The other day I lifted the blanket off the lawn where I had been playing with my baby and a tiny garter snake wriggled and twisted away through the grass.
That's how intimate I'm getting with nature this summer. I've let so many things go wild in my yard that I'm sitting on snakes.
Yet, I read a book a few weeks ago that completely changed how I see my landscape. In "Bringing Nature Home," author Douglas Tallamy makes a case for planting native plants, because that's the only thing native insects can eat. Even plants that were introduced to New England hundreds of years ago still taste foreign to most native insects and, therefore, they might as well be plastic for all the good they do for the food chain.
From a native insect's perspective, I was surprised to learn, my landscaping is almost entirely plastic.
My daylilies are originally from Asia. My lilacs were brought here from Europe. Cosmos flowers come from Mexico and the southern part of the United States.
Even the plants I thought were native — the weeds that grew spontaneously where I stopped mowing this summer — all are foreign.
I've become so obsessed with this idea that I'm running around the yard with a field guide any time a weed produces a flower, and investigating all my landscape plants.
So far the only thing I've confirmed as native is purple coneflower, and I have only two little bunches in my yard. What are the insects supposed to eat?
The premise of Tallamy's book is that by planting native species, a single homeowner can provide food and shelter for local native wildlife and mitigate some of the damage from all of our highways, parking lots and subdivisions.
This is an exciting prospect for somebody like me, who suffers suburban guilt. My prefab ranch house was dropped down in this location only about 10 years ago on land that used to be wooded. Now it's a subdivision of about 80 houses, replete with charming ornamental trees and foreign perennials that are useless to the local wildlife.
Tallamy says I don't even need to grow a meadow or plant things in a way that will attract the attention of the neighbors. All I have to do is choose natives whenever I add trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals to my yard.
I wish I had known this three years ago, before I invested in all these daylilies and foreign shrubs.
Within days of finishing the book, I went a little crazy with my mower. I cut down the area I was leaving wild and calling a meadow. The spring flowers had all shriveled anyway, and what was left was one enormous mullein weed and a bunch of tall grass. I mowed down the foreign "wildflower" weeds that were growing alongside my house, too.
I went to the New England Wildflower Society's Web site for their list of native landscape plants to use as a guide as I add more elements to my landscape.
Though I'd love to start by planting a grove of trees, my first step was a little more economical. I bought three packs of black-eyed Susan seeds on sale for a dollar. It's a tiny start, but it should make some butterflies happy.
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Julie Kirkwood is a freelance writer for The Eagle-Tribune. Her column, Yard Dirt, appears most Wednesdays. She also keeps a gardening blog, Yard Dirt: Sharing Seeds, at www.eagletribune.com.
