In 1996, famed writer and NPR commentator Baily White published a searing short story in “Mama Makes Up Her Mind: And Other Dangers of Southern Living” about a man named Joe. As the story goes, Joe loved his wife dearly. He created stunning gardens for her enjoyment but uses a great deal of pesticides to achieve a look of perfection. Within a relatively short time, no birds or insects remained in the eerily quiet gardens. Then, sadly, his wife died of cancer. More sadly, he never understood why.
The story is illustrative of efforts homeowners can make to get past ideas of visual perfection and move toward creating greater health for the planet as a whole. Two area residents, both of whom work with the organization Greening Greenfield, have clear and easy guidance for those looking to make even small changes.
“Recently, I’ve become more aware of the loss of pollinators,” said Dorothea Sotiros, a master gardener. Sotiros, who lives at Greenfield Commons, has created a pollinator garden where there was a dying tree and some patchy lawn.
“With the addition of this garden, we are hoping to create a corridor that runs from here on Deerfield Street to the Energy Park,” she said. Sotiros explained that pollinators need to be able to forage an area for food and then be able to move on to fresh sources.
“Unlike people, they know not to use all the resources in one spot,” she said.
Sotiros described the plants and shrubs in the newly created garden as chokecherry, goldenrod, asters, nodding onion, bee balm, mountain mint, catmint and New Jersey tea. She went on to explain another benefit to replacing lawn space with gardens is the effects on soil and water run-off.
“As the roots grow into the soil, the soil begins to absorb water better. When water is absorbed better, there is less run-off into streams of pollutants. Also, when there is more water being held in the soil, you will be less affected by drought,” she said. Sotiros said the plants were specifically chosen to not only provide forage for pollinators but to provide berries and hiding spots/nesting places for birds. All but two of the plants for the Greenfield Commons garden are native to New England.
In terms of wanting to get started shrinking your lawn, it’s fine to start small. Everything helps, Sotiros said. She said around September is the time to select the area you’d like to transform. Any gardener who has tried to make a garden in a lawn knows how much work that can be. Sotiros said the goal is to kill the grass, so lay down cardboard, carpeting or even a thick layer of newspaper in the area selected.
“If you do this later, the grass is dormant, so you won’t kill it and you are right back where you started in the spring,” she said. Once planting season arrives, you can select the plants to replace the lawn. Greening Greenfield has a series of lists online that help gardeners select plants for a variety of conditions or what you would especially like to attract (butterflies, birds, etc.).
Nancy Hazard, retired director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, had other suggestions for shrinking your lawn.
“One of the simpler things you can do is to just plant trees and shrubs. Planting shrubs is simple, fast and is the least labor-intensive,” she said.
Hazard added that the other benefits include shade (which will kill lawn), leaves to nourish the soil and create habitat for some pollinators, and the addition of flowers and berries for pollinators and birds to forage.
“Be a lazy gardener. Rake less, mow less. You could mow the front one week and the back the next, that way, no one will notice,” she said with a laugh. Hazard said you could mow a little more often in spring when the grass is growing fast and every two to three weeks later in the season when natural growth slows.
Hazard recommended the Homegrown National Park website for education and resources. In particular, Hazard said the work of Doug Tallamy is especially useful and profound.
“One thing he said was if we all decided to shrink our lawn, there would be more acreage than all of the national parks combined,” Hazard said.
Tallamy heads his webpage noting, “We are at a critical point of losing so many species from local ecosystems that their ability to produce the oxygen, clean water, flood control, pollination, pest control, carbon storage, etc., that is the ecosystem services that sustain us, will become seriously compromised.” As Sotiros noted, “We are completely dependent on plants for food and oxygen — kinda critical.”
On the Greening Greenfield website is the 70 percent challenge, which provides a lot of good information. The title is derived from a study conducted by research scientist Desiree Narango, who discovered that 70 percent of the vegetation near a chickadee nest must be native to the Northeast to provide enough protein-rich caterpillars to feed their young.
Also noted on the website is a 2014 study done by urban ecologists Susannah Lerman and Joan Milam, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst regarding the effects of shrinking lawns in Springfield. The study showed that increasing the lawn height to 3 inches, mowing less often and leaving lawns untreated by herbicides led to “documenting 110 native bee species,72 species of flowering planted, two state records and six new county records for bee sightings on participant lawns.”
For more information, visit greeninggreenfieldma.org or homegrownnationalpark.org.
Cris Carl is an avid local gardener, licensed therapist and certified herbalist. She is an experienced journalist who has written for the Recorder for many years. You can reach her at cstormfox57@ gmail.com.