Two questions motivate me: What can I do personally about the climate crisis? How can I restore my local ecosystem?

Now those sound like topics for the UN and the National Park System and Land Trusts. But actually, private landowners control the greatest acreage in the US. Through our activities in our garden club, including our plant sale, we can address both of these questions.

“Preserving and restoring ecosystems is the foundation to combating climate change.” The biologist Camille Parmesan said that in the first episode of the PBS documentary Evolution Earth. (You can go to PBS online and watch it.) She has worked 40 years studying Edith’s Checkerspot Butterfly. She wrote a Nature article in 1996 that was the first clear demonstration of a species shifting where it lives in response to climate change. Many colleagues ridiculed her because it was such a new revelation. She moved on to a global meta-analysis of 4,000 species with the same conclusion. Right now, half of all animals globally are on the move due to climate change. In this country, there are destroyed homes and communities under threat because another natural disaster will wipe them out again.

“Everything we love dearly was borne out of a stable environment. As we destabilize it, the foundations of society reliant on a stable climate start to deteriorate.” (C. Parmesan, Evolution Earth, Episode 1)

So who can guide gardeners in restoring our local ecosystem? Professor Tallamy, especially in his recent book Bringing Nature Home. He’s an entomologist and climate activist.

We can’t use the sun’s energy to power our bodies. We need plants to be able to ‘eat’ sunlight. What creatures are best at transferring that energy? Insects! But most are fussy about what they eat, and especially host plants for a new generation to develop. Caterpillars are loaded with fat and protein. They enable 3-6 young birds to leave the nest in under two weeks.

 

We need to focus on a productive landscape. Usually we think of that as producing human food or plenty of blooms. Doug Tallamy defines a productive landscape as planting for the largest number of edible insects. Native plants are necessary, because insects have evolved to need them. However, keystone plant species are what the insect world really needs. Keystone species boost caterpillar numbers by 75%.

Here are the keystone species Tallamy cites: Willows (Salix Falicales), Garry Oak or Oregon White Oak (Quercus garryana), the native strawberry (Fragaria vesca), lupine, asters, and sunflowers. (For a fun YouTube video, look at the bloke explaining “Why I Love Wild Strawberries.”)

We can make these keystone species prominent in our home gardens AND available in abundance during our annual plant sale.

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Starting this month, here’s what you can do in your yard. Stand in each area of your garden with a notepad and your camera. Take a photo so you remember the plants that will die back to the ground this winter. Begin deciding what to do with plants that have disappointed you or have grown too large. If a plant needs more shade/sun/moisture, do I have a place for it? Make a note of new spot OR that you’re going to pot it for our plant sale.

 

Is the growth habit unpleasing? Life is too short and our gardening time too valuable to have disappointing plants in our gardens! That disappointment may tickle another gardener who discovers it at our plant sale. Do you have volunteer plants in the wrong place? I dig up dozens of native red twig dogwood since my neighbor has a hedge of them. I try to grow them for two years in their volunteer spots and then pot them in February or March at the latest and place them in my garden club nursery area: close to the house and shaded from the hottest sunlight. If you dig up plants in the fall and pot them, they will need protection from freezing. That’s why I swing into action in late winter.
 

Once you decide what you’re removing, then decide what to search out for adding to your garden. More plants to feed caterpillars, more berries throughout the season for birds, more self-seeding annuals, more perennials for pollinators.

 

While the garden rests, you have two well-illustrated online resources to guide you in new plant choices.

 

National Wildlife Federation, the folks that helped us certify Vashon as a Native Habitat Community, has developed a Native Plant Finder with the assistance of Professor Tallamy. Click on this link to explore it. Enter your zip code and it customizes the list to our area. It even saves plants that interest you for a final list!

 

http://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/Find-Available-Natives

 

Audubon has developed a similar resource for selecting plants that benefit specific birds. What birds would you enjoy seeing regularly in your yard?

 

http://www.audubon.org/native-plants

In addition, get your hands on Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy. When you’re done, mark a few sections and share with a neighbor who has an immense lawn or still uses pesticides. It can be a game changer!