Learn to Embrace the Messiness of Nature

by Eoin Carroll

Our love of tidiness and our desire to shape nature to be more attractive to us is killing the natural world.  When I started gardening as a teenager it was constantly stressed that the good gardener should always remove dead material from the garden as soon as possible.  By removing dead trees and plants we are eliminating the spaces needed by insects, birds, and bats for nesting and overwintering.  We are short circuiting the carbon cycle by removing the plant material which if left would be food for many more organisms.

We find large lawns to be the most attractive option for our landscape and therefore have created ecological deserts where there is no food or shelter for the rest of nature.  To keep our lawns green we apply lots of water, fertilizers, and pesticides.  Unfortunately most of these end up in our waterways due to over application, poor timing (applying before a rainstorm), not testing the soil and thus fertilizing when it is not needed, and the inability of most lawns to infiltrate more than a small amount of water at a time.  Also by fertilizing we create the perfect conditions for most lawn weeds which prefer a richer soil and thus require us to spread even more pesticides.

We spend an enormous amount of time mowing our lawns and in the process create lots of air pollution (lawn mowers produce much more pollution than cars).  The constant walking or riding over the ground compacts it and makes it even less able to infiltrate water thus causing stormwater issues.

We modify the color, size, and shape of flower blossoms to be more pleasing to us but most of the time these changes make the plants unrecognizable to our native insects.  We abhor any insects eating our plants and unleash hellish brews of toxic chemicals to kill them which in turn kills the butterflies and fireflies that we want but wonder why they are disappearing.

We plant nonnative trees and shrubs because we think they are prettier and novel and that is what is available at most nurseries and big box stores.  

The solution is that we must reduce our lawns and plant more natives.  We need to learn to embrace the messiness of nature and stop trying to tidy it up if we want our native animal world to survive.