In our yards, mow is less

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

OSHKOSH — How did tradition, professional consensus and neighborhood peer pressure arrive at the unsustainable conclusion that we should surround our homes with a monoculture of cool season grasses?

Lawn. It covers 92 percent of our suburbs. We keep it alive in this unnatural environment by soaking it with purified water and burning fossils fuels to cut back the growth we have stimulated.

Prof. Doug Tallamy, who chairs the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, suggested a standard for evaluating our yards a bit more thoughtful than making everything the same. How about we choose plants based on how many species of caterpillars they support?

The ubiquitous suburban Ginkgo tree: 3. Top of the list, the mighty oak: 557 different members of the moth and butterfly larval community. Also high on the list are black cherry and viburnum, supporting species like tiger swallowtail butterflies and cecropia moths.

Generally, the stuff that belongs here supports a lot of biota. That showy stuff that caught a boat from Asia, not so much.

With a message like that, it's not coincidental that Tallamy was the keynote speaker at Wild Ones Native Landscapers' recent annual "Toward Harmony with Nature" conference at the Oshkosh Convention Center.

"We got here because we think of plants as ornaments," Tallamy said. "We need to form a new relationship with nature."

As a gardener and advocate of native plants, he suggests the place we form that relationship is in our back yards. Make that just our yards.

"You are allowed to have productive plants in your front yard," Tallamy said.

He’s not opposed to using Asian ornamentals — non-invasive varieties — as featured plants in your home landscape. They are pretty, he acknowledges, more showy than a lot of natives.

But our native insects grew up here with our native plant species. Ninety percent of insects are specialists, he said, relying on specific plants in their larval and adult stages. Perhaps the best example is nearly everyone’s favorite.

“We are witnessing the monarch’s disappearance,” Tallamy said.

Monarch butterflies need to eat milkweed as caterpillars and require a variety of nectar-producing plants as adults.

Pesticides, removal of fencerows, genetically altered crops and formerly protected CRT land being allowed to produce ethanol crops are conspiring against this delicate balance.

Why care about plants and insects that we don’t eat?

Here’s Tallamy’s formula: No plants = no oxygen.

“It’s plants that allow us to eat sunlight,” he said.

Plants turn sunshine into oxygen and carbohydrates, which sustain us and the animals we eat.

And we have already eliminated half of the world’s forests.

So how can our back yards — our yards — contribute to the solution?

Tallamy suggests we break our Kentucky bluegrass addiction and fill our yards with plants that support insect life. Use grass to create walkways from one native plant bed to the next.

“Now we’re living in a living landscape,” he said.

On a larger scale, use utility easements, river ways, mountain ridges, range land and our own yards to connect existing natural areas with natural corridors for wildlife to walk, fly or crawl from place to place.

There’s one more passage we need. That’s a passage from childhood to adulthood that includes exposure to nature.

“We have to get the kids out of the house and looking under rocks,” Tallamy said.

Small things in nature become very important when you pay attention.

In his own yard, Tallamy said he waits to hear the call of the woodcock. When the woodcock arrives in spring, he said, “I know the world is still working.”