Gardening in the Time of Climate Change

 

Designing and planting gardens for butterfly habitat is my passion project. I have certainly challenged myself by living in homes in three different continents over the last decade. But now that I’m back home in Virginia, I’ve rededicated myself to recreating my previous garden habitat, long destroyed by tenant neglect and aggressive invasives encroaching from all sides. 

Almost one year in, I’m finding that establishing a garden is more difficult and more expensive than it was a decade ago. The native plant craze has taken off, which I’m grateful for, but the price of high quality native plant material has skyrocketed. Luckily I have friends and neighbors who I helped in the past and they are now helping me. In exchange for hard labor in their gardens, I get the cast-off progeny from their successful habitats. I’ll take anything, from violets to ironweed, as long as it’s native, and especially if it’s a butterfly host plant. 

One of the unexpected challenges to establishing my garden, and it’s far from being lush so far, is the changing climate. The rain storms bring more rain in shorter times than in the past, leading to erosion and lost seedlings. The droughts are hotter and dryer, and last longer than I ever remember. I have to water seedlings, transplants and trees more often than ever before, just to keep them from expiring from one day to the next. This was surprising to me, because one of the main reasons I was originally drawn to native plants was their resilience to local soil and weather conditions. Now plants need more care, mulch and water.

The biggest disappointment to me this time around has been the lack of butterflies specifically, and bugs and birds generally. I was slightly  encouraged this month by assisting in the local annual butterfly count. The organizers know the best locations to find butterflies and we did see quite a few. This experience bolstered my enthusiasm and focused my efforts to support our local butterflies by providing the plants and conditions they need.

Just yesterday, I took a video inventory of my wildlife garden strip along the side of my property. Several of the perennials are in bloom, and I wanted to capture them before the approaching Tropical Storm Ophelia arrived, promising 50 straight hours of rainfall. While we need the water, I just wish it would arrive in more manageable quantity and frequency. My county is shifting how they will charge residents for storm water management, creating a new Stormwater Utility. Each household’s rate is determined by the ratio of hardscape to permeable surface, as determined by satellite image. Residents can apply for credits by doing certain stormwater retention practices, one of which is creating wildlife habitat. This is the reason I’m documenting the garden. Hopefully I can get a discount, but my overarching motivation is to support the butterflies, pollinators, birds, chipmunks, spiders, voles, and other things I don’t even know about (flying squirrels, I hope?). Life depends on it.

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So, in my yard this year I’ve seen one Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly in my wild cherry tree, and one Monarch on a potted Lantana that I was babysitting for my neighbor while she was on vacation. That’s it. That’s all. Birds I have many, but mostly because I’ve hung a bird feeder under the oak tree, and added two bird baths. Today, even during the windy downpour, I’ve spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, cardinals, doves, housefinches, sparrows, chickadees and titmice. But honestly, during the two months I refused to fill the feeder, to let the groundcover recover, the birds were nowhere to be found. I hope that by diligently restoring my backyard wildlife habitat, the birds will return because of the nuts, berries, seeds, caterpillars, spiders and cover that they need, not for the junk food they crave. 

In scant one year, I’ve managed to purchase, adopt and start from seed at least a few of each of these native plants:

New York Ironweed, Blue Lobelia, Lungwort, Cardinal Flower, St. John’s Wort, Blue-eyed Grass, Sensitive Fern, Ostrich Fern, Golden Ragwort, Elephant’s Foot, Foxglove Beardtongue, Virginia Strawberry, Bluestem Goldenrod, White Wood Aster, Geum, Wild Ginger, Wild Petunia, Virginia Creeper, Dwarf Crested Iris, Common Milkweed, Obedient Plant, Witch Hazel, Elderberry Mountain Laurel, Joe-Pye Weed, Boneset, Pawpaw, Bee Balm and Purple Coneflower. Still surviving from my old garden are Sweetbay Magnolia, Mapleleaf Virburnum, Winterberry Holly, Inkberry Holly, Silky Dogwood, River Birch and Burr Oak. It’s an impressive list in writing, but when I look out my window, it looks pretty bare. I know it will take another year or two to get established. I’m just impatient. 

Recipe: Tacos from leftover BBQ

 Not a Garden Post! Well, if you use your own kale, lettuce, garlic, tomatoes and onions, then it is!

I made tacos tonight and they were so good that I wanted to post my own recipe to Pinterest so I could remember how I made them. I don’t know how to create a post on Pinterest, only repost from the internet. So I’m using my own blog to create the post and then repost to Pinterest. If this inspires you to cook this using produce from your own garden, then my work is done here. 

Buy way too much BBQ pork at a shack by the road in the country. Eat it for two days. Realize you still have half of it. Saute onions and garlic in oil. Add BBQ with some of the leftover sauce and vinegar that came with it. Add Some salsa for moisture and flavor. When it’s hot and flavors are married, remove it to a warming bowl. Add some olive oil to the pan drippings and saute shredded kale until it’s roasted. Sprinkle it with sea salt and cayenne pepper. Remove it to a warming bowl. On a hot oiled griddle, turn over corn tortillas with tongs until they are hot enough to melt cheese but not crispy at all. Sprinkle grated cheese on each one. Add a spoonful of BBQ pork to each one. Add a spoonful of sautéed kale to each one. Monitor the tortillas carefully. Just before they get crispy, fold each one in half with the tongs. Let them sit a minute more folded, until they just start to firm up on the bottom. Remove to a serving platter with a spatula.

Garnish with leftover cole slaw, chopped lettuce, tomato, BBQ sauce and vinegar, and salsa.

Back Home and Restoring My Native Garden

Since I’ve been back in town after more than a decade of traveling around the world, one of my primary hobbies has been restoring my garden after years of neglect. My renters took great care of the house while we were away, but the garden had gotten over-run with English ivy, bush honeysuckle, and masses of prolific little clumps of Spanish Bluebell, Hyathinthoides hispanica (also comes in white, which is even more invasive!) After years of research and training as a tree steward, I became convinced that growing a local native perennial woodland habitat in my yard was the way to go. Because native plants are adapted to our soil and climate, they require less maintenance and watering once they are established. If they are planted in the right spot, they keep coming back year after year. Native plants evolved with native wildlife. The plants provide food and shelter for wildlife including migratory birds and essential pollinators. Native plants and trees can prevent erosion on a hillside as well as or better than English ivy, which is a highly invasive non-native species that chokes out native plants and kills trees if it is allowed to climb up the trunk. Alternatives to English ivy are listed in the brochure ―Native Alternatives to English Ivy‖ published by Plant Nova Natives. Here is a link to the article: https://www.plantnovanatives.org/groundcovers  

According to the EPA, converting a traditional formal landscape and lawn to a natural landscape saves time and money and reduces water pollution, flooding, air pollution, noise pollution and your carbon footprint. It takes a while to establish a native garden. Do it little by little. Each year, convert a little more grass to garden. Each year leave a little wider leaf mulch area below every tree. And each year have fun by adding a few native plants, shrubs or trees. So far my best growers have been golden ragwort (a great English ivy alternative), sedum ternatum, greenheaded coneflower and purple aster. I haven’t had much luck with my phlox or my miniature Joe-Pye Weed, but I haven’t given up hope.

One of my greatest inspirations throughout my journey with native plants has been Douglas Tallamy, entomology professor at the University of Delaware. I met him at a conference just before leaving to go overseas, and he encouraged me to spread the message of the importance of native plants to sustaining life in self, everywhere in the world I go. And I believe I have done so. Read Doug Tallamy’s newest book, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

Back Block Biome

This is a project that I dreamed up during my TreeSteward training in 2008. I never got the chance to implement it because in 2012 we got transferred to Rome, and then Uruguay, and then Kosovo. Well, ten years later, I’ve just returned home. My garden is a complete shambles. Most of the native plants are gone, replaced by the invasive bush honeysuckle and English ivy that surround my yard. I’ve spent the end of fall and most of the spring beating it back, and planning the new design for my native plant garden. 

I never forgot about this Back Block Biome project, and little by little I’m co-opting the neighbors in my block to join me in creating a native plant oasis in the growing city where we live. This is more important than ever, since our neighborhood is quickly giving way to infill development, cottage tear downs that are replaced with massive mansions, only after removing every tree, shrub and blade of grass from the lots. So here, mostly to inspire myself to implement my project, I post here the plan. I’ll update the post with how successful I’ve been.

The Back Block Biome Project

The effects and success of gardening for biodiversity can be increased by joining with your neighbors to plant a variety of native plants, shrubs and trees to create a larger area for insects, birds and pollinators to inhabit. I've found that when I'm outside planting and maintaining my garden, my neighbors stop by and talk about what I'm up to. When they see the bees, birds and butterflies enjoying my tiny habitat, they're often inspired to try planting native plants as well.

Many of us live in urban or suburban neighborhoods where we have adjoining back yards in our block. A lot of people think that native plants are rangey, scrubby, leggy or pushy.  Sometimes they do spread out because they are so well suited to their native habitat, and also because sustainable gardening techniques don't advise using herbicides and pesticides, and so plants tend to thrive. Because of this opinion that some native plants are misbehaved, I advise people to relegate some large native perennials like Joe Pye Weed to the back corner of their yard.  This made me realize that if everyone in a backyard block did this, we would have an impressive contiguous area of habitat. Nobody has enough room or money to plant host plants and nectar plants for every pollinator in our area. But we can collaborate to provide habitat for the butterflies, bees, birds and bunnies that we all want to support and enjoy. 

I imagined holding a Back Block Biome party at my house, to explain my idea and share a list of plants and techniques to create an interconnected native wildlife habitat. 

Here is what I mean for a Back Block Biome.

For illustration purposes, I searched on Google Maps and chose a block behind the school where I used to teach. It's suburban/commercial, with single family houses and a couple of restaurants in the block. There's also a park and a library next to the school yard. I thought it might be cool to invite the restaurants, school and library to get involved in the project as well as a community support project. I marked in green the adjoining backyard area where native plants could be planted so birds and butterflies could benefit from a larger habitat area than if just one family did wildlife gardening.

I've learned that native habitat gardening is contagious.  Once neighbors see you enjoying your yard full of lovely plants that attract butterflies and birds, they will be interested in joining in. If you live in an area with adjoining yards, consider organizing a planting project. You'll get to know your neighbors better and help wildlife as well.  

When I taught at the school in this picture, we did an annual planting and clean up day. Teachers and parents worked together to make the school a nice inviting place. After everyone worked together, we had a good feeling of belonging to a community.

I hope you like this idea and give it a try. Use the links on the sidebar of this blog to get started on how to choose plants for butterflies and other wildlife. Hold a meeting or a party and share the information with your neighbords to create your Back Block Biome. Have fun and let me know how it goes.