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[00:00:00] Griff Griffith: If you are listening right now, you probably already appreciate the awesomeness that is plants. I mean, besides cyanobacteria and algae, they’re the only living things that can convert sunlight into energy. And no plants means no pollinators, no birds, no mammals, and yes, no people.

[00:00:21] Plants fulfill the godlike role of supporting most life as we know it. Despite their divine efforts, however, most of us only like them for their looks, like their flowers, or beautiful green landscapes, or maybe even for their creature comforts that they provide us, like cool shade or soft comfortable lawn.

[00:00:40] In fact, we focus a lot on creating beautiful landscapes with, beautiful plants. But very often it’s to the detriment of the critical functions that only plants can provide.

[00:00:51] Doug Tallamy: it ties in with the perception that you have that, that plants are decorations. You don’t want anything touch your decoration or it won’t be perfect, but that’s not real life,

[00:01:00] Griff Griffith: Jumpstart Nature is on a mission to support life. Lots of it. Because that’s what keeps our ecosystems robust. Our crops thriving, our wildlife flourishing, and that’s, what’s going to help our descendants thrive too.

[00:01:12] But we’ve somehow inherited a curious tradition that traces back to colonial England, where our lands are valued for their decorative aesthetics rather than their functionality.

[00:01:23] Landscaping your yard was like a way of showing that you colonized the patch of wild that you had dominion over. And this choice we’ve collectively made has far reaching impacts that are hard to fully understand.

[00:01:35] So let’s connect the dots between the history and our relationship with plants and our yards, and together we’ll uncover the yard of the future.

[00:01:44] This is Jumpstart Nature. Just to set the stage, there are over 44 million acres of lawn in the United States.

[00:02:07] That sounds like a big number, but is it?

[00:02:10] Doug Tallamy: That’s an area bigger than the size of New England, and it’s dedicated to a status symbol, which happens to be an ecological dead zone, so we can do better.

[00:02:18] Griff Griffith: That’s more area than used to grow corn. In fact, one estimate concluded lawn occupies more space in the United States than all eight of our largest irrigated crops combined.

[00:02:29] By the way, that voice you heard a moment ago was Dr. Doug Tallamy. Dr. Tallamy is an entomologist and ecologist, co-founder of Homegrown National Park, and is perhaps best known for his research about, and advocacy for, native plants. Maybe Dr. Tallamy’s description of lawns as ecological dead zones sounds a bit extreme.

[00:02:50] So let’s explore this more deeply. Remember a moment ago when I was talking about how critical plants are for supporting life? It’s easy to overlook the magic of photosynthesis, and yes, even lawns partake in this process.

[00:03:02] But how does the energy that plants create transfer to animals?

[00:03:06] Doug Tallamy: It turns out that native plants pass the food onto animals much better than non-native plants. Because the animals they’re passing the food on are adapted to eating them plants, protective tissues, they don’t wanna be eaten. the animals that are getting that energy have to have the adaptations necessary to obtain it.

[00:03:24] Griff Griffith: So let’s unpack this. First, Dr. Tallamy mentioned native plants. Native plants are plants that evolved in and are adapted to a local environment.

[00:03:33] It turns out that most grasses used in our lawns in the United States aren’t even native.

[00:03:39] Even Kentucky bluegrass is European and Asian. It was brought to the United States by European settlers and became popular in Kentucky and thus was given the name Kentucky bluegrass. And non native plants in general do a terrible job at passing the food they create to the native animals.

[00:03:55] To explain this, many of you have heard of the food chain, right? That’s the concept we’re talking about here. You know, grass grows, a cow eats the grass, and then a lion eats the cow. That’s the food chain.

[00:04:06] And actually, a food chain is representative of a poorly functioning system.

[00:04:10] Doug Tallamy: most people talk about food chains. it’s not really what happens in nature.

[00:04:14] Griff Griffith: Rather we want a food web where lots of animals are eating the plants and lots of other animals are eating those animals that ate the plants.

[00:04:22] Doug Tallamy: A spiderweb would be a very good way to, to picture it. But not just one thing. Eats that, plant a number of things, eat it. So picture a number of. little lines emanating from that plant. And then a number of things. Eat those things that ate the plant. And very soon you have a very complicated, web of interactions.

[00:04:38] Griff Griffith: And in most ecosystems, insects are the primary animals that eat plants and convert their energy to forms that other animals can use. At best, our lawns feed a very small number of animals, and those are often the animals that we consider pests.

[00:04:52] Doug Tallamy: when we concentrate the preferred food of a particular insect over tens of thousands of acres, of course that insect’s going to take advantage of that or do the best they can. many of the insect pests that people think about are actually introduce species,

[00:05:08] Griff Griffith: Lawns are monocultures. We call big concentrations of a single type of plant monocultures. Mono meaning one, And culture in this regard refers to the practice of growing something. So a monoculture is a practice of growing a single item. You might be saying, But Griff, we have hibiscus, camellias, tulips, English ivy, and daylilies all in our yard.

[00:05:28] That doesn’t sound like a monoculture. Dr. Tallamy has a name for these plants.

[00:05:32] Gardeners know them as ornamentals. I sometimes think we’ve become desensitized to that word. These are plants sold for their value as ornaments, or as Dr. Tallamy says, decorations. These plants are not native to the United States. Not much here eats them, so they’re not really contributing to the ecosystem.

[00:05:49] Plants and animals are fighting an evolutionary arms race.

[00:05:59] Doug Tallamy: remember, plants don’t wanna be eaten. They’re protecting their tissues. Typically with nasty tasting chemicals, and I’ll use the monarch butterfly as a great example here, although it’s not an exception, most of the insects out there are just like the Monarch.

[00:06:12] They can only eat particular plants. In the case of the Monarch, they can only eat milkweeds. It is adapted to the cardiac glycosides that milkweeds use to protect their tissue. Has behavioral adaptations to getting around the sticky latex sap. That gums up the mouth parts of other insects.

[00:06:28] Griff Griffith: So it turns out that these delicate, highly evolved relationships exist everywhere.

[00:06:33] Doug Tallamy: when you look at the insects that eat plants, 90% of them are what we call specialists, meaning they can only eat particular plants.

[00:06:41] And that’s the problem with specialization. If you take away the plants on which these insects have specialized, you lose the insect. So when we,landscape with plants from other countries. None of our insects have specialized on those plants because they’ve never seen them before. It takes many eons for the insects to adapt to these plants.

[00:07:00] Griff Griffith: So we’ve taken an area the size of New England and we replaced it with plants that don’t support our food webs at all. They only serve as decorations.

[00:07:09] But you still might see some bees or an occasional butterfly on your non native plants.

[00:07:14] But don’t let that fool you that’s not a relationship. No matter where a plant is from, if it relies on pollination, it’s going to attract pollinators to its flowers. So pollinators may do a little window shopping, perhaps even stop for a snack. Think of it like it’s a gas station or a convenience store that offers mostly low quality junk food to adults. And I say adults because it takes thousands of generations of co evolution for insect caterpillars and larva to adapt to being able to eat the leaves of a plant.

[00:07:46] That’s the true mark of a plant contributing to the food web. That is what is meant by a native plant. It’s been here long enough to evolve relationships.

[00:07:56] So why do we have all these lawns and all these ornamental plants in the first place?

[00:08:01] Doug Tallamy: the idea of lawns Used to be a status symbol of the rich. We adopted it from the aristocracy of Europe. In the old days, you could not have lawn if you needed to use that land for agriculture, and most people did. and you needed to maintain it. So you either needed, lots of sheep or lots of slaves, and if you had those things, you were rich.

[00:08:21] anybody with a big lawn, it was a sign of wealth.

[00:08:24] Griff Griffith: Think about the places that have the largest most manicured lawns. What comes to your mind when you see these neatly trimmed, unbroken expanses of green?

[00:08:35] I think of opulent mansions, golf courses, corporate headquarters, and luxury resorts.

[00:08:41] All of these places have money. Yes, it’s largely a status symbol. When I was a kid, it was common to compliment our neighbors for a meticulously manicured lawn with no weeds, or judge them for an unmowed, dying or weedy lawn, and in many communities, this is still the case.

[00:09:00] I’m not bashing lawns 100 percent here. They do have a purpose, especially if you have pets and kids. But surveys show that even then, many people don’t actually use their lawns. And we mismanage them.

[00:09:13] So here’s a fun thought experiment. Imagine trying to explain the concept of a lawn to say Benjamin Franklin. It might sound like this.

[00:09:23] Hello, Ben. Thanks for asking about my lawn. It all started when the house was built. We tore up all the existing wild plants and we flattened the ground out, and then we planted thickly with European grass seed.

[00:09:36] Since that grass doesn’t natively grow here, we have to feed it synthetic fertilizer every few months and water it about once a week, sometimes multiple times. And unfortunately it grows too fast and too long. So we have to cut it with a lawnmower every week..

[00:09:51] At this point, Ben Franklin is probably thinking we’ve gone mad. Wasting our time and money on a never ending task.

[00:09:57] But wait, Ben, there’s more. The grass doesn’t like our climate much, so we have to apply fungicide a couple times each year to keep those fungal infections from killing it.

[00:10:06] We have a few pest insects that like to eat the roots of our grass, too. We accidentally brought those from Europe. Oops. But we just applied some insecticides and, um, we do it a couple times a year and it gets rid of them. Unfortunately, those insecticides kill other organisms, too. You know, bees and stuff.

[00:10:22] Ugh, and we hate weeds, so we apply broadleaf herbicides to kill those too.

[00:10:28] Just wait until Ben learns about how those fertilizers, fungicides, and insecticides end up in our waterways, watersheds, many miles away from where we applied them. And it causes havoc, such as harmful algae blooms, amphibian die offs, and water contamination, dead zones.

[00:10:45] Making it worse. Many consumers don’t even realize they’re applying some of these chemicals because they’re often mixed in with the fertilizers.

[00:10:59] It turns out that our obsession with lawns was amplified by some surprising history.

[00:11:08] Doug Tallamy: so it persists largely at this point through marketing and, the culture is based on neat landscapes, neat open landscapes,

[00:11:17] around 1900, we invented the lawnmower. now we could take care of lawns without having a lot of sheep or a lot of slaves, that made it available to the common man, but it represented. Wealth, in the fifties, marketing took over and if you didn’t have a perfect lawn, you were a communist.

[00:11:36] Griff Griffith: Wait, what? Yes, in this post World War II era, McCarthyism was rampant. It was named for Senator Joseph McCarthy and his extreme efforts to call out and eliminate communists.

[00:11:47] In this era, fear of communism was pervasive, and accusing someone who didn’t conform to your standards as being a communist was commonplace, and it led to many campaigns of false accusations. This is also the era of Levittown, the famous master plan community built by William Levitt.

[00:12:04] Levitt himself said, No man who owns his own home can be a communist. He has too much to do. And he was referring largely to the upkeep of the property. That’s right. Levitt knew that they would be mowing, pruning, raking, spraying, all those things.

[00:12:18] And keep in mind there is a $177 billion US lawn care industry, a $31 billion global lawnmower industry. And even the US fertilizer industry is estimated at $3.3 billion.

[00:12:33] Each of these marketing their quote unquote solutions in a way that keeps us coming back for more. So in a system perpetuated by literally billions of dollars of corporate interest, we’re looking at lawns as a sign of personal and community wealth. And much of this was set in motion with a background threat of being labeled as a societal outcast if you didn’t comply.

[00:12:54] Despite all of this, there is a passionate and energized community emerging, looking to bring the mysteries and discoveries of nature to their own homes, and it often starts with observation and curiosity.

[00:13:06] Leslie Inman: for years, driving down my street and seeing lawns being sprayed and just the use of chemicals. Just after the trucks would leave, I would see birds flying around and they’re, of course, they’re going to be landing on those lawns.

[00:13:23] it just looked wrong and there’s a caution sign on those lawns

[00:13:27] Griff Griffith: This curiosity about the apparent hypocrisy of having a sign telling people to stay off, but seeing birds and squirrels on the lawn led Leslie Inman down a path to learn more.

[00:13:37] Today, she manages a Facebook group called Pollinator Friendly Yards. How many members are in that group?

[00:13:42] Leslie Inman: 184,000, I think.

[00:13:45] Griff Griffith: Don’t let the pollinator friendly part of the name fool you into thinking the group only cares about pollinators.

[00:13:51] Leslie Inman: I reel them in with pollinators and then teach them about, you gotta be thinking about caterpillars and native plants and a lot more

[00:13:59] Griff Griffith: That’s 184, 000 people sharing stories, ideas, and resources to plant native plants, and dispersing that information Far beyond the confines of the group.

[00:14:09] In fact, there are several emerging groups promoting the concept of treating private properties as habitat. Dr. Tallamy has an organization called homegrown national park.

[00:14:20] Doug Tallamy: We had more than 40 million acres of lawn in this country,

[00:14:23] and I remember sitting at my kitchen table and I read that and I said, well, what would happen if we cut that area in half? So if everybody took half the area of lawn they have and planted it, um, how big an area that would that be, would that be 20 million acres worth? And I started to add up the area of all the big national parks in the country.

[00:14:42] and even threw in areas like the Adirondacks, not a national park, but it’s a big area. So Yellowstone, Yosemite, you know, the Smokies, Denali, all these things, you add ’em up. Still less than 20 million acres. So I said, well, gee, we’d have the biggest national park in the country. We could call it Homegrown National Park if everybody cuts their grass in half.

[00:15:01] Griff Griffith: Homegrown National Park encourages people to plant natives and over 34, 000 people have

[00:15:06] registered their native plants on the Homegrown National Park map.

[00:15:10] And the National Wildlife Federation has a long standing program that encourages people to create a certified wildlife friendly habitat in their yards.

[00:15:19] Mary Phillips: Garden for Wildlife, , is really the umbrella term for our whole habitat program at National Wildlife Federation, which includes our signature certified wildlife habitat program. And that was launched in 1973.

[00:15:31] Griff Griffith: Mary Phillips is the head of National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife program, and how many people have certified their spaces as habitats?

[00:15:39] Mary Phillips: We’re at 295,000, so really excited. Hopefully this year, in our 50th year, we will hit 300000.

[00:15:46] Griff Griffith: These are all great numbers. And these groups report an acceleration in growth and engagement in their programs. It’s a movement that’s gaining momentum. In fact, Mary Phillips also reports that some home builders are embracing native plants.

[00:16:00] , some people are concerned that native plants mean a wild looking space and wonder how this would fit in with the expectations of their neighbors and homeowners associations.

[00:16:10] Leslie Inman: I particularly not wanted it to look crazy and wild because I don’t think I’m going to bring people in that way. So especially in the front, it is very calm and tame and easily understood to people who don’t understand native plants. It fits in with the other yards, even though it’s almost 100% native.

[00:16:30] Griff Griffith: So the yard looks intentional, maintained, and aesthetically pleasing.

[00:16:33] Leslie Inman: Yes, but a total habitat at the same time.

[00:16:37] Griff Griffith: But is a certified habitat as simple as just adding native plants to make your yard wildlife friendly? Mary Phillips from the National Wildlife Federation again

[00:16:45] Mary Phillips: So it’s, , providing wildlife with food, water cover and places to raise their young and committing to using sustainable gardening practices.

[00:16:53] and we actually advocate native plants being probably the best source of food for wildlife in their various, , stages of development and specifically try to encourage people to do, if. They’re able in their garden or in their whole yard, 50 to 70% native plants

[00:17:11] Griff Griffith: And what about water?

[00:17:13] Mary Phillips: if you’re within. 500 feet or less, of a natural water source that could be counted, as well as, bird baths or ponds or, bubbling fountains, those kinds of things can.

[00:17:24] Be a water source for the requirement

[00:17:26] Griff Griffith: The last part of the NWF recommendation is to have places that provide cover and shelter to raise young. This means leaving leaves and some brush piles and twigs around. Dr. Tallamy breaks it down like this.

[00:17:39] Doug Tallamy: There are four things that every landscape needs to be doing these days if we’re going to reach a sustainable relationship with the ecosystems that support us. every landscape has to sequester carbon.

[00:17:50] It’s gotta pull carbon outta the atmosphere and store it. Every landscape has to support pollinators. 80% of all plants are pollinated by animals and 90% of all flowering plants. So we need pollinators everywhere, not just in agriculture. Every landscape has to support the food web we talked about earlier. And every landscape has to manage the watershed. lawn wrecks the watershed, particularly with all the things we put on it. they’re very, short root systems.

[00:18:14] So when you get a downpour, it doesn’t absorb much water and most of it runs off as storm water, taking the fertilizer in, the pesticides and the herbicides that we put on our lawns with it

[00:18:23] Griff Griffith: So this points us back to native plants. They sequester carbon. They support pollinators. They support the food web. And with native plants, you won’t need all the pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides, and herbicides that find their way into our water. And once you move away from these monocultures, pest outbreaks should become less and less common.

[00:18:41] Why is that? By supporting a diversity of native plants, you’ll bring balance back to the predator prey relationships. You’ll see more lacewings and ladybugs eating aphids and thrips. You’ll see more birds and bats. You’ll support hoverflies that pollinate plants as adults and eat aphids as larvae.

[00:18:58] You’ll notice dragonflies, praying mantises, and more. If this all sounds overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be.

[00:19:04] Mary Phillips: fortunately there’s a lot of tools out there to make it less complicated, and one of the big things that we encourage is people to just start in a small area of their property. you can even do this on a balcony or a porch

[00:19:15] Griff Griffith: Then you have to pick out the plants that you want.

[00:19:18] Mary Phillips: I would also. Recommend going to public gardens. , public gardens have amazing, habitat and native plant display gardens that really could inspire you and give you some ideas and, get you some focus

[00:19:30] Griff Griffith: Leslie Inman again

[00:19:32] Leslie Inman: there are six, keystone species, which are oak, willow, and, prunus cherry. Those are three tree species and then, goldenrod, Helianthus, sunflower, and, Aster. And if you could just start with those flowering plants or if you have room for those trees, those six keystone species can just help the environment and start your habitat immediately.

[00:19:59] Griff Griffith: Keystone species are really important and the ones Leslie mentions are great to start with. Keep in mind that the specific species may vary upon your location. We have some resources to help with that later. Here’s Dr. Tallamy again.

[00:20:12] Doug Tallamy: remember, the Roman arch, the keystone is the stone in the middle of that arch. And if you take the stone out of the arch, you can just picture the arch collapsing. That’s the stone that maintains that arch. So that’s why I call these plants keystone species. If you take these species out of your local food web, the food web collapses because they are making most of the food.

[00:20:31]

[00:20:31] Doug Tallamy: I like to think of the keystone plants in the ecological house that we’re building as the two by fours that hold that house up. They’re the support system. In the past we’ve been decorating with plants trying to build houses out of wallpaper, and that doesn’t work.

[00:20:43] So we wanna get those structural plants in there, the ones that are gonna support the ecosystem the best. And then we can decorate, with other plants later.

[00:20:51] Griff Griffith: Remember when we were talking about how native plants do the best job at delivering the energy they create to the food web. Well, these Keystone plants do it the very best and it turns out that one type of plant stands out even among the Keystone species.

[00:21:05] Doug Tallamy: oak trees do a number of things, that make them wonderful plants, for your ecosystem. Supporting biodiversity is one of the most important things. first of all, they make acorns, which each acorn is a very rich package of food loaded with fats and proteins,

[00:21:19] and a single oak tree can make a million acorns in its lifetime. So you’ve got a, yeah, a giant food producer there for, particularly for mammals and birds. but they also support those caterpillars. So it turns out that caterpillars are transferring more energy from plants to other animals than any other type of plant eater.

[00:21:35] So any plant that supports a lot of species of caterpillars, is contributing energy to food webs. and again, nothing supports caterpillars as well as oaks

[00:21:44] Griff Griffith: Oaks are incredibly resilient and there are 91 species of oak trees that grow in different sizes, including dwarf varieties and species that simply stay small.

[00:21:53] And Mary Phillips agrees on this concept.

[00:21:55] Mary Phillips: if you have the space to add shrubs and trees, a lot of times people are like, I’m just gonna do a flowering perennial garden, which is great, but to add those shrubs and trees, because they’re the. Big super plants.

[00:22:09] Griff Griffith: There are a few other key points. Be sure to understand the water requirements of your plants and when you buy your plants, make sure they aren’t treated with pesticides.

[00:22:18] Many growers pre treat plants and even seeds with pesticides such as neonicotinoids that can persist for years and even leach into neighboring plants. If your garden center can’t definitively answer that the plants they are selling are pesticide free, , then they probably aren’t.

[00:22:34] Also in the fall, you don’t have to rake up all the leaves. Leave as much as you can in place because many important insects overwinter in leaf litter. When you blow leaves in the pile and put them all in bags, you are sending your moths, fireflies, and other insects away from your yard and probably to their death.

[00:22:51] Leslie suggests,

[00:22:52] Leslie Inman: leaving the leaves in the fall is something so simple, just rake it off your little and put it under your bushes. Birds thrash through those and look for insects and helps the fireflies.

[00:23:03] Griff Griffith: Also,

[00:23:04] Leslie Inman: turning off the lights is huge, you know, so easy. Don’t string your whole backyard with lights. With, I know that’s pretty and you can use it when you have a party, but to leave those on every night. It’s very disruptive ,

[00:23:18] Griff Griffith: In the same way that millions of lawns become destructive, so do millions of lights. Certain wavelengths of light are particularly attractive to insects and disrupt their navigation. These insects can literally get stuck, transfixed, unable to tear away from that light. They flutter around it and around it all night and die of exhaustion.

[00:23:36] In this way, we are harvesting countless insects every summer night Motion sensors or even yellow wavelength lights that are designed to not attract bugs are great alternatives.

[00:23:49] And what if you add a bird feeder to improve your yard habitat? Well, you might be surprised that this isn’t such a straightforward thing. In fact, we decided to devote an entire episode to the subject. Tune in next week.

[00:24:01] In the meantime, we want to make planting native plants easy for you.

[00:24:05] This is perhaps the most convenient thing that you can do to make a difference for nature. And it’s entertaining. Gardening is interesting. Remember, you can also do this at your place of worship, your school, or place of business. Why not build community and start a native garden? A native garden can be a great addition to a food garden since it will support pollinators and predators that can restore balance and help you kick that insecticide habit.

[00:24:30] One of the best places to go to get started is on the National Wildlife Federation’s native plant finder website. You can simply plug in your zip code and it will show you what is native to your very neighborhood. The NWF even sells some of those plants.

[00:24:46] And many of our guests recommend finding native plant sales at arboretums and botanical gardens near you. And most states have native plant societies that often have sales and seed exchanges and can support you in other ways. And once you get native plants or if you already have some don’t forget to celebrate your achievement by logging it on The Homegrown National Park Biodiversity Map at map.homegrownnationalpark.Org

[00:25:11] Be sure to check out the show notes for all of these resources and more at jumpstartnature. com slash podcast.

[00:25:18] And we also have in depth interviews with Dr. Tallamy and Leslie Inman on our sister podcast, Nature’s Archive.

[00:25:25] So go shrink your lawn, add some native plants, and start your journey to help wildlife and our planet. And have you already reduced your lawn and added native plants? Tell us your story. You can email us at podcast at jumpstartnature. com or simply reply to our social media posts about this episode.

[00:25:43] We’re at jumpstart nature on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

[00:25:46] Michael Hawk: Thanks to all of our guests today, including Leslie Inman, Mary Phillips in Dr. Doug Tallamy.

[00:25:51] Jumpstart Nature was created and produced by me Michael Hawk. Michelle Balderston is our associate producer and our host is Griff Griffith.

[00:25:58] Some of the music used in this production has done. So with permission via creative commons licenses. This includes the following songs. Horde of Geese by Alexander Nakarada. Sunny Morning by MusicLFiles, both songs are available from filmmusic.io and full license information is in the show notes at jumpstartnature.com/podcast.

[00:26:18] Thanks for listening.