"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation." ~Jean Arp
"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation." ~Jean Arp
Saving Nature By Learning To Live With It: The Benefits Of Native Plants
July 10, 2013 by Fairfax County Park Authority
Dr. Doug Tallamy is a Professor and Chair of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. He is the author of “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens.” He recently spoke to about five dozen land managers, naturalists and public service employees of Fairfax County. His appearance was funded by the same fund that produces the Park Authority’s Stewardship Brochures.
"If half of American lawns were replaced with native plants, we would create the equivalent of a 20 million acre national park – nine times bigger than Yellowstone, or 100 times bigger than Shenandoah National Park."
The average, everyday homeowner can trigger dramatic reversal of environmental damage without waiting for changes to laws or for leadership from government or business. Dr. Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware believes that and cites the saving of the Atala butterfly as an example.
In a recent address to Fairfax County employees, Tallamy said the Atala butterfly was thought to be extinct in the 1970s. Then landscapers started placing the insect’s food source, a native plant called the coontie, around houses — not to help the butterfly, but because the plant was attractive in home landscapes. The result – a butterfly thought to be extinct found the suburban plants and today appears to be on the rebound.
Tallamy believes homeowners everywhere can have that kind of influence on their environment. To those who have forgotten or who have never known an environment other than modern suburbia, he says, “There are very few places where nature is functioning as it once did.”
Biodiversity is a key term in this discussion. It simply means how many different plants and animals there are at any place. That’s important, because each plant and animal plays a particular role in the outdoors as does each player on a football team. Take away the tight end and the quarterback can’t function because opportunistic defensive players (think of them as invasive plants) come rushing through and mess things up. If you continue to remove offensive players, the offense eventually collapses.
The same is true of a machine. Take out the rivets, and the machine falls apart.
“Biodiversity losses are a clear signal” that humanity’s support structure is failing, Tallamy says. “Plants and animals are the rivets that sustain us.”
His suggestion: Don’t think about the environment globally. Ask, “What is happening in your front yard?”
Lawns, in his view, establish privacy. They were “not developed to share that space with other living things.” He cited numbers to support that assertion — monarch butterfly populations down 90%, bobolink (and some residents may even ask, “What’s a bobolink?” It’s a bird) populations down 97%, and total bird numbers down 50% over recent decades.
Monarch butterflies are rarely seen in some places now. People in their 50s and 60s will remember seeing them commonly last century. What’s happened? Their food source has been removed. Tallamy says they’ll come back if homeowners plant milkweed again.
“We’ve come to see plants as decorations,” adds Tallamy. Turf is one of those plants. Lots with lawns don’t clean water, don’t provide clean air, and don’t support wildlife. Developed spaces are trying to borrow ecosystems services from elsewhere, but there is no “other place” where these ecosystem services are produced. “Our yards support very little biodiversity because they were not designed to do that,” says Tallamy. “We can save nature if we learn to live with nature.”
One solution is to plant native species. That leads to biodiversity. In order for a land area to be productive, there must be large numbers of insects which feed on the plants, and in turn feed the larger animals. Our native insects cannot eat non-native plant species. Yards planted with non-native species support almost no wildlife.
In addition, not all natives are equal. Some groups of plants support many more species of animals than others. For example, native oak trees support over 550 species of butterflies and moths. The larvae of these butterflies and moths, caterpillars, are the primary food used by birds when raising their young. Lose the caterpillars and lose the birds – support the caterpillars and support the birds. By bringing nature back into our landscapes, we reconnect with nature, provide benefits for other organisms and enrich ourselves.
Aren’t small parks and preserves the answer? Tallamy says they’re not big enough. Small populations of plants and animals are subject to local extinction during natural boom-and-bust cycles. “Our natural areas are not large enough to sustain nature,” Tallamy says.
Does a yard have to be 100% native? No. Tallamy says just move in the direction of native plants, and know what the plants in your yard are doing and not doing. Some are “biologically inert.” He says, “Think of them as statues.” He told his audience there are steps “each one of you can do at your own home at your own pace.” And remember to make sure any non-native plants are not invasive plants.
So what do we do? Tallamy offers this:
- Create corridors, natural connections between your yard and the neighbor’s yard
- Reduce lawn size
- Out with invasives, in with native plants
- Use lawn only in walking areas. That’s where turfgrass shines
- Got leaves in the fall? Put them on your flower garden as mulch. Still have leaves? Make your garden bigger.
Tallamy says that if half of American lawns were replaced with native plants we would create the equivalent of a 20 million acre national park – nine times bigger than Yellowstone, or 100 times bigger than Shenandoah National Park.
The environmental movement intensified in the 20th century and continues today with us. It’s our turn to choose our legacy. What you protect today will still be around tomorrow for your children, and those children will form their outlook toward the environment from you. As Tallamy told his listeners, “There is no better way to expose children to nature than to bring nature home to them.”
Written by Dave Ochs, manager, Stewardship Communications
So,
why Native plants only? It
is the only way to help steward our inclusion in a landscape,
creating a sense of place. Simply,
it allows our inclusion in a landscape to be functional without
detriment to every other player in or from that landscape. Humans
need not feel bad about having desires, just bad about perpetuating
ignorance as an acceptable allowance to facilitate those desires.
Humans
are selfish. I am selfish. And as a result, the
consequences of my actions in my habitat are real for the habitat I
am in.
Dr. Seuss said it best in The
Lorax,
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going
to get better. It’s not”.
...I
actually do believe
that, in an ideal world, every residential and managed landscape
would contain some amount of plants for food, vast amounts of native
plants thriving in robust ecosystems all around the buildings (or
even on them), and no other plants. So. There. I’ve said it. That’s
my ideal, and I’m sticking to it.
Are
you now asking, “But how could this ever work? What about my
daffodils? My lilacs, dahlias, iris and sedum? What about my clients’
need for season-long color and pest-free foliage?” In
answer I can only say that, for me, achieving my ideal involves
giving highest priority to the fact that plants have a much more
important purpose than to entertain and serve humans.
Plants support all life on the planet. They are the foundation of complex food webs everywhere, growing in intricate relationships of support and competition with other organisms. Most of the time we don’t comprehend these interactions, even when they’re right in front of us. Do we know which plants are doing what, for whom, and why, and what will happen if they’re not there? Essentially no, we don’t. Do we know that non-native plants are ecologically equivalent to natives? On the contrary, we know that usually they are not. So if we select plants primarily to satisfy our many human-centered goals, we are ignoring plants’ essential role on Earth.
Planning
to Achieve the Ideal
Living
a native-plant ideal, in contrast to the standard gardening approach,
involves taking myself out of the center of the picture. Not out of
the picture entirely, no. Just out of the center.
"The connection between milkweed and monarch has become widely known recently. Many people are now aware that although adult Monarch butterflies can nectar on any number of flowers, their offspring, emerging as caterpillars, must eat the leaves of milkweed and only milkweed to reach the next stage of growth and undergo the miraculous metamorphosis that allows an adult Monarch butterfly to come into existence.
What has all this got to do with us? Quite simply, it gives us an opportunity to be a part of a solution.
The 3-D film, Flight of the Butterflies, released this year, does a beautiful job of explaining the Monarch’s life cycle, its migration path, and the story of how scientists discovered the secrets behind Monarch migration. Towards the end of the film, a third-generation Monarch is heading south and looking desperately for a place to lay her egg. She must find a milkweed plant or the next generation will be born into starvation. As she flies over acres of fields of chemically-treated corn she finds no milkweed to land upon, and begins to sink down to the ground, her life nearly over, her mission incomplete. But suddenly, on the horizon, a sub division of houses appears. At this point, I must admit to a sentimental collapse….could it be? Was there going to be milkweed in one of those backyards? YES! There it was, one of those yards stood out from the sterile boxes of evergreen yews that surrounded it. In that sweet flowery haven, the butterfly landed on a milkweed, and I cried.
That’s reasonable, right? I have spent the past 13 years preaching this message to everyone who will stand still long enough to hear it, not to mention those who were within earshot and simply couldn’t get away: Native plants make a difference. And there I was in the Smithsonian museum, my mission being validated by the best science, the most creative artists, and the most passionate, forward-thinking people there are. I’m practically crying just remembering it!
Getting back to the subject. The butterfly laid her eggs, ensuring the next generation would make it to Mexico and carry the cycle forward. Which also gets us back to the current situation with milkweed. We can make a difference, we must make a difference. There are so many things we either have no power to change, or very little power to change; but if enough people choose native plants in their yards and their community spaces, we can provide enough biodiversity to preserve many things which are currently endangered, including Monarch butterflies."
Written by Suzanne Dingwell. Taken from:
http://nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/help-monarchs-with-the-right-milkweeds/
What has all this got to do with us? Quite simply, it gives us an opportunity to be a part of a solution.
The 3-D film, Flight of the Butterflies, released this year, does a beautiful job of explaining the Monarch’s life cycle, its migration path, and the story of how scientists discovered the secrets behind Monarch migration. Towards the end of the film, a third-generation Monarch is heading south and looking desperately for a place to lay her egg. She must find a milkweed plant or the next generation will be born into starvation. As she flies over acres of fields of chemically-treated corn she finds no milkweed to land upon, and begins to sink down to the ground, her life nearly over, her mission incomplete. But suddenly, on the horizon, a sub division of houses appears. At this point, I must admit to a sentimental collapse….could it be? Was there going to be milkweed in one of those backyards? YES! There it was, one of those yards stood out from the sterile boxes of evergreen yews that surrounded it. In that sweet flowery haven, the butterfly landed on a milkweed, and I cried.
That’s reasonable, right? I have spent the past 13 years preaching this message to everyone who will stand still long enough to hear it, not to mention those who were within earshot and simply couldn’t get away: Native plants make a difference. And there I was in the Smithsonian museum, my mission being validated by the best science, the most creative artists, and the most passionate, forward-thinking people there are. I’m practically crying just remembering it!
Getting back to the subject. The butterfly laid her eggs, ensuring the next generation would make it to Mexico and carry the cycle forward. Which also gets us back to the current situation with milkweed. We can make a difference, we must make a difference. There are so many things we either have no power to change, or very little power to change; but if enough people choose native plants in their yards and their community spaces, we can provide enough biodiversity to preserve many things which are currently endangered, including Monarch butterflies."
Written by Suzanne Dingwell. Taken from:
http://nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/help-monarchs-with-the-right-milkweeds/
"The Hemulen, moaning piteously, thrust his nose into the sand. ‘This has gone too far!’ he said. ‘Why can’t a poor innocent botanist live his life in peace and quiet?’
‘Life is not peaceful,’ said Snufkin, contentedly."
Tove Jansson. Finn Family Moomintroll, 1948
Once upon a time there was a hemulen who worked in a pleasure ground, which doesn't necessarily mean having a lot of fun. The hemulen's job was to punch holes in tickets, so that people wouldn't have fun more than once, and such a job is quite enough to make anyone sad if you have to do it all your life. The hemulen punched and punched, and while punching he used to dream of the things he would do when he got his pension at last. In case someone doesn't know what a pension is, it means that you can do what you like in all the peace you wish for, when you're old enough. At least that was how the hemulen's relatives explained it to him.
"You're lonely and have nothing to do," the other hemulens used to tell him in their friendly way. "So it might cheer you up a bit to lend a hand and be among people." "But I'm never lonely," the hemulen tried to explain. "I can't find the time to be. There's always such a lot of people who want to cheer me up. If you don't mind, I'd like so much to..." "Splendid," the relatives said and slapped his back. "That's the thing. Never lonely, always on the go."
The hemulen punched along, dreaming about a great wonderful silent loneliness, and hoped he would grow old as soon as possible. The whirligigs whirled, the trombones trumpeted, gaffsies and whompers and mymbles shrieked in the roller coaster every night. Edward the Booble won a first prize in china smashing, and all around the sad and dreamy hemulen people danced and whooped, laughed and quarreled, and ate and drank, and by and by the hemulen grew simply afraid of noisy people who were enjoying themselves.
Tove Jansson. The Hemulen Who Loved Silence, 1962.
"You're lonely and have nothing to do," the other hemulens used to tell him in their friendly way. "So it might cheer you up a bit to lend a hand and be among people." "But I'm never lonely," the hemulen tried to explain. "I can't find the time to be. There's always such a lot of people who want to cheer me up. If you don't mind, I'd like so much to..." "Splendid," the relatives said and slapped his back. "That's the thing. Never lonely, always on the go."
The hemulen punched along, dreaming about a great wonderful silent loneliness, and hoped he would grow old as soon as possible. The whirligigs whirled, the trombones trumpeted, gaffsies and whompers and mymbles shrieked in the roller coaster every night. Edward the Booble won a first prize in china smashing, and all around the sad and dreamy hemulen people danced and whooped, laughed and quarreled, and ate and drank, and by and by the hemulen grew simply afraid of noisy people who were enjoying themselves.
Tove Jansson. The Hemulen Who Loved Silence, 1962.
Grundtvig's Church, Denmark; completed 1940
All (amazingly fantastic) images taken by Kim Høltermand and found at: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Grundtvigs-Church/186986
“Early one morning in Moominvalley Snufkin woke up in his tent with the feeling that autumn had come and that it was time to break camp.
Breaking camp in this way always comes with a hop, skip and a jump! All of a sudden everything is different, and if you’re going to move on you’re careful to make use of every single minute, you pull up your tent pegs and douse the fire quickly before anyone can stop you or start asking questions, you start running, pulling on your rucksack as you go, and finally you’re on your way and suddenly quite calm, like a solitary tree with every single leaf completely still.Your camping-site is an empty rectangle of bleached grass. Late in the morning your friends wake and say: he’s gone away, autumn’s coming.”
“The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It’s a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you’ve got in as many supplies as you can. It’s nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won’t find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.
There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.”
“Snufkin padded along calmly, the forest closed around him and it began to rain. The rain fell on his green hat and on his raincoat, which was also green, it pittered and pattered everywhere and the forest wrapped him in a gentle and exquisite loneliness.”
“The very last house stood all by itself under a dark green wall of fir-trees, and here the wild country really began. Snufkin walked faster and faster straight into the forest. Then the door of the last house opened a chink and a very old voice cried, “Where are you off to?”
“I don’t know,” Snufkin replied. The door shut again and Snufkin entered his forest, with a hundred miles of silence ahead of him.”
Tove Jansson. Moominvalley in November, 1970
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