bby Eoin Carroll

Many of the environmental problems we have today have a common cause, habitat loss and what we have replaced that habitat with.  Some of these problems are:

• Reduction of bird species
• Loss of insects especially pollinators
• Increases in flooding
• Excess sediment and nutrients draining from our watersheds
• Native trees and shrubs at risk from imported insects and diseases

We have replaced our forests and meadows with lawns, trees, and shrubs from Asia, Europe, and South America.  They were picked for their decorative value with no thought to how they will interact with the native ecosystems. In doing so we have created ecological deserts.  These plants are unable to support the complex food webs that are necessary for healthy ecosystems.

An even larger problem is that some of these non-natives become invasive and cause a great deal of damage.  They are laws that prevent me from throwing my garbage over the fence into my neighbor’s yard.  However there are no laws keeping me from planting a highly invasive shrub like Japanese Barberry that produces a lot of seed and has become a serious problem in our forests.

Even if we had the political climate that would support creating new national parks, they would still be too small and separated from one another to preserve native species in the amount needed.  What is needed is to restore some of the habitat in our front or backyards to support our endangered world.

However this doesn’t mean that you have to remove all of your landscaping and replace it with expensive native plants.  Most homes today have a lot of lawn.  If you are using it then great leave it alone.  However if the only time you walk across it is to mow you should consider replacing parts of it with native plants.  If every homeowner would replace 10% of their lawn with native plants we would have the equivalent of a really large new national park, hence the name Homegrown National Park.

This new park would also have the very important function of creating corridors for our native species.  You can think of each of them as being part of a puzzle that once assembled will produce a lovely picture.  You can learn much more at the website homegrownnationalpark.org.

I recognize that getting started can be scary and you may feel pretty intimidated by the task.  I recommend that you start small.  A great way to start is to add rather than subtract.  Try some native trees or shrubs.  Later this summer the Master Watershed Stewards will be having our native tree and shrub sale.  You place your order on-line and then pick-up the plants on a date in the Fall.  I will send out more information when it is available.

The Master Watershed Stewards also has a native plant sale which has just started.  There are five different kits featuring a selection of native plants for different types of locations.  They are being sold as plugs which is a great way to buy native plants, although you do need to baby them for the first couple of months.  The sale will go on until July 4th or until we are sold out.  You will pick up the plants in September which is a great time for planting native plants.  Please talk to me if you would like to know more.