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New York Times
09-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Four Ecologically Crucial Things You Should Do in Your Garden
Each time I'm asked a question about some aspect of ecological horticulture, I hear another question triggered in my head: What would Doug do? My answer-formulating thought process starts by pondering that. 'Doug' is Douglas W. Tallamy, the entomologist and University of Delaware professor who is co-founder of Homegrown National Park, an educational nonprofit. Perhaps no other contemporary figure has done more to introduce gardeners to the intimate connections between plants and animals imperiled by the biodiversity crisis, and propose actions we can take. Dr. Tallamy's core exhortation, starting with 'Bringing Nature Home,' his 2007 breakthrough book: Add native plants, and remove invasive ones. He has also probably answered more ecology and native plant questions than anyone else, and his latest book, 'How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard,' tackles 499 of them. Dr. Tallamy distills essential takeaways in topics as big as evolution and food webs, alongside targeted, can-do answers, such as reducing hazard to beneficial insects from our human obsession with artificial light at night by switching to yellow lightbulbs and motion detectors, please. Or what would Doug do about the peril of mosquito-fogging treatments? Skip them. Even fog solutions formulated from natural materials such as pyrethrin aren't mosquito-specific, he explains, indiscriminately killing monarchs and other butterflies, pollinators, fireflies and more. I recently asked him some other frequent questions; our conversation was edited for length and clarity. Making room for natives is foundational to ecological horticulture. People with established gardens of nonnative ornamentals ask, 'How much of it do I have to give back? How many hostas can I keep?' There's really only one study, and that's what my grad student Desirée L. Narango did, looking at the percentage of native versus nonnative woody plants needed to support a population of chickadees. The figure she came up with was 70 percent native, which means 30 percent nonnative. That is that area of compromise. Now, you can't compromise with invasives. They are ecological tumors, so even one is not good. But there's plenty of ornamentals that are not invasive. But that's one study, with one bird and one place. We should not over-extrapolate that. What I think about is what the ecological responsibilities of every landscape are. There are four of them: Every landscape needs to manage the watershed in which it lies. Every landscape needs to support pollinators. Every landscape needs to support a viable food web. And every landscape needs to sequester carbon. So you've got your ornamental landscape already established; it's already doing some of those things. Which ones can you do better each year? Just pick at it. Maybe I can add an oak tree. Maybe I can add a little patch of goldenrod that's not there now. You don't have to think about redesigning the entire landscape. Just say, 'Can I improve on any one of those four goals incrementally over time?' And that way you can feel good about doing it and it gets done, but it's not overwhelming. Lawn furthers none of these goals, does it? Lawn doesn't do any of them, and that's the issue. It's not just neutral; if you have a good lawn the way you're supposed to, it destroys the watershed, or at least it degrades it. It's not supporting any pollinators. It's not supporting a food web. And it's the worst plant choice for sequestering carbon. We can do better. But it has important ornamental value in terms of a cue for care: It shows your neighbors that you know what the status symbol is — that you're going to do it, too, but you're just going to have a lot less lawn. You'll keep your lawn manicured and you have swaths of grass. It's going to be a mechanism for moving around your property. It's a great way to avoid brushing up against vegetation during tick season. So it does have important benefits, but three or four acres of it? Nah. I mean, we can do better than that. You mentioned invasives. Gardeners point to a plant they grow and say, 'I've never seen it self-sow, so I don't think it's invasive here.' But that's probably not the litmus test, is it? When I first started giving these talks some 20 years ago, people frequently talked about how English ivy was not invasive in the East — a problem in Oregon, but not a problem here. So now it is. It's tough. There are places in the country where certain plants will never be invasive. It's too dry, or it's too something. So it's not like that never occurs. But if it has invasive tendencies, it typically means something's moving it around — either the wind, or it's often birds taking berries and pooping them out someplace else. Burning bush, for example: One bush makes like 30,000 seeds. A mockingbird eats a few of them, flies off. You don't see that reproduction in your garden, but it's in the woods two acres away. Migrating birds in the fall, particularly, can fly 300 miles in one night. And they're pooping on the way. There are so many good plants we can use that are not harmful. Why do we insist on using the ones that have already proven to be harmful, at least someplace? As gardeners get planting this spring, I know you want them to incorporate keystone plants — a term you have popularized, and one of your big principles. The term is from Robert Payne's ecological literature in the '60s, and he realized that particular species are playing outsized roles in their ecosystem. He worked with starfish or sea urchins and tidal pools. But then we looked around and said, 'Well, a lot of species have keystone roles.' Like beavers. You take the beaver away, the whole pond disappears, and everything that depends on it. Elephants are keystone players on the Serengeti. But it hadn't been applied to plants before. And we realized, looking at host-plant records, that just 14 percent of our native plants are supporting 90 percent of the caterpillars that are the bread and butter of terrestrial food webs. That 14 percent is really important. So we can talk about native and nonnative, and that's what we were talking about before we knew this. But I could make a 100 percent native landscape that supports very little. And if the goal is restoring ecosystem function and food-web integrity, you've got to have the plants that do that. So it's nice that we figured this out, but it does make it a little bit more complicated, because now you have to choose the most effective plants. There are keystone plants for making caterpillars. There are keystone plants for supporting pollinators. And ideally we want both of those. But the first question you asked me is, how does somebody who's got an established garden improve it without tearing the whole thing apart? Look at the plant choices you have, and add some keystone plants, like the ones in Homegrown National Park's regional guides. That is the way to boost the productivity of your garden tremendously without removing anything. Out of all the things that my lab has done over my entire career, I think the most important, most far-ranging thing is ranking plants in every U.S. county in terms of their ability to support the food web. We've just finished a list for the entire world, so now we've got to get it out there somehow. Because I hear about these reforestation efforts, I hear about the trillion-tree effort, and it's all based on climate change. But a trillion eucalyptus is what? A lost opportunity. Yes, it'll sequester carbon, but it could support biodiversity at the same time. What plants are the best wherever you are? That's the information we want to provide. Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and podcast A Way to Garden, and a book of the same name.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Every yard makes a difference. Native-plant champion Doug Tallamy's got a new book explaining how
If you're a human living on this planet, you should get to know Doug Tallamy, the entomologist and University of Delaware professor whose groundbreaking 2006 book, 'Bringing Nature Home,' supercharged the native plants movement. Tallamy made a case that our native birds and insects evolved with native plants, so they recognize them as food. The loss of these native plants and habitats to development poses an existential threat not just to wildlife, but to us. Since then, Tallamy co-founded Homegrown National Park, a grassroots movement whose mission is to 'urgently inspire everyone to address the biodiversity crisis by adding native plants and removing invasive ones where we live, work, learn, pray, and play.' Tallamy chatted with The Associated Press about his decades-long research, his new book, 'How Can I Help?' and what he's planning next. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. AP: What initially inspired you to focus on native plants and their relationships with insects? TALLAMY: I am an entomologist, so I always think about insects, but it was when my wife, Cindy, and I moved into our home in Oxford, Pennsylvania. The developer had mowed the land for hay, and when you do that, what comes back is all the invasive plants from Asia, so we ended up with 10 acres of invasive species. Watching the insects interact with those plants showed very clearly that our native insects do very poorly with them. So we put the plants that they require back. Ever since, I've been measuring the number of bird species that have bred on our property — 62 — and the number of moth species — 1,337 — that produce the caterpillars that those birds need to reproduce. And that tells me it works. About 80% of the plants in our residential landscapes are non-native plants. They don't have to be invasive to wreck the food web. So that led me in a whole new research direction to find out what is happening to the food web. We got the numbers that supported the argument that native plants are essential, insects are essential, insects are declining, the birds that need them are declining. AP: How has public awareness of native plants and biodiversity evolved since you wrote 'Bringing Nature Home'? TALLAMY: I have been talking about it for 20 years and can measure the public response. I get three or four speaking requests a day. Interest is going through the roof. My message is that you can be part of the solution instead of contributing to the problem just by how you landscape your property. You can reduce the area that you have in lawn, you can put in powerful plants that support biodiversity and you can watch it come back to your own yard. And that empowers people. AP: What are the biggest misconceptions that people have about insect conservation and native plants? TALLAMY: A common one is that native landscaping is essentially the lack of landscaping and you just stop doing anything. That's not true at all. They think all native plant landscapes are wild and messy, but they don't have to be, by any stretch. Another misconception is that if you use native plants instead of crape myrtle from Asia, it's going to lower your property value. These are the talking points of homeowners' associations. If you don't have most of your property in lawn, you're not a good citizen. AP: How do you respond to people who fear that 'wild' look? We do have lawn as a status symbol. So, I don't suggest we get rid of lawn. Instead, reduce the amount of area that's in lawn. You should use lawn where you walk because it's the best plant to walk on without killing it. Line your sidewalk and your driveway with lawn, and have swaths of grass going through your property where you're going to walk. Keep it low and manicured to show you understand what the culture is and that you're intentional and taking care of your yard. And when you do that, nobody even notices. You don't get cited. You get cited when you try to put a big meadow in your front yard because nobody's used to that. AP: What simple actions can homeowners take to make the biggest impact on their local ecosystem? TALLAMY: There are two. First, reduce the lawn. Every property has to support pollinators, every property has to manage the watershed in which it lies and every property has to sequester carbon (plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). That'll help combat climate change. And every property has to support the viable food webs of the animals associated with the property. Lawn does none of those things. If you have a lot of lawn, you get a lot of runoff, and you're polluting your watershed with the fertilizers and the pesticides you put on the lawn. When you have a well-planted property, it keeps the water on site, cleans it, helps it soak into the ground and recharges your water table. AP: What's the second action? TALLAMY: Choose plants that are going to support that food web, the ones that will share the most energy with other living things. That's the problem with plants from other continents; our insects can't eat them. So, there are no insects for the birds, and the food web stops. In 84% of the counties where they occur, oaks are the No. 1 plant for passing along that energy. If you're going to plant a tree, that is the best plant to choose. AP: In your new book, 'How can I Help?", you answer 499 questions you're most frequently asked and address the importance of ecological balance. How would you explain that to homeowners who may not be familiar with the science? TALLAMY: I included chapters like that because we were never taught these things. How can I expect somebody to understand that conservation is important when they don't know what biodiversity does, when they don't know how much we depend on it totally? Or what evolution or natural selection is. So, it's a little primer to basic ecological knowledge that will help you understand how important these issues are. AP: What upcoming projects are you excited about? TALLAMY: Well, I'm getting closer to retirement, but I just graduated a master's student who is looking at how we landscape underneath our trees. We talk about the importance of trees in creating the caterpillars that drive the food web. But those caterpillars drop from the tree and they pupate in the ground. And how we landscape under those trees determines whether or not those caterpillars will survive. So, that's really an important addition to our landscape management tools. You want uncompacted areas where we're not walking, which means beds around our trees. If you're mowing or walking under it, you're squishing all those caterpillars. So, we ranked all of the plant genera in North America in terms of their ability to support caterpillars and keep that food web going. We haven't published it yet, but now we've got that data for every country in the world. AP: Anything else you'd like to share? TALLAMY: I always like to convey a sense of responsibility. It's not just the job of a few ecologists or conservation biologists. It's everybody's responsibility because we all need it. You can do that by voting properly. You can do that by not hindering conservation efforts, or you can actively do it right on your own property. But everybody has a responsibility to do it. ___ Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice. ___ For more AP gardening stories, go to Jessica Damiano, The Associated Press
The Independent
08-04-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Every yard makes a difference. Native-plant champion Doug Tallamy's got a new book explaining how
If you're a human living on this planet, you should get to know Doug Tallamy, the entomologist and University of Delaware professor whose groundbreaking 2006 book, 'Bringing Nature Home,' supercharged the native plants movement. Tallamy made a case that our native birds and insects evolved with native plants, so they recognize them as food. The loss of these native plants and habitats to development poses an existential threat not just to wildlife, but to us. Since then, Tallamy co-founded Homegrown National Park, a grassroots movement whose mission is to 'urgently inspire everyone to address the biodiversity crisis by adding native plants and removing invasive ones where we live, work, learn, pray, and play.' Tallamy chatted with The Associated Press about his decades-long research, his new book, 'How Can I Help?' and what he's planning next. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. AP: What initially inspired you to focus on native plants and their relationships with insects? TALLAMY: I am an entomologist, so I always think about insects, but it was when my wife, Cindy, and I moved into our home in Oxford, Pennsylvania. The developer had mowed the land for hay, and when you do that, what comes back is all the invasive plants from Asia, so we ended up with 10 acres of invasive species. Watching the insects interact with those plants showed very clearly that our native insects do very poorly with them. So we put the plants that they require back. Ever since, I've been measuring the number of bird species that have bred on our property — 62 — and the number of moth species — 1,337 — that produce the caterpillars that those birds need to reproduce. And that tells me it works. About 80% of the plants in our residential landscapes are non-native plants. They don't have to be invasive to wreck the food web. So that led me in a whole new research direction to find out what is happening to the food web. We got the numbers that supported the argument that native plants are essential, insects are essential, insects are declining, the birds that need them are declining. AP: How has public awareness of native plants and biodiversity evolved since you wrote 'Bringing Nature Home'? TALLAMY: I have been talking about it for 20 years and can measure the public response. I get three or four speaking requests a day. Interest is going through the roof. My message is that you can be part of the solution instead of contributing to the problem just by how you landscape your property. You can reduce the area that you have in lawn, you can put in powerful plants that support biodiversity and you can watch it come back to your own yard. And that empowers people. AP: What are the biggest misconceptions that people have about insect conservation and native plants? TALLAMY: A common one is that native landscaping is essentially the lack of landscaping and you just stop doing anything. That's not true at all. They think all native plant landscapes are wild and messy, but they don't have to be, by any stretch. Another misconception is that if you use native plants instead of crape myrtle from Asia, it's going to lower your property value. These are the talking points of homeowners' associations. If you don't have most of your property in lawn, you're not a good citizen. AP: How do you respond to people who fear that 'wild' look? We do have lawn as a status symbol. So, I don't suggest we get rid of lawn. Instead, reduce the amount of area that's in lawn. You should use lawn where you walk because it's the best plant to walk on without killing it. Line your sidewalk and your driveway with lawn, and have swaths of grass going through your property where you're going to walk. Keep it low and manicured to show you understand what the culture is and that you're intentional and taking care of your yard. And when you do that, nobody even notices. You don't get cited. You get cited when you try to put a big meadow in your front yard because nobody's used to that. AP: What simple actions can homeowners take to make the biggest impact on their local ecosystem? TALLAMY: There are two. First, reduce the lawn. Every property has to support pollinators, every property has to manage the watershed in which it lies and every property has to sequester carbon (plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). That'll help combat climate change. And every property has to support the viable food webs of the animals associated with the property. Lawn does none of those things. If you have a lot of lawn, you get a lot of runoff, and you're polluting your watershed with the fertilizers and the pesticides you put on the lawn. When you have a well-planted property, it keeps the water on site, cleans it, helps it soak into the ground and recharges your water table. AP: What's the second action? TALLAMY: Choose plants that are going to support that food web, the ones that will share the most energy with other living things. That's the problem with plants from other continents; our insects can't eat them. So, there are no insects for the birds, and the food web stops. In 84% of the counties where they occur, oaks are the No. 1 plant for passing along that energy. If you're going to plant a tree, that is the best plant to choose. AP: In your new book, 'How can I Help?", you answer 499 questions you're most frequently asked and address the importance of ecological balance. How would you explain that to homeowners who may not be familiar with the science? TALLAMY: I included chapters like that because we were never taught these things. How can I expect somebody to understand that conservation is important when they don't know what biodiversity does, when they don't know how much we depend on it totally? Or what evolution or natural selection is. So, it's a little primer to basic ecological knowledge that will help you understand how important these issues are. AP: What upcoming projects are you excited about? TALLAMY: Well, I'm getting closer to retirement, but I just graduated a master's student who is looking at how we landscape underneath our trees. We talk about the importance of trees in creating the caterpillars that drive the food web. But those caterpillars drop from the tree and they pupate in the ground. And how we landscape under those trees determines whether or not those caterpillars will survive. So, that's really an important addition to our landscape management tools. You want uncompacted areas where we're not walking, which means beds around our trees. If you're mowing or walking under it, you're squishing all those caterpillars. So, we ranked all of the plant genera in North America in terms of their ability to support caterpillars and keep that food web going. We haven't published it yet, but now we've got that data for every country in the world. AP: Anything else you'd like to share? TALLAMY: I always like to convey a sense of responsibility. It's not just the job of a few ecologists or conservation biologists. It's everybody's responsibility because we all need it. You can do that by voting properly. You can do that by not hindering conservation efforts, or you can actively do it right on your own property. But everybody has a responsibility to do it. ___ Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice. ___ For more AP gardening stories, go to
Associated Press
08-04-2025
- Science
- Associated Press
Every yard makes a difference. Native-plant champion Doug Tallamy's got a new book explaining how
If you're a human living on this planet, you should get to know Doug Tallamy, the entomologist and University of Delaware professor whose groundbreaking 2006 book, 'Bringing Nature Home,' supercharged the native plants movement. Tallamy made a case that our native birds and insects evolved with native plants, so they recognize them as food. The loss of these native plants and habitats to development poses an existential threat not just to wildlife, but to us. Since then, Tallamy co-founded Homegrown National Park, a grassroots movement whose mission is to 'urgently inspire everyone to address the biodiversity crisis by adding native plants and removing invasive ones where we live, work, learn, pray, and play.' Tallamy chatted with The Associated Press about his decades-long research, his new book, 'How Can I Help?' and what he's planning next. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. TALLAMY: I am an entomologist, so I always think about insects, but it was when my wife, Cindy, and I moved into our home in Oxford, Pennsylvania. The developer had mowed the land for hay, and when you do that, what comes back is all the invasive plants from Asia, so we ended up with 10 acres of invasive species. Watching the insects interact with those plants showed very clearly that our native insects do very poorly with them. So we put the plants that they require back. Ever since, I've been measuring the number of bird species that have bred on our property — 62 — and the number of moth species — 1,337 — that produce the caterpillars that those birds need to reproduce. And that tells me it works. About 80% of the plants in our residential landscapes are non-native plants. They don't have to be invasive to wreck the food web. So that led me in a whole new research direction to find out what is happening to the food web. We got the numbers that supported the argument that native plants are essential, insects are essential, insects are declining, the birds that need them are declining. AP: How has public awareness of native plants and biodiversity evolved since you wrote 'Bringing Nature Home'? TALLAMY: I have been talking about it for 20 years and can measure the public response. I get three or four speaking requests a day. Interest is going through the roof. My message is that you can be part of the solution instead of contributing to the problem just by how you landscape your property. You can reduce the area that you have in lawn, you can put in powerful plants that support biodiversity and you can watch it come back to your own yard. And that empowers people. AP: What are the biggest misconceptions that people have about insect conservation and native plants? TALLAMY: A common one is that native landscaping is essentially the lack of landscaping and you just stop doing anything. That's not true at all. They think all native plant landscapes are wild and messy, but they don't have to be, by any stretch. Another misconception is that if you use native plants instead of crape myrtle from Asia, it's going to lower your property value. These are the talking points of homeowners' associations. If you don't have most of your property in lawn, you're not a good citizen. AP: How do you respond to people who fear that 'wild' look? We do have lawn as a status symbol. So, I don't suggest we get rid of lawn. Instead, reduce the amount of area that's in lawn. You should use lawn where you walk because it's the best plant to walk on without killing it. Line your sidewalk and your driveway with lawn, and have swaths of grass going through your property where you're going to walk. Keep it low and manicured to show you understand what the culture is and that you're intentional and taking care of your yard. And when you do that, nobody even notices. You don't get cited. You get cited when you try to put a big meadow in your front yard because nobody's used to that. AP: What simple actions can homeowners take to make the biggest impact on their local ecosystem? TALLAMY: There are two. First, reduce the lawn. Every property has to support pollinators, every property has to manage the watershed in which it lies and every property has to sequester carbon (plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). That'll help combat climate change. And every property has to support the viable food webs of the animals associated with the property. Lawn does none of those things. If you have a lot of lawn, you get a lot of runoff, and you're polluting your watershed with the fertilizers and the pesticides you put on the lawn. When you have a well-planted property, it keeps the water on site, cleans it, helps it soak into the ground and recharges your water table. AP: What's the second action? TALLAMY: Choose plants that are going to support that food web, the ones that will share the most energy with other living things. That's the problem with plants from other continents; our insects can't eat them. So, there are no insects for the birds, and the food web stops. In 84% of the counties where they occur, oaks are the No. 1 plant for passing along that energy. If you're going to plant a tree, that is the best plant to choose. AP: In your new book, 'How can I Help?', you answer 499 questions you're most frequently asked and address the importance of ecological balance. How would you explain that to homeowners who may not be familiar with the science? TALLAMY: I included chapters like that because we were never taught these things. How can I expect somebody to understand that conservation is important when they don't know what biodiversity does, when they don't know how much we depend on it totally? Or what evolution or natural selection is. So, it's a little primer to basic ecological knowledge that will help you understand how important these issues are. AP: What upcoming projects are you excited about? TALLAMY: Well, I'm getting closer to retirement, but I just graduated a master's student who is looking at how we landscape underneath our trees. We talk about the importance of trees in creating the caterpillars that drive the food web. But those caterpillars drop from the tree and they pupate in the ground. And how we landscape under those trees determines whether or not those caterpillars will survive. So, that's really an important addition to our landscape management tools. You want uncompacted areas where we're not walking, which means beds around our trees. If you're mowing or walking under it, you're squishing all those caterpillars. So, we ranked all of the plant genera in North America in terms of their ability to support caterpillars and keep that food web going. We haven't published it yet, but now we've got that data for every country in the world. AP: Anything else you'd like to share? TALLAMY: I always like to convey a sense of responsibility. It's not just the job of a few ecologists or conservation biologists. It's everybody's responsibility because we all need it. ___ ___
