Prairie Up

Times are changing. Prairie up.

You Love Your Native Garden. But Will Buyers Love It Too? (Gift Article) For homeowners who have ‘rewilded’ their gardens into mini nature preserves, a moment of truth arrives when they prepare to sell.

This is "easier" to manage because it doesn't need to be mowed every week or watered (ever) or fertilized (ever) and w**ds aren't much of an issue (mostly black medic on the edges and some siberian elm seedlings).

It's NOT "easier" because someone can't be hired for $25 to take care of it every week for 10 minutes. And because you do need to know SOMETHING about each plant species -- like when it flowers, when it goes to seed, how it reproduces, how large it gets, how long it's anticipated to live, what will replace it when it goes, what's a "w**d" and what isn't.

This landscapes does clean and cool the air far more effectively than a close-clipped monoculture lawn. It reduces flooding. It certainly provides more habitat for everything one could think of, including ticks and mosquitoes but also birds and butterflies and bees and beetles and spiders.

Because it's edge habitat -- the nature of a small suburban lot that borders woods and has trees on it -- there is preferred tick habitat (damp / cool shade near sunlight). If it was 100% open sunny meadow there'd be fewer ticks. But yes, nature exists here. And because we have so little nature left in urban and suburban areas we have issues with heat island effects, polluted air, flooding, etc, as well as a loss of contact with beneficial microbes that would reduce allergy development in young kids. Plus, creative play in more diverse landscapes increases cognitive and emotional behavior in kids (something cleaning and cooling the air also does).

I've written about this in all of my books, including the new one coming out in 2027. I've shared titles of books and research on these topics found in the appendix of my books.

But it doesn't matter. We're a very propagandized culture. Who benefits from stoking our fear of nature and wildness? What is less healthy -- being bitten by a bug or walking on treated lawn with no cover from hot summer sun? (That might depend a bit on allergies perhaps.)

You're here because to some degree you already agree with most things posted on this page about habitat, lawns, climate, extinction, etc. And while a lawn converted to native plant garden is not a religion that needs to meet a quota, we do need more of us woken to the issues, about acting locally, and seeing how empowered we are and in turn how liberated we can be when we start rethinking pretty.

Because lawn is a very, very recent phenomenon in western society, and especially in the United States. And especially suburbs and lawns within suburbs. Lawn hasn't always been the way. It's not intractable. It's also not sustainable. Similar things can be said about governments and laws and policies and thus beliefs.

We are transient -- and perhaps that transience makes us clutch to the most simplified narratives in our lives all that much more. Stability is not found in the lines of a green carpet, but in the organic free-form of fractal equations replicating with the power of sunlight and the interdependent community of wildlife that has literally given us our lives.

Plant something. I dare you. And prairie up in all the ways.

Happy National Prairie Day!

It's been just 3 weeks since install and you can already see growth. Amazing. Of course, lots of good rain in that period too, which is shocking after a bone dry winter. Touched up with 700+ plants today and will check in again in one month (the total was about 11,500 plugs).

During this month's Prairie Upping monthly Q&A I went over the plant list and some design methodology, along with other sundry. You can still watch that recording (and all 4 recordings so far this year) by signing up at ye olde website.