Doug Tallamy’s Habitat Restoration Story and How You Can Help Save Nature

Introduction

Doug: There’s a lot of people that are upset with the biodiversity crisis and all the other things happening on the planet, and they feel powerless. Because, you know, what can one person do well? One person can manage the piece of the earth that we claim we own. And that’s good enough, because there’s a lot of us. So, if we all did that, we’d be in good shape.

Shannon: In today’s episode, we’re talking with Dr. Doug Tallamy. Doug has been an entomologist at the University of Delaware for 44 years and is the author of such well-known books as Bringing Nature Home, Nature’s Best Hope, and The Nature of Oaks. He is also the co-founder of Homegrown National Parks.

Nature isn’t just “out there” in some pristine, far-off location. It’s all around us, including right outside our doors.

Hi, my name is Shannon Trimboli and I help busy homeowners in the eastern U.S. create thriving backyard ecosystems they can enjoy and be proud of.

Welcome to the Backyard Ecology podcast.

Hi Doug. Welcome to the podcast

Doug: It is a pleasure to be here.

Shannon: I am so excited to have you here and to be able to talk with you today. And on behalf of all our listeners who have found inspiration and guidance from your books, I just want to say thank you so much for writing them and for bring awareness to all of this.

Doug: You are welcome.

The Story of Doug Tallamy’s First House

Shannon: And speaking of which, you’ve got a new book and we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. But first I want to hear a little bit about your story. Because I think it’s really easy for us to get caught up in all of the great work that you’re doing professionally with your books and your presentations and your research and everything like that. And it’s really easy to forget that you are doing all of these things that you’re encouraging us to do as well, which means you have your own personal stories of triumphs and challenges and lessons learned. And I think it could be really inspiring and fun to hear some of those stories from you.

Doug: You want to hear about my very first house?

Shannon: That would be great. Did you start off by, just going, “Oh, let’s plant native plants for pollinators and wildlife,” or did you go with the same thing that so many of us have done, which is planting all the normal stuff when you first bought your home?

Doug: I got my job at the University of Delaware in 1981 as a freshly minted PhD with a little time as a postdoc. But I was trained in entomology. We didn’t know anything about plants. I didn’t know anything about invasive species. Nobody was talking about invasive species back then.

So yes, we moved into a development. We chose it because it had a lot of trees. We liked that. But, we did the same things that everybody else did. We put in the Pachysandra. Planted the non-native rhododendrons. And, you know, we were young, busy, two kids, just trying to get tenure and make it all work. I was not thinking much beyond my own little world at that point.

Even though as grad student, we had learned about host plant specialization. I had the tools I needed, to put it all together, minus some real important things like the urgency and the decline of biodiversity. Nobody was measuring it back then. E.O. Wilson hadn’t written his paper about the little things that run the world. So, it really was a different world.

And, I was like everybody else. But you know, that gave me an advantage because I understand where people are coming from. I was there too. And that helps in talking about the need to do this. I know where you’re coming from.

Shannon: Exactly. And that’s why I think starting with that and hearing some of those stories could be so helpful for many of our listeners just to know that, “Hey, Doug did it. Doug had those problems. He got through it. Maybe I can too.” And we’ve got the advantage of being able to learn from you and so many others who are also now doing this. Examples that you didn’t have. So, you had challenges that we didn’t have.

I mean, I came from a wildlife biology degree. And even when we bought our first home, my husband has a wildlife biology degree too, we still did the same thing. We planted the way my mother planted, my grandmother planted, the way our friends were planting. We didn’t make that connection between everything we learned with habitat and stuff out in the wilds with our own yards and our own property.

Doug: Yeah, we grew up in a culture that has humans here and nature someplace else. We never talked about the fact that we couldn’t coexist. It just was assumed. We don’t coexist. The nature is someplace else. So, that’s what has to change. There is no someplace else anymore.

What Inspired the Change in Your Thinking?

Shannon: Exactly. So, what inspired your change of view there and how did you progress to where you’re at now?

Doug: Well, that happened when Cindy and I moved into our current house in Oxford, Pennsylvania. It was a farm that was broken up into 10 acre lots, and we said we’re gonna get one of those lots.

Well, it was an old farm. It had been farmed for over 300 years. The soil was exhausted. Most of the topsoil was down in the holler. And the last thing they did was mow it for hay. Well, when you mow for hay in southeast Pennsylvania, you’re mowing the root stocks of all the invasive plants. You’re mowing autumn olive and multiflora rose and Oriental bittersweet, and on and on.

Well, of course, when the property transferred and we actually built the house, it was three years out of mowing. And by the time we moved in, all those root stocks had grown back and it was 10 acres of solid invasives. That’s what got my attention about invasive plants is that, “okay, this is an issue.” Because you walk around and you notice the insects are not eating those plants. So, this must be an issue for the food web.

What surprised me was that everybody else wasn’t already working on this. I mean, we had learned about host plant specialization. There’s no way our insects are going to specialize on Asian plants. So, surely there must be a lot of people working on it. But it turned out they weren’t.

And that’s what changed the direction of my research was realizing that this is an open niche. It’s a serious issue. It’s getting worse every day. We’re still selling these plants in our nurseries. So yeah, on a dime, I stopped looking at how cucumber beetles choose their mates and started working on invasive plants and their impact on food webs.

First Steps on Your Property

Shannon: So what was the first thing you did when you got on your property and you made that decision. How did you first tackle it?

Doug: Uh, we actually made the decision because there’s always undergrads at schools saying they want to try research. And I said, “yeah, come to my house and measure insect use of native and non-native plants.” But first, go to the literature and see what’s been done.

So, this one young lady came back to me a couple days later and said, “I can’t find anything.”

I said, “All right, I’ll look.” So, I looked, and there’s a big long list of why invasive plants aren’t such a great idea, but wrecking the food web was not on that list. And that’s when I said, “Hmm.. Maybe I’ll write a grant.”

So, I actually wrote an NSF grant and a USDA grant. And I got both of them, which is unheard of for me, but it told me my peers were not thinking about this. So, that that was step one, actually do some research to measure the impact. The fact that there was an impact was obvious, but how big an impact, what was, what was it doing to other trophic levels? How are the birds reacting?

We’re still working on this. These are big questions that are difficult to answer. But that’s what got the research started. What interested me… oh, I remember what happened! So, we used to have a woman in the college that walked around. She was in the ag editor’s office, and her job was to take what faculty members were doing and take it to the public – one person.

So, I met her in the hall shortly after we started that research and she said, “Are you doing anything interesting?”

I said, “Everything we do is interesting.” I said, no, we just started a project looking at how insects use native or non-native plants.

She said, “Well, why are you doing that?”

I said, “Well, it looks like they can’t use non-native plants.”

She said, “Well, that’s good, right, because we don’t want any insects.”

I said, “No, that’s not good. We actually do want insects.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s what birds eat.”

“Oh, okay.” So, she goes away and she writes this article, “Tallamy says birds are disappearing.” I didn’t say that. No data. And it hit the AP. So, immediately I started getting requests for talks from bird clubs and other people.

We hadn’t started the research. We had no data. This was before PowerPoints. We just had slides. But anyway, those were the first talks and I essentially presented the hypothesis – this is why this could be a real issue. And then we started getting data and we added to that and people said, “We want to read about this.” There was interest in this.

You know, I had studied insect parental care and sexual selection, mate choice, all those things. Which was interesting, but nobody cared. The public did not care how a cucumber beetle chose its mate. And the public did care about this and that. I liked that. I mean, you know, finally I’m doing something that seems to matter.

I knew it mattered ecologically. So, it felt fulfilling to me. But the public cared about it. So they said, “We want to read something.” And I said, “There’s nothing to read.” You know, we hadn’t finished the research, hadn’t published any papers, and I knew they wouldn’t read them anyway. So, for over a year there was nothing to read.

Finally I said, “I will write a pamphlet.” And that was to just protect myself. Well, the pamphlet became Bringing Nature Home. It got a little long, and that was the first book, but it was really a demand by the public. I wouldn’t have ever written a book. You know, writing a book’s too scary. But you can write a pamphlet for the public. That’s okay.

That’s how it all got going. And then it just kept going. First of all, I didn’t think anybody would read it, and that’d be the end of that. I was wrong about that. They keep wanting more and more and more. And so people say, “You changed my life.”

I say, “I changed my life.” I mean, it was a hundred percent change and we’re still doing it so.

What Does Your Property Look Like Now?

Shannon: That’s wonderful. So, what does your property look like now and how long have you been doing it? I mean, what’s our time span here?

Doug: Okay, we moved in the year 2000. So now it’s 2000…what is it…25. So, July will be the 25th year. Our property now we’ve managed it so that, you know, I wanted to keep a field up in one corner, but the rest we’re going to put the eastern deciduous forest back. And we have. And it was much easier than I thought.

When I say we, I mean the blue jays and the squirrels and the seed bank and me. It came back like crazy. Now I garden with a chainsaw because I’m losing all my light. We planted so many things. As a matter of fact, we heat with wood in a wood stove entirely from trees that have grown on our property since we moved in the year 2000. So, it looks like a forest.

We’ve got wood thrush breeding here. That’s a forest bird. It does not look like it was mowed for hay. People don’t believe it. You should see how fast those tulip trees grow, or oaks that I planted as acorns. It was probably 2001 when I planted them. They’re 60, 70 feet tall now! Oaks. So that was the one thing, you know, I planted too closely together and I really do have to start to manage it so that it’s a functional forest and not just a tree lot.

Shannon: How big is this property?

Doug: It’s 10 acres. It’s a little bit of a challenge when you’re talking to people with a quarter acre because they say, “Well, it only works on your property because it’s so big.”

And, of course, the more the property have the easier it is. There’s no doubt about it. But your quarter acre is attached to somebody else’s quarter acre, which is attached to somebody else’s quarter acre. And the object is to not have you be the only person that restores your property. We want everybody to do it. We want it to become the cultural norm. And then you have enough space to make it work.

Shannon: Yeah, exactly. And so often that one person on the quarter acre lot can become the inspiration for others and it can grow. I know a lot of people that have been that inspiration and done that.

Doug: Yes. They become models.

How Much Help Did You Have?

Shannon: So, you mentioned having grad students coming out and doing research on your property. But you also mentioned that you are teaching, you’re doing research, you’ve got a family. And that’s something that I think a lot of people struggle with, is how to juggle everything with careers and family and friends and all those other life things that come up. And then to also try and figure out how to do habitat work on your property.

So, were you primarily, you and your family, doing it yourselves on top of everything else, or were you bringing in a lot of help? How are you getting the work done?

Doug: You know, the biggest work demand on the property was controlling the invasives. And I’ll give 95% of the credit to Cindy, my wife, who loves being outside. And she was out there every day, winter, summer, it didn’t matter. Whacking away. And she got control. That made a huge difference.

I’ve got a slide in one of my talks, because that’s a challenge. People say, “I’ve got a lot of property, I can’t do this.” And I show little old Cindy there in the midst of vines and everything else. I said, “She did it.” You just pick at it a little bit each day and it gets done faster than you’d think. So that was the biggest labor problem. And no, we never had a labor force of grad students or anybody else coming out and doing that.

Now, you know, I’m old. I’m 73 now. So, in 2000, when we moved in and started this, our kids were already out of the house. We weren’t trying to raise little kids and do all that at the same time. When I was doing that, I was like, everybody else. I did my career in the back of bleachers while the kids were in swimming or football or this or that. And, it would’ve been too hard doing it when you’re raising the family.

This is what we did in empty nest syndrome. You know, we filled our nest with all the things that colonize. It was so much fun to record the different species that came to our property once we started putting plants back. I remember when the oak tree in my front yard, which I wrote The Nature of Oaks about. It was three feet tall in the first crotch. There was a field sparrow nest in the middle of it, and I hadn’t even started to look at the caterpillars on those trees yet.

So, restoration works. Nature is really resilient, and I’ve got a lot of examples of people with really small properties – a 10th of an acre or smaller. Where it works. So, don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a big piece of property.

But I know where there’s a lot of big pieces of property. It’s all the land conservancies and the parks and preserves around us. They’re all over the place and they don’t have enough people to manage them. So, if you really want to get involved in a big management, just volunteer, they will love you.

Shannon: Oh yes. They’re always looking for volunteers to help. And so often… well, invasive species management is always a part of that. And it often gets looked at as pulling weeds. And it’s important, but you lose that enthusiasm. But it is such an important thing.

Deer Overpopulation and Invasive Species

Doug: We’re learning a lot about that because we have spent the last 20 years trying to manage invasive species. Fewer nurseries are selling them now. We’re making a little bit of progress that way. But it’s still a huge, huge problem. And I have finally figured out why. It’s a huge problem because at the same time we have way too many deer.

We’ve got deer over abundance, and those deer eat the natives and they don’t eat the non-natives. So, the idea that multiflora rose and autumn olive and all those are super plants, and that they can out compete anything. No, they can’t. It’s just that the deer don’t eat them when they’re little and they do eat the oaks and everything else. When you fence out the deer and make deer exclosures, our native plants are quite competitive.

But, you know, a two inch oak that’s just popped its head above the ground cannot compete with the deer that goes munch. And they love them. So, the competitive balance is vastly tipped towards the things the deer don’t like. So, when you’re managing invasive plants, you’ve got to manage the deer at the same time. Because what comes back? It’s more invasive that the deer don’t eat. So, that’s our challenge today. Only took 20 years to figure that out.

How to Do This As You Age

Shannon: Well, we’re always learning. There’s always something else.

You brought up something that I think is an important question. You mentioned you are getting older and we’ve got a lot of people… I mean, we all get older and it’s pretty obvious for anybody that’s watching the video that there’s a little bit of an age difference between us.

So, this is something that you’re going to have more firsthand experience with because I know we do have quite a few listeners who are nearing retirement age, beyond retirement age, some of them quite a bit beyond retirement age and they’re interested in this. They want to do it, but they’ve also got some valid concerns as they continue to age. Are they going to be able to keep doing it? How do they do this realistically and make a difference? Do you have any thoughts for them or suggestions for them?

Doug: Well, I always say that baby boomers, I pick on baby boomers because yes, they’re retiring now, they’ve got extra time. They’re looking for something to do. Most of them are still in relatively good health and a lot of them have some money. I think that is the most important group in the country in terms of conservation, because it’s this giant workforce. They’re enthusiastic.

And I say this because I look at who comes to my talks, I look at the audience, you know, it’s 80% baby boomers. They’re saying, “Yeah, gimme a challenge.” So, that’s good. Stay tuned. It’s not going to last forever. That’s right. So, I’m 73 now. 10 years from now and I’ll be 83. Right. We’re not going to be conquering the world then. But that’s a valuable 10 years. You know, let’s make it count. Let’s make it count on the ground. Let’s make it count how we vote. Let’s do all the things we need.

A lot of people say you’ve got to educate the kids. Yes, they’re right. We do. We have to change the culture from kindergarten on up, but we can’t kick the can down the road to the next generation. This has to be done now. We need the next generation to pick up where we leave off. But, it’s not just our kids, it’s us.

Shannon: Yes, exactly. And if you’ve got a smaller property, then for some of those people that have those quarter acres, 10 acres, the smaller properties, that’s where it becomes even easier, I think as you age, if you’re on one of those to do a lot more. Because, we’ve got 40 acres right now and we have no plans of leaving.

So, assuming nothing changes, there’s going to become a time when we’re not going to be able, my husband and I, aren’t going to be out there running chainsaws and managing the woodlots and the fields the same way that we can now. We’ve got a bit to go there. We’ve got a lot we can do before then. But I think that’s one of those times when you can go, “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t have all that property” for some people.

Doug: Yeah, it makes it something that’s manageable.

There’s a lot of people that are upset with the biodiversity crisis and all the other things happening on the planet, and they feel powerless. Because, you know, what can one person do well? One person can manage the piece of the earth that we claim we own. And that’s good enough, because there’s a lot of us. So, if we all did that, we’d be in good shape.

We need to create, it’s starting to happen, but we need to rapidly create a new industry that I’ll call ecological landscaping, ecological gardeners, whatever you want to call them. Instead of the Mow, Blow, and Go, guys, we hire the people that know how to take care of your property. Because most people don’t garden. Even now, they just hire somebody. You got to have somebody to hire so they don’t have to worry about plant choice. They don’t have to worry about maintenance. You just hire these people just like you hire your lawn care people.

You’ve got 40 acres. We need to have companies you can hire later on when you’re not out there to take care of it. It doesn’t take care of itself.

Shannon: No.

Doug: It would. If we hadn’t brought in all these invasives and gotten rid of all the predators and everything, it would’ve taken care of itself. And the more we can fix that, the easier it’ll be. But right now, everything needs maintenance. That lawn that everybody loves. It needs maintenance.

Opinion of Neighbors

Shannon: Oh yeah, exactly.

So, what did your neighbors think when you first started doing this? Because that’s another concern I hear a lot of times is, “Oh no, my neighbors. What are they going to think?” And “I’m in a homeowner’s association.”

But even when you’ve got a little bit of property, you still have neighbors. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a homeowner’s association. And neighbors will sometimes make it quite clear if they don’t like something. Or if they like it.

So, what were your neighbor’s thoughts in those early days?

Doug: Yeah, in the early days… Well, first of all, we have a huge advantage over a lot of other people, and that is that our property’s on a flag lot. So, the driveway’s an eighth of a mile long, and then you have the property. And I do have an immediate neighbor who could see everything, but you can’t see us from the street. So, we don’t have the social pressure that a typical suburbanite has.

But what about that neighbor? He came walking down my driveway, and he said, “Why don’t you mow this?” His name was Sam. He was my good neighbor, Sam.

I said, “There’s a lot of things living in there, Sam, and I like those things. I want to promote them.”

And he kind of scratched his head and walked back up. He also had 10 acres and it was like a golf course. He put 32 Bradford pears on them. There wasn’t a single native plant on his 10 acres. And that was good management. You know, he was a good citizen. I was a slob. But he was, you know, he was nice.

But he moved. And the people who bought the property just had a different mindset. They’re a young couple, they’ve got two young girls, and they did not know who I was or what I was doing, but they wanted to make a meadow of that 10 acres. So, after a while we got to know them.

He said, “Who could we hire?”

I said, “You can hire Larry Weaner. You know, he’s a little pricey, but you can hire him.” They did. They hired him the next day. So, now they’re three years into their restoration. And they did it on their own. They do know who I am now, but that was a coincidence. They didn’t say, “Oh, we live next to Doug Tallamy. We’re going to do this.”

So, I’ve got 10 acres. They’ve got 10 acres. It’s now essentially a 20 acre preserve. You know, there’s two houses on there. That’s how it works. That’s really neat. I mean, I’m encouraged to see what now is going to come to this place that wouldn’t have come otherwise, because they’re not reforesting.
It’s a meadow. And that’s great because I don’t have big meadows.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking was that that’s going to increase the biodiversity for both of you. Because they’ve got the meadow and the open areas, and then you’ve got the wooded areas. Oh my gosh. That’s going to be so much fun to watch.

Doug: That’s right. That’s right.

Biggest Win Creating Habitat on Your Property

Shannon: What would you consider your biggest win personally when it comes to creating habitat on your own property?

Doug: The discovery that it works so easily. And that it worked so quickly. We’ve been here 25 years, but it didn’t take 25 years. It was happening in year two and three and four and five and it happened really quickly. So, that surprised me.

Again, the biggest challenge was fighting the things that don’t belong there. It wasn’t putting the things that do belong there back. Most of them came back on their own. And the things that use those things came back on their own. It’s just keeping the plants that do not support the biodiversity at bay. If you can do that, nature restores itself. Then nature can take its course.

That I think that was the biggest win because that provided motivation for me to take this message to other people. I’m not just making it up. It really does work.

Shannon: Right, and you’ve got proof you can show people

Doug: We’ve got proof. That’s right. We’ve been measuring it. We’ve been measuring how life has come back, and I measure it in two ways. The number of breeding birds, so the birds that have bred on our 10 acres, and the bird food they use, which is caterpillars from moths.

So, I count the number of species of moths that are making a living on our property, and I do that by taking their picture. I’ve been doing that for eight years now, and I have recorded 1,337 species of moths on our property, which is 40% of all the moths in the whole state of Pennsylvania, which is 2.9 million acres. So, it works. It works.

And, you know, I got 80 new moth species last year in my eighth year of doing this. So, I’m not near the end. Who knows how many will come in? And those produce the caterpillars that make the bird food, which is what attracts the birds.

I don’t know, they’re all my biggest wins. I just love seeing how the whole picture comes together.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s kind of a mean question. I know. It’s like asking, what’s your favorite plant? What’s your favorite bird or butterfly? I’m like, “Uhh, the one I’m looking at now.”

Doug: Yeah, it’s like, what’s your favorite kid, you know?

Shannon: That’s so exciting to watch that biodiversity come back and to know that you’re still getting new ones. I mean, like you said, 25 years into the whole project and everything you’ve been doing, and you’re still getting new species.

Doug: And you can take credit for it. It’s kind of like playing God. “Look at all the life I have created on my property.” I didn’t create it, but I did put the seeds in that created. And if I hadn’t done that, if I had the mowed lawn, it wouldn’t have happened.

So, you know, you’re in charge of the life around you and it’s a big responsibility. It’s an awesome responsibility. And I wish more people knew they had that responsibility.

Shannon: Yes, and I’m excited because I think a lot of people are recognizing it and realizing it and starting to do something about it.

Doug: Yes. More and more.

Is There Anything You Wish You Had Done Differently on Your Property?

Shannon: So, is there anything that you wish you had done differently on your property?

Doug: Oh, that’s a good question. I have issues that I don’t know what to do with now. Like Japanese stilt grass is an invasive that has come in and covers the whole property. I don’t how to manage it. So, could I have kept it out? I doubt it. It came in, it seemed like in one year, two years. I don’t know if it blew in with seeds, the deer brought it in. I don’t know. So, I’d love to be able to say, “Well, I wish I had done this to keep that out,” but I don’t know what I could have done.

Um, we have a serious deer problem, and we don’t hunt personally. My neighbor, another neighbor who’s moved in, does hunt. And we now allow him to hunt on the property because it’s such a problem. But, you know, he hunts, he gets his bag limit, which is not much, and I look out front and there’s nine deer standing there. So, it’s not controlling the issue. I wish we could get a handle on that, because that’s a really frustrating issue. You plant a plant, you nurse it through, you get a beech tree that’s six feet tall, and either the voles girdle it or the deer chop it down to nothing in one winter. That’s really frustrating.

You know, coast to coast there are too many deer and it’s an issue for people all over the place. So, I wish I had a solution to that and then I could say, “Oh, I could have done that differently.” But, but I don’t have solutions to either one at this point.

Otherwise, I don’t know. I think we’ve been really lucky. I was really lucky to marry Cindy who liked getting control of invasives because I didn’t have time to do the job that she’s done. And that’s key. If you don’t get rid of them, it doesn’t happen. So, yeah, I’m not sure what I would’ve done differently.

You know, what I would have done differently is discover this 30 years earlier when I… you know, now I need to be able to see things well and I need to be able to hear. I can’t hear and my eyesight’s going. So, discovering all of this when I was younger could have been a lot more productive. That would’ve been good.

Shannon: And if you ever figure out the silt grass issue, tell us, please. Because it came in and took over our woods and our grass. I mean, in the backyard it’s pretty shady, and that’s our primary grass in many parts of the backyard. It’s now stilt grass.

Doug: People say mow it or spray it. I can’t do either way. You spray it, you kill everything. I can’t mow throughout. I can mow little patches, but not the 10 acres. And then that kills everything too.

I want a disease. I need a stilt, grass disease. Species specific.

Next Steps on Your Property

Shannon: So, what’s next on your property? Are you kind of getting into that maintenance and management stage? Are you planning on doing new stuff?

Doug: Oh, I always try to add new plant species. But again, with the deer, it’s an issue. If I don’t cage it, I don’t have it. So, that gets discouraging. But if I get the opportunity, I do that.

I garden now with the chainsaw because, we have lost our light in a lot of places. And, I want to open it back up. You know, a savanna type landscape is the most diverse, and we’re getting closed canopy, heavily shaded woods where there’s no understory. Well, there’s no understory because of the deer, but because of the shade too. And I’d like to open that up a little bit.

So yeah, what I need to do is retire so I have the time to manage this property properly. That’s the next step.

Shannon: It sounds like you’re in a similar phase as us. I mean, we’ve got the old fields as well as the woods, but the woodlots have all become closed canopy. We want to open them up to be more savanna-ish. So we’re getting ready to start with the gardening with the chains. I like that phrase.

As well as dealing with all the invasive species. I think if it’s invasive in Kentucky, we’ve got it. There’s a few that we don’t have, but most of them we do. I joked with a friend of mine one time who was doing invasive species management. And every time I went into the woods with him, he’d teach me another invasive species that I didn’t know. And then I’d go home and I’d find it on my own property. I joked with him and was like, “I’m not going in the woods with you anymore because you just keep showing me more problems.”

Doug: Yeah, that’s what Ado Leopold said, “An ecological knowledge means it’s a world full of wounds.”

What’s the Most Common Question You Get Asked?

Shannon: But I know that all of these questions that I’ve been asking you are really probably just a drop in the bucket of all the millions of different questions that you’ve been asked over the decades. So, I’m curious, what’s your most common question that you get asked?

Doug: That has changed over the years. For a long time, the most common question was the cultivar question. Are cultivars as good as straight species? Because you go to the nursery and that’s all they sell are cultivars or they call them nativars. That is not an accepted term, but they call them nativars anyway. It’s just a cultivar of a native species. And is it as good? Should they be buying these?

So, we actually did a study, three year common garden experiment, looking at three cultivars or six cultivar traits – common cultivar traits of woody plants. We didn’t do the flowers. So, if you take a tall plant, make it short. If you change green leaves into red or purple leaves, introduce leaf variegation, stuff like that. The only cultivar trait that negatively impacted insects consistently was taking a green leaf and making it red or purple, because you’re loading that leaf with anthocyanins that are feeding deterrents. The others were inconsistent.

So, I would say it depends on what the cultivar trait is. If you take a flower, like a blood root, and make it a double flower, you have changed the reproductive parts of the plant – the pollen and the nectar – into petals. So, it offers nothing to pollinators. It’s beautiful and that’s why people do it. Most of our hydrangeas are all double flowers. They’re very pretty, but they’re not providing anything.

But you know, there are cultivars like, Phlox paniculata Jeana. It was a natural variant found in Georgia, which has twice the flowers of the straight species. And it has twice the pollinators. So, it does depend. It’s not a black and white, all good or all bad issue.

The one thing that is a problem with cultivars, no matter what, is that they’re clonally reproduced so that you don’t lose the trait you’re trying to sell. And that means you’re selling something with zero genetic variability. And we know that’s not a good idea. Particularly in the age of climate change and all the nasty things we’re throwing at our plants. They need as much genetic variability to be able to adapt to these things as possible.

So with that in mind, is buying a cultivar of a native plant better than buying a plant from China? Yes, it is.

Shannon: Well, you said it’s changed over time. What’s your new one?

Doug: Oh, I get a lot of, “How did I get into this?” You even asked that question. You know, “What’s your early life story?” Um, “What gives me hope?” That’s a common question. These days people are looking for some hope. Um, I would say those are the two most common these days.

Practical questions like, you know, “How do you get rid of lawn?” and things like that. But, there’s actually a lot of resources out there that can answer those.

How Can I Help?

Shannon: And your newest book really is about those most common questions that you get asked. Isn’t it?

Doug: It is, yeah. I get questions every day on email, and I still get them every day on email. And these are questions from people who have read the books. They’ve heard the talks. And they still have really good questions. So, these are things I haven’t talked about or written about in the past.

So, I would answer the questions and it was an enormous amount of time. I started to get a little resentful and finally said, “Well, wait a minute. I’ll save these answers, and that will be the new book.” So, the new book is called, How Can I Help? It’s 499 questions with their answers, and they made me cut it down. It was a lot more than that. We actually started calling it Next Steps For Nature. I liked that title, but they changed it at the end. Called it, How Can I Help?

It can be a first exposure book I guess because it’s all in there. But, it’s really for the people that have embraced this and they just want more knowledge.

Shannon: That’ll be really exciting for people to be able to read that and see it. And if you had more questions, maybe it’s volume one and volume two.

Doug: It could be. It could be.

Thoughts on Climate Change and Planting Native Plants

Shannon: And I don’t know if this relates to any of the questions that are in your book, but you kind of alluded to it a minute ago. And it’s something that I’ve been getting asked about a lot more often recently. That is thinking about climate change and how do we, or should we be thinking about climate change as we’re trying to create these thriving backyard ecosystems and planting native plants and doing all these things.

Doug: Yeah, that is a common question these days. Usually what people want to know is, should we be planting plants from the south up north because the planet’s going to warm and they’ll be happy in a hundred years. That’s called assisted migration. And I’m not a big fan.

I’m not a big fan because the planet is not gradually warming. It is if you average everything out. But what’s happening is the climate is becoming more variable. So, the jet stream’s going up and down and up and down. And when it goes up, it’s warmer than it ought to be. But when it goes down, it’s colder than it ought to be.

We’re in southeast Pennsylvania. We have had a very cold winter this year. Baton Rouge, Louisiana had nine inches of snow and it got down to nine degrees. The jet stream dipped down a couple years ago. There was a huge freeze in Texas that that killed even native plants all the way down into Mexico. If we start moving southern plants up, they’re going to have to experience the polar vortex that comes every single winter now. And they’re not going to make it. They’re going to die.

There’s that. And then there’s also, it depends on how far you move these plants. Moving them a little bit, that’s okay. But if you move them beyond the community of animals that have co-evolved with those plants, you’re removing its ecological function.

This is not a north-south, it’s an east-west, but we looked at red oak. The productivity of red oak in terms of supporting insects in Portland, Oregon where it’s used as an ornamental plant quite a bit. Of course, it’s from the East. In Pennsylvania, it’s one of the top producers and supports hundreds and hundreds of species. In Portland, Oregon, nothing touched it. It’s an ornamental plant there, not a single mar on any leaf. Same plant. Practically the same latitude, but it’s totally removed from the ecosystem in which it evolved. So, if we do that, it’s like introducing a plant from Asia. It’s not functioning very well.

We compared 16 species of oaks in this area in terms of their ecological productivity. The only two that underperformed were oaks that were planted too far north. So, willow oak and water oak are both planted a little bit farther north than their natural range where we did this study. They supported some stuff, but not nearly as much as the oaks that belong here. That’s what we lose when we start moving, moving plants around.

It’s controversial. A lot of people disagree with me, but that’s what I think. At least today, I do change my mind sometimes.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s kind of always been my thoughts on it too. But I think that’s brings up another point that I think often gets missed. I know a lot of people don’t think about it that I talk to, until I point it out, is that native doesn’t mean native everywhere.

Doug: Oh yeah.

Shannon: A plant can be native to one part of the country and that same species isn’t native to another part of the country. I mean, East Coast – West Coast, that’s a pretty big difference. But it doesn’t even have to be that. It can be within the eastern U.S.

Doug: Yeah. You want to stick within your ecoregion. As you go up a mountain, you’re going to get different plants. In Kentucky, you’ve got mountains. They’re not like the Rockies, but you get mountains. If you take plants from the top of the mountain and put them in the valley, it’s a very different situation.

So yeah, we’re not creating a native plant museum where you collect natives from all over the country and say, okay, it’s native. It’s native where it functions as a native and if it’s outside that area, it’s not native.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s how I look at it too. Does it function natively within that ecosystem?

How Are Things Going with Homegrown National Park?

Shannon: So, how are things going with Homegrown National Park and that movement? Because we have talked a lot about how it’s important for all of us to do stuff, and that’s really where you’re suggesting people go do stuff and how you’ve been suggesting people do it.

Doug: Yeah, that’s what Homegrown National Park’s all about. It’s getting that message to the millions and millions and millions of people that don’t know they are the future of conservation and that they have, not just an opportunity on their properties, they’ve got a responsibility.

So, we try everything we can. All kinds of social media and register your property on the map and the amount of area you’re going to be a good steward of. We don’t charge. We’re not trying to compete with other conservation organizations. We’re just trying to disseminate a message to what we call the non-choir, the people who don’t already know it. And there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of them. So, how do you do that? We try everything we can.

It’s going well, it’s going well. More people join all the time. We’ve got Canada involved. There’s a woman in England that wants to start it over there. I mean, we’re really talking about a global issue here. It’s maintaining functional ecosystems all over the planet and that will require native plants all over the planet. But we’re small.

That’s another thing. I get emails all the time, “You should be doing this, this, this, this, and this.” Yes, you’re right, we should. But, you know, not charging is an issue because then we don’t have any money. We’ve got donations, and it’s great. It’s kept us alive. It’s the same issue with any nonprofit. You spend all your time asking for money. I don’t want to do that. We don’t want to do that. We want to just get information out. So, we try to balance that as much as we can, but for the most part, it’s going well.

We’ve got an executive director, Tim Snyder, now, who’s doing a really good job. A good team of two who are good with the social media and help us manage things. We’re trying to build a board.

Michelle Alfandari is my co-founder. She helped me put it together. But we’re both getting old, and we want to find a new president of the board. Anybody want to be a president of the board of directors? Let me know. Call me up because we’re looking for somebody. It’s always been a working board too, to make it work. So, it takes a little bit of time. That’s a commitment and it’s hard to find people ready to do that.

Shannon: I can’t imagine how much of that, “Well, you should be doing this,” and “Why aren’t you doing that?” that you guys get because you’re so well known. Because I know how much we get with Backyard Ecology and we’re nothing compared to you guys. And so, yeah, I can only imagine how much you guys get about that.

Doug: What’s frustrating is they’re all good ideas.

Shannon: Yes.

Doug: We should be doing those things.

Shannon: Yeah. So often I’m like, “Yeah, I want to do that, and I want to do that.” And then it’s like, “oh, I can’t do everything” because our team is Anthony and me. So, a team of two.

Doug: That’s the way it was with Michelle and me the first two years. Yeah. And she did the lion’s share really.

What Are You Most Excited About?

Shannon: What are you most excited about overall with everything going on that you’re doing, whether it’s personally or professionally?

Doug: I am most excited about the speed with which these things are happening. I really did when we started out, I didn’t think anybody would read the books or that they would care.

I knew it was important. I would do my best. I’d write a book. If they’re not going to read it, then they’re not going to read it. But I was wrong. They’re reading. They’re ready. They’re eager. They feel empowered. And they’re jumping on that. That’s what’s most exciting to me. It needs exponential growth, but that’s starting to happen. I mean, it’s actually happening. And, you know, who knew? Who knew it would happen? So, that’s what’s most exciting.

Keeping it going. The next challenge is keeping it going without me, without Michelle. We’re trying to change the culture and as we see the culture change, it’s going to take more than one organization or two people. So, that’s the transition that we have to have to see.

Shannon: And that’s a hard transition to make.

Doug: It is. It is. But, I do see steps in the right direction and that’s exciting to me.

Shannon: That’s good. That’s really good.

We Have a Personal Responsibility

Shannon: Anything else that you think we need to talk about?

Doug: I always end by emphasizing the personal responsibility by getting people to realize that the future of life on earth is not going to be in the hands of a few conservation biologists and a few ecologists. It’s going to be in the hands of everybody, and that’s the culture change we’re talking about.

E.O. Wilson wrote Half Earth. We have to save nature. We have to save functioning ecosystems on half the planet. That’s an all hands on deck proposition. Everybody has to be on board. And we’re not looking for leadership from the top. It’d be great, but it’s a grassroots movement. It’s going to come from us at the bottom. That’s that personal responsibility I’m talking about.

Shannon: And my next question was going to be, if listeners only remember one thing from this conversation, what would it be? But I think you just hit it pretty good.

Doug: I think that would be it. That would be it. This is your responsibility.

Shannon: Yes. And, it’s wonderful because each of us can make such a huge difference. You’ve seen it on your 10 acres. I’ve seen it on my 40 acres. I know people that have done it on much smaller on 10th, a quarter of an acre. You said you’ve seen the same thing. So, the examples are out there. You don’t have to have ton of land. And I know people that are doing it who are raising families or are older and stuff like that. So, there are ways to do this. I mean, we can get around different challenges – we’ve all got challenges.

Doug: I want to interject quickly before we end that 82% of us live in cities. So they don’t get a free ride here. If you live in an apartment complex, it probably has a balcony. And if everybody did native plant gardening in containers on that balcony, you could change that pile of bricks into a vital resource for local pollinators, for the migrating monarch. So, everybody can participate even right where they live. Yes, you can go volunteer in a park and that’ll help a lot, but, those container gardens can happen when you don’t have any property.

Shannon: Yes, and I think that’s a great point because it is something else that I get asked about a lot is. “I live in an apartment. What do I do? Can I do anything?” A lot of times native plants are touted as needing those long root systems – prairie plants and all that. But, not all of them have those deep, long root systems. Many of them can survive just fine in a pot, in a container, on a balcony.

Doug: We have a section on the Homegrown website for container gardening – native plants that do well in containers for every ecoregion in the country. So, it’s all there. All you have to do is go check it out.

Resources

Shannon: Nice. I’ll make sure I put a link specifically to that area of the website in the show notes. I’m going to have links to your books and to the Homegrown National Park webpage as well, but we’ll make sure we pull that specific area out too.

Doug: Excellent.

Shannon: Well, thank you so much for being a guest on the Backyard Ecology Podcast, and for sharing your story with our listeners. I’m sure lots of people are going to really enjoy that and enjoy your new book. I’m really excited to read that one too.

Doug: Well, thanks for the opportunity. It really is important to have these opportunities.

Shannon: Well, take care and thanks again.

Doug: All right. Bye-bye.

Shannon: And I invite any of our listeners living in the eastern U.S. who are interested in gaining ongoing, personalized coaching and support as you create your own thriving backyard ecosystems to check out the Backyard Ecology Community. You can learn more at backyardecology.net/community.

As always, I want to thank our Patrons and other financial supporters who go above and beyond to help us produce free content focused on creating thriving backyard ecosystems that you can enjoy and be proud of.