
in your yard, they’ll reproduce and spread more readily once you plant
them, since hybrid plants often don’t produce viable seeds.
The bright colors and sweet nectar of native flowers like camas lillies (on right) may tempt more butterflies onto our property.
If you’re not sure what plants are native to your area (remember that
“native to North America” doesn’t necessarily mean native to where you
live) or which ones would do well in your yard, a great starting point
is the regional planting guides produced by Pollinator Partnership,
which include suggested species lists for attracting insects and other
pollinators. Once you’ve picked a couple to start with, Plant Native has directories of native plant nurseries listed by state to help you find places that can sell them to you.
I’m starting small. After a lot of Googling, I found a tiny Oregon
company that was selling bulbs for Camassia quamash, a beautiful blue
lily found here in the Northwest. I planted them at the base of the
dogwood tree in our backyard, and with any luck they’ll flower next
spring. I’ve started bookmarking other plants that would work well to
fill the gaps in our landscaping. Over time, we can attract more insects
and birds and make our suburban yard function just a little bit more
like native habitat - and so can you.
From http://www.livingalongsidewildlife.com/2014/11/creating-wildlife-friendly-yard-with.html
by Nancy Lawson http://www.humanegardener.com/?p=377
We’re taught from an early age to think of blemishes and natural
signs of growing older as flaws in need of removal or destruction. A
still tasty but slightly bruised apple rarely makes it to market, and
when it does, few shoppers buy it. A birthmark that could have been a
thing of beauty is surgically removed. Wrinkles that were years in the
making are lasered and collagened away.
It’s the same way with plants. At the first sign of “damage,” we’re
expected to impose our will over the natural order of things. A leaf
with holes or raggedy edges is a weakness, and, according to the
Landscaping Industrial Complex, will surely lead to our entire garden’s
undoing if we let it.
Caterpillars are especially victimized by this warped pursuit of
false perfection. Often labeled “pests” and “menaces,” these essential
denizens of healthy backyard ecosystems are treated like foreign
invaders in their own land. They’re sprayed, picked off, hosed down and
otherwise attacked for the crime of daring to feed themselves. A popular
product, BT, is organic but nonetheless lethal; marketed as safe and
natural, this bacteria-based treatment is anything but for caterpillars,
whose guts rupture after eating it.
Just as often as we malign these animals, though, we simply don’t
think about them at all. And that’s a problem, too. Most insects,
including many caterpillars, are specialists, meaning they need certain
native plants to survive. But many of the plants traditionally used in
butterfly gardens are nonnative and do nothing at all for butterfly
babies. As I explained in a recent column in All Animalsmagazine,
the confusion runs deep and isn’t helped by poor nomenclature;
gardeners across the country still revere the butterfly bush, despite
its inability to support caterpillars. To make matters worse, the
species, originally from Asia, is now a known invasive, taking over
wildlife habitat in the U.S. and even, ironically, contributing to a demise of butterfly populations in England.
The steep decline of monarch butterflies in recent years has jolted
the public into action and put a spotlight on the necessity of milkweed
for species survival. But I’ve begun to wonder whether enough attention
is being given to the impacts of our war with nature on all the other
butterfly and moth species struggling to survive in ever-shrinking
habitats. Just last year, three species of skipper butterflies in Florida were declared likely extinct, and many more around the country are in peril.
How profound will continued losses be? As entomologist and professor Doug Tallamy has pointed out in his book Bringing Nature Home,
96 percent of North American terrestrial bird species depend on insects
to feed their young. To put in perspective the number of insects that
requires, Tallamy notes that it takes an average of 9,100 caterpillars
to raise one brood.
It’s abundantly clear that nature needs our help now more than
ever—and that’s true not just for iconic species but for all the living
creatures on our planet. Here are five ways to support habitat for
caterpillars—and, by extension, many other animals in your backyard: 1. Host the Host Plants: Plants in every layer of
the garden support caterpillars, from tiny native violets
to towering oak trees. Online resources, including these
helpful lists for Eastern-region gardens and Southeastern gardens, can help you get started. Monarchs
are now the most well-known insect specialists, inspiring a movement to
plant more milkweed. Gardeners should plant several milkweed species
that mature at different times, ensuring food for monarch caterpillars
throughout the season. This butterflyweed, an orange-flowered native,
has reseeded in several places on my property.We
tend to think of butterfly gardens as overflowing with flowers. But our
native trees, bushes and vines are critical to the survival of many
butterfly and moth species. Sassafras trees (the dark leaves shown here)
feed Eastern tiger swallowtail and spicebush caterpillars. Virginia
creeper vine is host to the Pandora sphinx moth caterpillar.Just
across from the sassafras grove that serves as one of my butterfly
nurseries are nectar plants to feed this spicebush swallowtail and other
wild denizens of the garden.2. Leaf Well Enough Alone: When we treat our outdoor
spaces like living room carpets—leaf-blowing and mowing and
fertilizing—we are issuing a death sentence to so many creatures who
live among the leafy, grassy layers. By letting organic matter decay
under trees and in your garden’s in-between spaces, you can provide
shelter for overwintering chrysalises as well as eggs, caterpillars and
pupae of many butterflies. While
placing pots atop a retaining wall this spring, I spotted this little
mourning cloak butterfly in the making wandering through the detritus of
last year’s garden. This caterpillar feeds most often on willows but
also eats American elm, paper birch, poplars, aspens, cottonwoods and
hackberry. The adult butterflies are long-lived, overwintering in loose
bark and tree cavities. Unfortunately, as with so many species, humans
sometimes label them “pests” and spray trees to kill the larvae.Trimming
back some of the tall dead grasses in late spring, I found this
spicebush swallowtail chrysalis that had overwintered deep in the mound.
Needless to say, I put him back and stopped trimming. Even gardens that
look dormant to our eyes are always filled with life.3. Share the Wealth: If you enjoy growing vegetables
and herbs as I sometimes do, your local lepidoptera will likely enjoy
it, too. Don’t be surprised to find a black swallowtail caterpillar on
your dill or a hornworm on your tomatoes. Though many people react in
horror to the presence of hornworms, they are welcome in a balanced
garden, where parasitic wasps often control the population by
laying their eggs in the worms. And those hornworms who manage to escape
that fate grow into stunning moths that help pollinate the garden. Having
a humane backyard often means sharing your bounty with creatures like
this Eastern black swallowtail, who was cruising this summer over an
onion plant on his way to the dill, just one of his preferred species.Gathering
mint one day for a watermelon salad, I didn’t notice I’d also gathered
up a hornworm. I put him back in the garden so we could both enjoy the
fruits of nature’s labor. Some hornworms turn into beautiful hummingbird
moths, so named because they look and fly like tiny hummingbirds.4. Learn Your Species: Like any proper host, you can
help your guests have a pleasant stay if you learn just a little bit
about their needs. That starts with understanding who they are and what
they look like at all stages of their short lives. Of the many sites
I’ve turned to, the Butterflies and Moths of North America is one of the most comprehensive. Even
a humane backyard in a pot can sustain caterpillars and other wildlife.
At least six American lady caterpillars were munching on this licorice
plant on my deck, so I potted up several more host plants and placed
them nearby.The
resulting adults, American lady butterflies, were only too happy to
dine on the nectar of the butterfly gods: orange zinnias.5. Give a Little Respect: Take care to avoid all
chemicals, including organic ones that may be healthier for you but
deadly to our garden friends. Always be on the lookout for what lies
beneath (a monarch caterpillar meandering over to a tree to form a
chrysalis) or who’s hiding above (a swallowtail caterpillar curling up
in a sassafras leaf). Spread the word about these animals, who are not
“creepy,” as a recent well-meaning but poorly worded Washington Post
story labeled them, but beautiful in their own right, quietly making
their way through the world without much notice. But notice we must. And
even more than that, we must take action—before they have nowhere left
to go and all the butterflies, and their babies, are gone. A
red-spotted purple dines on rain-soaked cracks in the driveway. Its
caterpillars eat cherries, poplars, oaks, hawthorns and other trees and
bushes.Also
undemanding and unassuming, the Eastern-tailed blue flies low and likes
flowers close to the ground, thus going largely unnoticed by people.
The caterpillars eat buds, flowers and seeds. They have a fascinating
symbiotic relationship with ants, who protect the larvae in exchange for
the pleasure of eating a honeydew substance emitted by the
caterpillars.
From http://www.perennialmeadows.com/2014/08/perennials-prevent-weeds/
Late Summer Sensations In the Perennial Meadow Garden
Although I have had to neglect my trial gardens on the edge of
Amsterdam this year following a decision to move house and all that
involved, it is surprising just how well they have grown and how little
work it has been to keep them looking good. The
key to successful perennial planting is not only choosing the right
plants but planting enough of them. My borders were planted densely in
the first instance as these gardens are where I trial the plants I write
about and design with, but as the borders mature the planting densities
become even higher. The result is that there is little room left for
weeds to become established. There
are some borders in my garden that have not changed for more than ten
years and every year they seem to become easier to maintain; we are
talking about less work than an hour per year in some cases. Four
years ago I planted up two similar long borders and in the first year
the mulches were essential to keep down the weeds. This year with no
time to spare they have had to fend for themselves and apart from the
occasional towering example of nettle or willow herb that seemed to have
appeared overnight, there has been little else to deal with. Establishing
a balance between the various plants we include in our planting scheme
is never easy and involves a lot of trial and error, but when it works
life becomes a lot easier. That is not to say you have nothing to do.
The new double borders contain a fine umbellifer, Cenolophium denudatum,
which after a slow start has now decided to set seed possibly too
enthusiastically. I need to watch it and this summer decided to remove
all the seedheads before they matured – it was actually beginning to
look untidy so the borders looked better after the half hour I found for
the task. Plants
compete with one another and we as gardeners need to referee. Sometimes
I favour the thugs and allow them to take over, but in other cases some
plants need to be controlled by reducing their spread every year or so –
Inula hookeri is a case in point; I wouldn’t be without it, but it is a strong competitor. The
shrubs I have been adding to my borders in recent years are beginning
to play a role; in some cases too much of one and this is again
something I will eventually teach myself to understand and work with.
Without the weeds, nature becomes something fun and enjoyable to play
with.
Plants sold as "bee friendly" may not be all that bee friendly after all.
By Emily Main
Bees
are in serious trouble. The tiny little pollinators, which save U.S.
farmers billions of dollars in pollination services, are dying off by
the thousands—a travesty that has led many a home gardener to plant
"bee-friendly" plants in his or her yard or garden to provide a refuge
for bees, far away from the toxic agricultural pesticides many
scientists believe could be playing a role in their die-off.
But a new report, titled Gardeners Beware: Bee-Toxic Pesticides Found in "Bee-Friendly" Plants Sold at Garden Centers Nationwide,
from Friends of the Earth US, Pesticide Action Network, and the
Pesticide Research Institute finds that home gardens could be poisoning
bees just as badly as large farms. The groups bought plants marketed as
"bee friendly" at big-box home-improvement stores in the Washington, DC,
San Francisco, and Minneapolis metropolitan areas, and found that seven
out of 13 tested positive for neonicotinoids, pesticides known to be deadly to bees.
The plants purchased for the report included a number of flowers and
vegetables popular among home gardeners who want to attract bees and
pollinators to their gardens: tomato and summer squash starts, herbs,
pumpkins, gaillardia, daisies, zinnias, and asters. Most samples tested
positive for one neonicotinoid but the two gaillardia samples each
tested positive for two types of the pesticide.
"The pilot study confirms that many of the plants sold in nurseries
and garden stores across the U.S. have been pretreated with systemic
neonicotinoid insecticides, making them potentially toxic to
pollinators," said Timothy Brown, PhD, of the Pesticide Research
Institute, in a statement. "Unfortunately, these pesticides don't break
down quickly—they remain in the plants and the soil and can continue to
affect pollinators for months to years after the treatment," Brown said.
Agricultural researchers have been sounding the alarm on
neonicotinoids for years. The pesticides are systemic, meaning they're
absorbed by a plant's roots and then travel into its pollen and nectar,
the bees' food. Even if the pesticides exist in levels low enough to not
kill bees, the new report states, they can still compromise a bee's
immune system, impair its ability to forage, and exacerbate the effects
of any other infections or diseases a bee might contract.
Because these pesticides are commonly used on large agricultural
fields, they've been fingered as one of a complex set of factors that
cause colony collapse disorder, the mysterious phenomenon that has
decimated beehives since 2006. Yet, as this report shows, home gardens
could be just as toxic to bees as massive monocrop fields, given that many home and garden centers treat plants with systemic pesticides to kill insects.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just announced that the
agency has developed new pesticide labels that will sound an alarm on
any neonicotinoid pesticide, whether for use in homes or on large farms.
The labels state that the use of those pesticides is prohibited
anywhere bees are present.
However, it's unlikely those labels will show up on plants. Your best move? Go organic. • Seek out USDA- certified-organic seeds and plant starts. They're prohibited from being treated with pesticides of any sort. And that goes for flowers as well. • Evict pesticides. Even though the EPA's new labels
will help protect bees, why risk killing any in the first place? The
new report lists 55 pesticides sold to consumers that contain
active neonicotinoid pesticides toxic to bees. In saving the bees,
you'll be saving yourself: The inactive ingredients in pesticide
formulations are often more harmful to human health than the active
ingredient.
• Plant WILDflowers.Attract and feed wild bees
by growing lots of flowering plants from spring though fall, especially
native wildflowers, which attract not only bees but also birds and
other wildlife that thrive in your local climate.
• Go au natural. Leave a part of your
landscape uncultivated. Many native bee species are solitary, rather
than social, meaning they don't build hives. Some nest in the ground,
others, in shrubby, weedy areas.
• Call your congressman! A bill currently floating
through Congress, Saving America's Pollinators Act of 2013, would call
for national measures to protect bees, beyond simply labeling
pesticides.Tell your local reps to support the act here.
From http://www.organicgardening.com/living/is-your-yard-killing-bees, you can find the links there.
Nowadays,
the word "native" has taken on a kind of glamour among gardeners. Many a
catalog or garden center makes the adjective a selling point, often
promising lower maintenance and butterflies. But how native are your
native plants? And does it matter?
Many virtues are claimed for
native plants: They can handle the local climate, are drought-tolerant
(at least if they come from the prairie) and require less maintenance
(if you choose the right native plant for your garden's conditions). And
native plants provide food and shelter for native wildlife.
But
if you buy a pot of coneflower, tickseed, little bluestem grass or
smooth hydrangea from a garden center or catalog, it's probably not
exactly the species that grew here centuries ago. It's more likely to be
a cultivar, or cultivated variety, selected for some characteristic
that makes it more attractive or useful and easy to sell to gardeners.
Sometimes
the change comes from the normal variation that occurs in every
generation of plants. In other cultivars, it was deliberately sought by
careful crossbreeding, even between different species. Sometimes
cultivars of native plants are referred to as "nativars."
A
cultivar may have more conspicuous blooms, like Annabelle hydrangea
(Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle'), which has much larger fluffy white
flower clusters than the native smooth hydrangeas. It may be more
compact, like Kim's Knee High coneflower (Echinacea purpurea 'Kim's Knee
High'). It may bloom longer or at a different time than the native
plant, or it may be less susceptible to diseases and insects. It may
have a leaf color or bloom shape not found in nature, like coneflowers
and coreopsis with flowers that are double or downright odd.
In
the form of cultivars, many native plants — or sort-of native plants —
have been welcomed into the mainstream of gardening. But there's a
question: Do they really work like native plants? Do they still serve
the functions of native species, particularly in supporting animals?
For many enthusiasts, that's the most important reason to use them: To provide habitat for a wide variety of other species.
The
manifesto of these gardeners is "Bringing Nature Home: How You Can
Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants" by University of Delaware
entomologist Douglas Tallamy (Timber Press, 360 pages, $19.95; bringingnaturehome.net).
And cultivars worry Tallamy because he fears that altering native
plants to make them more attractive to people may make them less useful
to animals.
If the plant blooms earlier or later in the year than
the original species, will it still be in sync with the life cycles of
the insects that pollinate it? If the leaves are purple instead of the
regular green, has the chemistry changed enough to turn off insects that
use it as a food source?
Hello
Yellow butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa 'Hello Yellow'), with bright
yellow flowers instead of the normal orange, appeals to Peggy Anne
Montgomery, publicist for American Beauty Native Plants, a partnership
with the National Wildlife Federation that markets cultivars as well as
straight species.
"I think it's kind of fun to have another color," she says. "And the insects don't care."
The
problem, though, is that we don't really know whether the insects care
or not. "Nobody has studied this in a scientific way," Tallamy says. The
first attempts to answer the question are just beginning.
Other
advantages claimed for native plant cultivars that matter to gardeners —
drought-tolerance, hardiness, low maintenance — can be tested in the
marketplace. But only careful scientific study can hope to discover
whether cultivar differences matter to birds, insects and
microorganisms.
Such research has started at the University of
Vermont, where doctoral candidate Annie White is studying whether
insects such as native bees that gather pollen and carry it from bloom
to bloom will visit cultivars as often as they visit the straight
species.
In her first year's data with a small number of plants —
hardly enough to settle the question — the results were suggestive: Six
of nine native species attracted more native pollinators than the
cultivars she planted with them. The light purple flowers of the
straight native species New England aster (Symphyotrichum
novae-angliae), for example, got more than a dozen times as many visits
as the popular cultivar Alma Poetschke (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae
'Alma Poetschke'), whose blooms are vivid magenta.
On the other
hand, the bees were equally happy to visit either cultivars or straight
species of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and giant hyssop (Agastache
foeniculum).
White's guess, she says, is that "real ecological
trade-offs" come in when the plant is very different form the straight
species, with a distinctively different color or flower form.
For
most gardeners, the debate over cultivars and natives is almost moot,
because only cultivars are available. True native plants are difficult
to find in garden centers.
Natural Garden Natives, a line of
native plant species from locally collected seed, finds a market largely
through plant groups' spring sales. "There's a two-week window in May
when you can find them," says Trish Beckjord, who specializes in native
plants at the wholesale grower Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles, Ill.
Otherwise, you must persuade your local garden center to order them.
Tallamy
wishes gardeners would take that step. "I would like to see the
homeowner say to the garden center, 'I would like to have the choice of a
real native species,'" he says. "You can still have the cultivar."
Some
say that cultivars have value, even to the cause of native species.
"Cultivars can help the starting gardener or help someone make the
transition to more native plants," Beckjord says.
Perhaps there is
a range of native-ness in which every gardener can find a comfort zone.
Tallamy and co-author Rick Darke have just published an inspirational
book, "The Living Landscape: How to Design for Beauty and Biodiversity
in the Home Garden" (Timber Press, 392 pages, $39.95), to help gardeners
create attractive and accessible habitat gardens.
In smaller or
less casual gardens where big plants won't fit, perhaps lower, tidier
native species might find a place among the foreign-born peonies and day
lilies.
A short coneflower may still feed a goldfinch in a tiny
garden where its tall ancestors would flop. And it may be the first
plant to connect a 21st-century gardener to the prairie past.
Abstract: Trees remove air pollution by the
interception of particulate matter on plant surfaces and the absorption
of gaseous pollutants through the leaf stomata. However, the magnitude
and value of the effects of trees and forests on air quality and human
health across the United States remains unknown. Computer simulations
with local environmental data reveal that trees and forests in the
conterminous United States removed 17.4 million tonnes (t) of air
pollution in 2010 (range: 9.0-23.2 million t), with human health effects
valued at 6.8 billion U.S. dollars (range: $1.5-13.0 billion). This
pollution removal equated to an average air quality improvement of less
than one percent. Most of the pollution removal occurred in rural areas,
while most of the health impacts and values were within urban areas.
Health impacts included the avoidance of more than 850 incidences of
human mortality and 670,000 incidences of acute respiratory symptoms.
Full article PDF available at http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/46102.
It's easier for me to see the effects my landscaping have on the Bay: more gardens + less lawn = better storm water management, less nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment, and landscaping chemicals go into the streams and then the Bay, more oysters and crabs, and less carbon goes into the air from mowing.
But what's the effect of choosing native plants over non-native plants, besides more birds and butterflies? Pest management is a big effect. Native plants support predatory insects, who help keep insect populations in balance--less chance of an outbreak of one species. "My" wrens feed their babies on the caterpillars on the native plants and mosquitos (yea!), making more wrens. Again, helping keep populations in balance.
We humans have a knack for throwing systems out of balance, and we are not good at managing the outcomes. Pest management via native plant ecoscapes means less need for pesticides, all of which have negative impacts from production to use to disposal. And less chemicals running into the Bay. And who is hurt most by polluted water and air? The poor or CEOs? The American yard as an instrument of social justice?
The following article by Mike Ellerbrock covers some water quality issues; what do you think of his last paragraph?
"Ellerbrock is
director of the Center for Economic Education at Virginia Tech, a deacon
for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, and member of EPA’s National
Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Water is essential for life. Clean water enhances human quality of life every day in myriad ways.
For most of us fortunate Americans, losing our
household water supply for even one day is a major hassle. A precious
resource, clean water is no longer an unlimited resource in most regions
of the globe.
Water markets offer hope for efficient,
affordable and equitable distribution. Water’s scarcity calls for
collaborative management and institutional oversight.
In his recent commentary (“EPA runs amok,” June
25), 9th District U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith claims that the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency “is attempting to supersede the power of
state and local governments” to restore water quality in the Chesapeake
Bay.
By EPA setting specific pollution discharge
limits in the bay watershed for nitrogen, phosphorus and sediments from
point and nonpoint sources, Griffith asserts that EPA engages in federal
overreach and “micromanagement” of local jurisdictions’
responsibilities under the Clean Water Act.
With all due respect for Griffith, I am afraid
that his statements muddy the water regarding the bay’s future. An
important distinction lies in the responsibility for setting versus
implementing the standards.
More at http://www.roanoke.com/opinion/ellerbrock-muddying-the-bay-s-waters/article_31068dad-ccf7-50de-ad65-32b51c074bce.html?mode=story
"I didn’t spend spring vacation in Daytona Beach taking drunken selfies with my besties—I stopped buying mulch.
I had an epiphany. Hauling home heavy plastic bags of uniformly chopped
and dyed commercial mulch from a garden center and dumping them around
my garden is a kind of cultural sleepwalking. It’s a failure to engage
with the reality of our natural world.
Think about it: Mother Nature gives us free mulch. It’s called fallen leaves."
More of a great perspective on our trained, knee-jerk attitude toward mulch at http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/July-August-2014/Going-Natural/
What is a watershed? A recent survey of residents in Williamsburg/James
City County indicated that a majority of people do not know the
definition of a watershed. Basically, a watershed is a section of land
that drains to a common location, i.e., a catch basin or drainage basin.
It is all the land surrounding a body of water that-when it
rains-drains to that body of water. Land typically is located above the
level of the water in streams and lakes, so naturally water flows
downhill and collects in those streams and lakes.
See https://www.wm.edu/as/kecklab/watershedmonitoring/watershedprimer/index.php for the rest of the article.
"There is something about natives that fascinates me. I get excited
about what value they offer. The landscaping plants of my parents:
English ivy, Japanese barberry, and dwarf spruce trees and Bradford pear
trees from China can be thought of as statues in a garden. Meaning, as Doug Tallamy
puts it, they offer very little/no benefits to the ecosystem. Not to
air quality, insect life, bird communities, or soil health, and can be
detrimental to other plants as they invade and take over.
But to think of the plants native to the Chesapeake Bay region, you
can see the big, interconnected picture take shape. Plants like milkweed
(Asclepias spp) and white turtlehead (Chelone glabra) are the sole host plants for native butterflies, monarch (Danaus plexippus) and Baltimore checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton), respectively. This means without this plant, those butterflies can’t reproduce! That’s how interconnected they are."
Switchgrass and mountain mint give height and texture to the garden.
Butterfly weed, Joe-Pye weed and yellow coneflower showing shining
brightly on the corner of 6th St and Chesapeake Ave in Annapolis, MD at
the Alliance’s front garden.
May 14 Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake joined
the Planning Department’s Office of Sustainability to officially launch the
Growing Green Initiative at Humanim – The American Brewery Building. The
Growing Green Initiative
(GGi) is a City-led effort to use sustainable, innovative, and cost-effective
practices for
Stabilizing and holding
land for redevelopment; Reusing vacant land to
green neighborhoods; Reducing storm water
runoff; Growing food; and Creating community spaces that
mitigate the negative impacts of vacant properties. See http://www.baltimoresustainability.org/growinggreen for a link to the Green Pattern Book
I recently learned that dead trees provide
vital habitat for more than 1,000 species of wildlife nationwide. The
two most common types of dead wood you’ll find in your yard, along a
trail or at a park are snags (upright) and logs (on the ground). Despite
their name, dead trees are crawling with life. From the basking lizards
on top to the beetles underneath, the list of wildlife that depend on
logs feels endless. Here’s a sampling of what you may find if you
explore a log more closely. What have you observed on, under or near a
dead tree?
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Although I have had to neglect my trial gardens on the edge of
Amsterdam this year following a decision to move house and all that
involved, it is surprising just how well they have grown and how little
work it has been to keep them looking good.
The
key to successful perennial planting is not only choosing the right
plants but planting enough of them. My borders were planted densely in
the first instance as these gardens are where I trial the plants I write
about and design with, but as the borders mature the planting densities
become even higher. The result is that there is little room left for
weeds to become established.
There
are some borders in my garden that have not changed for more than ten
years and every year they seem to become easier to maintain; we are
talking about less work than an hour per year in some cases.
Four
years ago I planted up two similar long borders and in the first year
the mulches were essential to keep down the weeds. This year with no
time to spare they have had to fend for themselves and apart from the
occasional towering example of nettle or willow herb that seemed to have
appeared overnight, there has been little else to deal with.
Establishing
a balance between the various plants we include in our planting scheme
is never easy and involves a lot of trial and error, but when it works
life becomes a lot easier. That is not to say you have nothing to do.
The new double borders contain a fine umbellifer, Cenolophium denudatum,
which after a slow start has now decided to set seed possibly too
enthusiastically. I need to watch it and this summer decided to remove
all the seedheads before they matured – it was actually beginning to
look untidy so the borders looked better after the half hour I found for
the task.
Plants
compete with one another and we as gardeners need to referee. Sometimes
I favour the thugs and allow them to take over, but in other cases some
plants need to be controlled by reducing their spread every year or so –
Inula hookeri is a case in point; I wouldn’t be without it, but it is a strong competitor.
The
shrubs I have been adding to my borders in recent years are beginning
to play a role; in some cases too much of one and this is again
something I will eventually teach myself to understand and work with.
Without the weeds, nature becomes something fun and enjoyable to play
with.
Bees
are in serious trouble. The tiny little pollinators, which save U.S.
farmers billions of dollars in pollination services, are dying off by
the thousands—a travesty that has led many a home gardener to plant
"bee-friendly" plants in his or her yard or garden to provide a refuge
for bees, far away from the toxic agricultural pesticides many
scientists believe could be playing a role in their die-off.
