There's
a sense, for those who live in the suburbs, that trying to
'renaturalize' their small lot, surrounded by manicured lawns soaked in
chemicals, swimming pools soaked in chemicals, pressure-treated decks
soaked in chemicals, large areas of asphalt and concrete, and invasive
species, both cultivated and wild, is a hopeless undertaking.
The late Sara Stein wrote two books a decade ago, Noah's Garden and Planting Noah's Garden,
that showed not only that it is not hopeless, but that it is our
responsibility, as stewards of even small patches of land, to do so.
I've just finished the former book, which provides the rationale for
this responsibility and the grim history of how we in North America
have ruined and impoverished our land, and I've ordered the latter,
which explains in some detail how to rectify the damage we have done.
These
books are not easy going. Ms Stein was an earnest and scholarly writer,
and a ruthless debunker of well-intentioned behaviours. Many readers
will be inclined to give up trying to implement what she recommends
before they start, because most of what we've been taught to do, or
intuitively seek to do, to restore a level of natural life to our
altered landscapes, seems to do more harm than good.
Here are some of the key messages and data she conveys in the first book:
- Our
children, brought up in artificial environments and exposed to nature
only in "stay off the grass" managed excursions, may never appreciate
or realize what they're missing once natural environments are forever
gone.
- Our suburbs, notwithstanding how green they are, are
dreadfully impoverished landscapes, supporting a tiny fraction of the
diversity of life natural landscapes do.
- Our assault on the
natural environment in North America has been going on relentlessly for
four centuries, and is so effective that there is virtually no native
landscape left anywhere: even parklands and conservation areas are
dominated by invasive species and severely depleted of biodiversity,
what Ms Stein calls "an appalling blankness" concealed by "a mask of
naturalness".
- The succession process by which a devastated
landscape returns to balance, richness and diversity involves many
successions of one species with another, and cannot be rushed or
leapfrogged.
- Our clearing and mistreatment of land is causing
excessive erosion of topsoil across North America at an average rate of
4-7 tonnes per acre per year.
- Invasive species, some introduced
to try to 'naturally' restore imbalances, have negative effects on
biodiversity that linger for decades and even centuries.
- The
average American suburban lot is 10,000 sf (about 1/4 acre), about
twice that of the average suburban lot in other affluent nations,
including Canada.
- Even small lots can, with some diligence, be
'restored' to allow a substantial improvement in biodiversity using a
combination of native species (lists here)
to create (a) meadows, with sedges, grasses and wildflowers, (b)
artificial ponds, (c) wetlands for bog plants, (d) hedgerows of berries
and other species, and (e) woodlands. The diagram above shows how these
areas can be integrated, while still leaving some 'lawn' in the area
most visible to neighbours.
- Wild animals in our temperate
ecosystems need large areas to stay in balance: 5 square miles per fox,
9 per coyote, even more for larger predators, and a substantial amount
even for herbivores like deer. Excessive numbers are generally
encouraged by our monoculture, which hugely upsets this balance and
devastates species lower in the food chain, causing overpopulation and
hardship to the predators. Our unnatural behaviours have severe and
usually unobserved consequences on whole ecosystems.
- So-called
'natural' herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers introduced to try to
restore health or balance aren't really natural and can do more harm
than good. Ironically, occasional restricted burns can be healthier
than 'organic' products.
- The loss of wetlands across North
America is barely visible to us, but is massive and has had dreadful
consequences to most amphibian and songbird populations.
- A lawn
is the opposite of a natural meadow or prairie; a replanted monoculture
'tree collection' is the opposite of a woodland or forest.
In
sum, renaturalization takes enormous restraint, learning, patience and
hard work. The natural gardener's job is best limited to planting
appropriate native species the right way in the right places at the
right times, being patient, trusting the soil and otherwise not
interfering. It entails responding to what Mirabel Osler calls "a
gentle plea for Chaos", to achieve in time what Ms Stein calls "a humor
of richness and meaning".
Half of the property of our community
is protected wetland, which we are not permitted to touch (though some
of our neighbours have stupidly ignored the law and done considerable
damage trying to 'clean up' their property). At first I was ashamed of
the green algae cover on the kettle ponds, alarmed at the dozens of
trees felled sloppily each year by our resident beavers, distressed by
the bare drowned trees and windfalls that made us look like messy
caretakers. Now I realize how essential these untouched elements of the
rich local ecosystem, replete with amphibians and songbirds and wild
turkeys, are, and I have pledged never to disturb them, except to
harvest a small number of windfall trees for firewood. I worry that the
growing warmth and drought may mean the end of these fragile wetlands,
perhaps within a decade. I am determined to gradually introduce native
species on the rest of our property, and to persuade my neighbours to
do likewise.
This involves generally doing less each year to
meddle with nature's struggle to recover from centuries of human
destruction, disguised by the "mask of naturalness" that, to my
unschooled eye, makes our community look so lovely, so unspoiled.
Somehow, that is hard, but it is getting easier as, together with my
neighbours, we learn to be humbler and modestly better stewards.
Ms
Stein writes: "I've made the apple jelly and harvested the squash in
the same spirit that squirrels have stashed their nuts and ants have
dragged their grain. Our hearth is stacked with logs, our land is
stocked with plants. I close my window against the frosty evening
satisfied that ant, and mouse, bee, bird, squirrel, bloom and seed know
well how to get from scary autumn to the next brief summer as long as
we, bearing a shovel and a holly, can fill the gap-toothed faces of our
land and make the seasons' smile complete."
We do what we must, and sometimes, what we can.
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1:33:14 AM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
