Side effects: May Include Joy, Calm, and Delight
The morning news is just awful: wars, school shootings, forest fires, floods, political extremes. It’s all too much, and I think I can actually feel my blood pressure rising. Stressed and depressed, I turn away from the news, and look out my window…
A big flock of robins has descended on the Winterberry, eating berries as fast as they can in a joyful feast! They dash back and forth between the Winterberry and the Crab Apple as if they can’t decide which fruit they like best. Dozens more birds – robins, blue jays, and cardinals dive into the American Holly. Squirrels grab the berries knocked to the ground and scamper off to stash them for later.
As I step outside to watch the action, I hear crows screeching an alert from the top of the Locust trees. Sure enough, I see a red-tailed hawk circling high above. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a rabbit dash for cover under the mess of flower stalks I’ve left standing for just that reason – it’s a great place to hide!
Watching all of this, I realize that I’m now smiling and calm. The tension I felt earlier has receded. My pulse and breathing have slowed, and there is a sense of well-being just from spending a few minutes in my own yard. These are the healing side-effects of living in nature!
My yard is not typical of suburban New York City. It is heavily planted with native trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers. It’s intentionally a bit messy this time of year, with leaves still on the ground, and untrimmed perennials and tall grasses in muted shades of brown and beige still standing. The shrubs are not clipped into tidy shapes but are allowed to form thickets with their branches interlaced. There is a brush pile creating shelter against the back fence, and River Birch trees with shaggy bark hide insects for woodpeckers and nuthatches even in winter.
I know that is why the birds are here: there is food and shelter available year-round in this particular suburban yard.
About 10 years ago, I eliminated pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers from my yard. Then I began removing the non-native and invasive plants so typical of our area: ivy, vinca, pachysandra, barberry, and burning bush. I gradually replaced them with lots of native trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers, always chipping away at the lawn to make more room. I stopped sending fall leaves off of the property and started using them to mulch the trees and shrubs, so the fireflies and caterpillars over-wintering in leaves could stay alive and emerge in the spring. Eventually, I replaced more than half of my lawn with native plants.
I did all of this because I learned that American songbirds are dying off at a horrifying rate. The total population of backyard birds today is 25% less than it was in 1970, and many once common species have lost closer to 50% of their numbers! Baltimore orioles, bluebirds, and warblers were once as common as robins, but are rarely seen now. This is happening because the forests, meadows, and grasslands where birds once nested, mated, and hunted for insects are gone.
There is virtually no undeveloped land left in America. The suburbs keep growing, taking over land that only a few decades ago was wild. Today, 83% of the continental US is privately owned, and 44 million acres of it is planted in lawn! Worse, most of that lawn is maintained with chemicals that are toxic to birds, butterflies, fireflies, and insects that birds need to feed their young.
Yet, America’s suburbs may be “nature’s best hope.” It’s really the only land left that can be reclaimed as a useful habitat. In the book, Nature’s Best Hope, Doug Tallamy suggests that if we converted just half of the lawn in suburbia — 22 million acres — to native plants, it would exceed the combined areas
…of the Everglades, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Badlands, Olympic, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Denali, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks.
That much habitat could have a huge impact on biodiversity – even reversing losses of vital and cherished bird and animal species. These facts were the motivation for my effort to convert a typical lawn-and-tidy-shrub suburban landscape into something richer and more diverse.
I thought I was doing it for nature. The surprise has been what nature does for me!
My yard full of native plants is my refuge, my laboratory, my classroom, my gym, my anti depressant, my stress reliever, and a playground for our family’s children that is infinitely more
interesting and safer than a lawn full of chemicals. We’ve seen new species of butterflies settle here after I added their host plants. With more birds around, we started learning to identify
them. So far, we have identified over 40 different species! And I’ve seen wonderful things I had never before even heard of, like a hummingbird moth!
There is something new to discover almost daily in a bio-diverse landscape. It is full of life and wonder! The seasons change so visibly: delicate spring flowers, fragrant summer shrubs, so many fall colors, and winter bird feasts! The sounds are amazing: bird calls, crickets, tree frogs, cicadas, and squirrels chittering. The experiences make me feel alive: watching fireflies blink on a summer evening while the air is filled with the perfume of Summersweet shrub; watching from my living room window as tiny birds take refuge from a snowstorm.
When the stress of daily life is just too much, you can always visit the Nature Center, or take a walk in any park or nature preserve. It will help.
But it’s so much better to live with nature, and in nature, in your own yard! You can welcome it, take care of it, observe it, learn from it, and be surprised by it every time you step outside. As we begin the new year, I hope you will resolve to convert a bit more of your yard to habitat and do it not only for nature but for yourself and your family.
There are simple things you can do that will make a difference. This blog frequently has suggestions, so scroll through the Around the Grounds Collection below, or start with these posts for ideas: (1/26/23, 2/16/23, 3/23/23, 4/27/23, 10/5/23).
Wishing you joy, peace, and delight in the new year!
Thanks to Saverio DeGiorgio for the featured photo. Follow Sav on Instagram @savwildlifephotography
THIS BLOG IS AUTHORED WEEKLY BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, OF GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.
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Holiday Decorating: Retro Style!
There was a time when the halls were decked with boughs of holly! Merry-makers strung their trees with popcorn and cranberries, and yule logs made of real wood warmed the hearth.
As we try to reduce our use of plastic in daily life, it can be fun and satisfying to use natural materials in holiday decorations.
And, if you have a yard heavily planted with native plants, you’ll have plenty of ornamental material to choose from! The same plants that provide winter interest in our residential landscapes can add touches of natural beauty to holiday mantles, tables, vases, wreaths, and trees.
Three great native shrubs have been featured here with photos and information about their landscape use: American Holly, Winterberry, and Red Twig Dogwood (also called Red Osier Dogwood). All three also make great, long-lasting holiday decorations, and they don’t mind being pruned a bit for that purpose.
The bright red accents from these shrubs combine beautifully with evergreen foliage for holiday color schemes.
Horticulturists have been developing beautiful cultivars of Red Osier Dogwood that look great both in the landscape and in winter decorations. A cultivar called ‘Arctic Fire’ is a compact version that stays about 3 to 5 feet tall and has brilliant red stems. As strange as it seems, there are even yellow versions of Red Osier Dogwood! Yellow and golden cultivars bring winter interest to the landscape and a surprising burst of color to holiday decorations
Crabapples, Chokeberries, White Pine, and even Southern Magnolia are all American native plants that bring retro style to holiday arrangements. Try combining them with birch branches,
dried flower stalks, twigs, pine cones, nuts, and other “found objects” from your yard. The cones of the White Pine don’t even need artificial snow — they come naturally “flocked” in their own
pine sap!
Charming ornaments for your tree or centerpieces also can be made from natural elements found in the garden.
But don’t scavenge in protected areas for these ornamental plants. Parks and wooded areas need all of these treasures to provide food and habitat for birds, insects, and other animals. It’s much better to plant your own property with native plants to add beauty year-round. And if you leave native perennials standing at the end of the season, the dried flower stalks not only provide food for winter birds but also make great additions to your seasonal decorations!
So, take a pass on the latest plastic holiday décor and, instead, look around your yard! If you have lots of native plants, and leave your flower beds untrimmed, all you need is a little creativity to deck your halls as in days of yore.
One last thing: do leave some of those beautiful berries for the birds. They love the natural decorations on the outside of your house!
Photo: Kristina Zagreda
THIS BLOG IS AUTHORED WEEKLY BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.
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Mighty Arborvitae
Arborvitae gets no respect.
Though Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) may be the most-planted tree in suburban America, it has been given a diminished role unworthy of this majestic native tree. Planted by the thousands along property lines by developers, builders, and landscapers, rows of crowded Arborvitae trees, standing shoulder to shoulder, have become the de-facto fences of suburbia.
Without room to spread their branches or reach their natural height, Arborvitae is often topped and heavily pruned to form hedges. They handle this assignment very well, but Arborvitae can do so much more!
If you’ve only seen Arborvitae used as a hedge, it may surprise you to learn that in its natural habitat, it can grow 50 to 60 feet tall and live for hundreds of years! In fact, the largest known specimen is over 100 feet tall and more than 40 feet wide at the crown. The oldest living Arborvitae is thought to have germinated from seed in 952 A.D., and is now 1,071 years old! Based on ring counts on dead trees, there are verified specimens of Arborvitae that lived to be over 1,800 years old.
Northern Lake Michigan
Photo: C.J. Earle
Arborvitae is one of the common names for Thuja occidentalis and means “tree of life” in Latin. It was named by the French sea captain, Jacques Cartier, when he was exploring Canada in 1536. After months at sea, Cartier’s crew, including two young members of the Huron native tribe who had been sailing with them, were all suffering from scurvy. On the way up the St. Lawrence River, Cartier dropped the two young men at their home village. When he later returned, he was astonished to find the two Hurons fully recovered from all symptoms of scurvy while his French sailors were still suffering. He asked the Huron elders to teach him the cure, and they showed him how to make a medicine, a tea rich in Vitamin C, from the foliage of Thuja occidentalis. Cartier brought the life-saving plant back to France, making it the first North American tree introduced to Europe.
The native habitat of Thuja occidentalis is swamps, low woods, and forest edges from northern Canada south to New York and Connecticut and west to Michigan and Northern Indiana. It is an
evergreen conifer, extremely cold hardy, and adapted to poor rocky soils all the way to the edge of the Canadian tundra. Sometimes called Northern White Cedar, Eastern White Cedar, or
Swamp Cedar, Arborvitae is not a true cedar in the Cedrus family, none of which are native to North America. But the fragrance of its foliage and bark, and the usefulness of its wood, are similar.
North America and is adapted to extreme cold. This forest of
Arborvitae is at the brink of the Niagara Escarpment in Northern Wisconsin.
Photo: C.J. Earle
The foliage of Arborvitae is flat and scale-like and has a spicy fragrance when crushed. Native peoples used it not only for medicine but also used the fragrant foliage as insect-repellant
bedding. They stripped the tree’s shredding bark to make rope and twine, and they found many uses for the rot-resistant wood, including canoe frames and roofing shingles.
Thuja occidentalis has significant value to wildlife. It is a favorite food of white-tailed deer, as suburban homeowners often discover to their dismay. Twigs and foliage of Arborvitae constitute as much as 10 to 25% of the winter diet of deer, who will browse it as high as they can reach. In northern forests, the tree also provides highly nutritious food for snowshoe hares, porcupines, red squirrels, and beavers. Many native birds find nesting sites in Arborvitae and insects to feed their young. The seeds are the preferred source of food for Pine Siskins, birds indigenous to the Northeastern US.
It is sadly ironic that one of the most-planted trees in suburbia is disappearing in the wild. Thuja occidentalis is listed as Threatened in Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, and Maryland and Endangered in Indiana, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Development is the primary culprit as forests are cleared to make way for more suburban homes.
It is equally sad that the rows and rows of Arborvitae planted on suburban property lines are not nearly as valuable to wildlife as they should be. The most popular varieties of Arborvitae are cultivars or hybrids that offer little value to wildlife – other than deer. A cultivar called ‘Emerald Green’ Arborvitae was developed in the 1950s in Denmark, just in time for the rapid expansion of the US suburbs after WWII. It quickly became the ubiquitous hedge plant we see all around us. In a tight hedge, and with limited biological diversity due to clonal reproduction by nurseries, its value to insects and birds is limited.
Another Arborvitae popular with builders is a hybrid called ‘Green Giant,’ which is a cross between a species indigenous to the Pacific Northwest and a Japanese species. As a hybrid between two non-natives, ‘Green Giant’ has very little value to insects or birds in this part of the country. If you can find the straight species of Thuja occidentalis (without a cultivar name), plant that. If not, ‘Emerald Green’ is a better choice than ‘Green Giant.’
Thuja occidentalis is an amazing tree. It deserves to be more than a fence! Given enough room to take its natural form, Arborvitae merits a starring role in suburban landscapes.
rightful place with Oaks, White Pines, and Junipers in
Northeastern landscapes
In our last blog post [Privacy Without “O-fence“], we urged homeowners to diversify their hedges and privacy screens by planting a mix of native trees and shrubs to increase habitat and biodiversity. Too much of any one plant becomes a mono-culture, limiting resources for wildlife. Unfortunately, that is what has happened to this magnificent native tree.
Think of Arborvitae as an easy-care, long-lived, medium-sized, native, hardy evergreen that will enhance your landscape as part of a diverse planting of trees, shrubs, and perennials. You won’t
be sorry!
THIS BLOG IS AUTHORED WEEKLY BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.
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Privacy Without “O-fence”
Suburban yards are places for families and friends to relax, perhaps enjoy a barbecue, and watch children and pets play safely. Privacy is important.
No wonder, then, that suburban homeowners often decide to plant a “privacy screen.” Hedges of trees or shrubs, planted as living “green fences,” are as common in suburbia as the lawns they typically surround.
But too often, these hedges are made with invasive plants that spread themselves into natural areas causing ecological harm. Top offenders include privet, Japanese barberry, forsythia, bamboo, and burning bush. All of these plants are recognized as invasive species and should be avoided.
The good news is that the need for privacy does not require bringing any of these offensive plants onto your property. There are so many better choices!
In the Eastern US, the most popular privacy screen by far is Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), also known as Northern White-cedar. Favored by builders and landscape maintenance companies, a row of inexpensive and readily available Arborvitae is often planted along the property line as soon as a new house is built.
Though Arborvitae is a much better choice than any of the invasive plants mentioned above, it is not the only — or best — option. In areas populated by deer, Arborvitae is extremely vulnerable.
Here are some alternatives – beautiful evergreen trees and shrubs, native to the Northeast, that make ideal privacy screens. And because they are native, they also offer value to native birds and pollinators!
American Holly (Ilex opaca) makes a dense, evergreen privacy screen and has the bonus of tiny flowers for pollinators in the spring and beautiful berries that add winter interest to the landscape.
Rhododendron is another good choice for privacy. When European settlers first explored the Eastern US, they struggled through massive stands of Rhododendron maximum that formed impenetrable evergreen thickets. Why not use that same feature now as an effective screen? Our native songbirds love to hide in a thicket!
Inkberry (Ilex glauca), another native evergreen, grows quickly and has shiny, dark green leaves that form a dense screen. More winter-hardy than boxwood and growing taller, Inkberry is a great hedge plant.
Grass
The very best privacy screen, though, is not a row of one species of plant, but a forest! The Northeastern US was once predominantly forest, and many of the plants in those forests are still the best plants to grow here. In suburban yards, we can mimic the beauty, seclusion, and peaceful quiet of a diverse forest simply by planting more stuff! And a bigger variety of
that stuff is inspired by our native forests!
Maybe it’s time to reconsider our approach to the “privacy screen.”
Hedges can be great, but they can also be visually boring and ecologically sterile. There is no law requiring homeowners to mark their property boundaries with a row of identical plants. Just because your property line forms a rectangle doesn’t mean your landscape has to be one. A diverse mix of plants – native trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials – planted in masses makes a landscape interesting, lush, ecologically valuable, and very private.
Rhododendron completely screens a house from the road
If you already have a hedge or a fence along the property line, consider planting inside it using a mix of native trees and shrubs that change with the seasons. Start with the corners.
Trained landscape designers tend to avoid square corners and straight lines in their designed plantings. You can do the same thing. Map out curved beds that soften the corners and bring more plants further into your yard. Plant taller shrubs at the back, and choose flowering shrubs and perennials to plant in the foreground where you can enjoy them.
So, consider creating a privacy screen that looks more like a forest than a fence. By planting more plants, and a bigger variety of plants in more of your yard, you will have more privacy, more seasonal interest, less lawn to tend, and more habitat for birds, butterflies, and fireflies.
How’s that for a win-win-win-win?!
THIS BLOG IS AUTHORED WEEKLY BY CATHY LUDDEN, CONSERVATIONIST AND NATIVE PLANT EDUCATOR; AND BOARD MEMBER, GREENBURGH NATURE CENTER. FOLLOW CATHY ON INSTAGRAM FOR MORE PHOTOS AND GARDENING TIPS @CATHYLUDDEN.
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