Create a Homegrown National Park

By Maria Price

Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, is best known for his first book, Bringing Nature Home. In this book, he promotes the use of native plants to save our environment, and highlights their primary importance in the food web, from insects up through birds and beyond. He encourages us to help biodiversity rebound by combining ecological function with aesthetics in our gardens.

Tallamy writes that the United Nations predicts we will lose one million species to extinction in the next 20 years. People feel powerless when they hear statistics like this, but he claims the severity of this can be turned around by the way we landscape.

People can do meaningful conservation in their yards. Tallamy says that we need to think of conservation outside of parks and preserves and that means everybody gets to help. The author says there are four simple things that people who own property can do to alleviate the problem.

First of all, shrink the area you have dedicated to the lawn. Use keystone plants and get rid of invasive plants and install a pollinator garden. If you don’t own land, you can help with your dollars, your labor, or your vote. Everybody is responsible for good stewardship.

In 2005, the average area dedicated to lawns in the United States was 40 million acres. Tallamy says that if half of that lawn was converted to native plants, the figure is greater than the area of our major national parks combined.

In his latest book, Nature’s Best Hope, a New Approach to Conservation, he promotes an idea he calls the Homegrown National Park. Every landscape should support the food web, manage the watershed, support pollinators with native plants and sequester carbon.

Plants are the foundation of the idea since they anchor vigorous ecosystems by providing food to insects, birds and other animals. Chickadees, which weigh about one-third of an ounce, need 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to raise a single clutch of eggs, says Tallamy. Very old established native trees like oaks contribute more robustly to local food webs and also sequester carbon through their root system. A mature oak can support 517 species of butterflies and moths. By growing native plants that feed caterpillars, we can participate in making the world a healthier place.

As you include natives in your landscape, you’ll get to see the diversification of life that will quickly follow.

Mark your calendars for Beaver Creek Cottage Garden’s second annual native plant sale on May 14 at 8117 Beverly Rd, Severn.