“You should think of your lawn as an area-rug rather than wall to wall carpeting”: Advice from a pollinator-garden expert

If you’ve ever visited New York City, you may be familiar with the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The park consists of two giant gardens located in the middle of one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet.
Rebecca McMackin, a self-described, ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer, designed the Brooklyn Bridge Park on top of two shipping piers. McMackin’s recent TED talk is called, Let Your Garden Grow Wild. It’s about pollinator gardens and encourages gardeners to reframe the way they’re thinking about their yards.

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Read the Interview Transcript:

Alexis Kenyon: Rebecca, one thing I loved about your TED talk is that, when people are talking about this kind of stuff, a lot of times it feels like they’re scolding gardeners or people who love their grass lawns. And I felt like, rather than trying to squash that positive intention, your talk felt like a re-channelling of it.

Rebecca McMackin: That’s so nice to hear that that came through because that was absolutely the intent. There is a lot of research now about how to change people’s behavior in a way that they’re not just like hearing a message or hitting a Like button, but going out and changing behavior. And so much of it is around welcoming them in rather than shaming them about what they’re actively already doing.

I had this experience last year, I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there was this guy outside my window who had this like, perfect manicured lawn. And he would have a crew come in to like leaf blow off the lawn once a week, but then he would also go and he would hand pick up each leaf off of his perfect manicured lawn.

And I was like, ‘That’s this guy caring for his land.’ Who knows what is actually in his heart, but like, to me, it seemed like he was really taking care of something that he really loved. And so to go in and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong. You’re hurting whatever it is that you’re trying to care for.’ It actually really, could be really painful to people.

Shifting that energy over into a more beneficial way slowly and gently, so that you’re going with that inclination to care, rather than saying, ‘no, you’re doing it wrong. Change direction.’ It seems like, if you’re looking at the long game, you’re looking at really changing behavior rather than trying to score points or whatever, that is the way to do it.

Lawns are part of the American Identity

Alexis Kenyon: I want to ask you about the history of lawns. Where do we get this idea of what our yards should look like?

Rebecca McMackin: I’m convinced that gardening is part of our species, depending on how you define gardening. That tendency to take care of the land around you and make it useful and beautiful is part of what we do as human beings, and it takes different forms. But that gardening itself is just how we relate to the land around us. The process of caring for turf and managing a lawn is a very, very specific practice that came out of England.

After Versailles, after these massive estates started figuring out and really displaying turf as this symbol of wealth and saying, ‘We don’t need to use this land to produce food. We don’t need to use it to have animals. This is literally just green for no reason at all,’ but there’s an incredible amount of labor that goes into it. It’s just a display of wealth.

In the late 1800s, this practice started to make its way over to the United States. And people start to manage, you know, patches of turf. I should be specific and say not just ‘people,’ but settlers and early colonial people in North America started to manage land that way, trying to mimic these trends in Europe. And that was all fine and good for a while.

And then after World War II, there was an abundance of chemicals developed for World War II for a wide variety of purposes. And then a bunch of companies that didn’t know what to do with them afterwards were trying to figure out how to sell them to people. And many of them made their way into the turf care realm, or horticulture, in general.

A lot of early herbicides, pesticides were offshoots of  metals, like copper and zinc, that weapons manufacturers were experimenting with at the time. So they come from a very complicated, very problematic place that has now become its own monster, right?

American turf is very different from European turf. It is the largest irrigated crop in the United States. It’s absolutely massive. It’s tied into consumerism. It’s tied into masculinity. It’s tied into, you know, capitalism and all of those things are very much part of our American identity.

American turf is very different from European turf. It is the largest irrigated crop in the United States. It’s absolutely massive. It’s tied into consumerism. It’s tied into masculinity. It’s tied into  capitalism and all of those things are very much part of our American identity.

Alexis Kenyon: In your TED Talk, you say we don’t need to be authoritarian about our gardening. I want to play that clip for listeners.

Rebecca McMackin (TED talk): Traditional gardens were often about displaying control over nature. But we no longer wear powdered wigs and hoop skirts. We don’t need to be authoritarian in our garden design. And it’s not all or nothing…. There’s almost always space on our land where we can go a little wild. The rose mallow is this tropical-looking hibiscus that grows throughout eastern North America.

The stems are often cut down by gardeners in spring. But we left them up one year because we found that there were a bunch of beneficial insects that use those stems. And what we ended up with, I find absolutely stunning. It might not be a look for every garden, but certainly we can find space for it. Because a few weeks later, we found a song sparrow nest nestled in between those uncut stems. And soon, we had baby song sparrows hopping around outside of the garden. There’s a direct link between that garden practice.

In these scary times, it can be so hard to know what to do and how to help, but it feels great to cultivate life with your own two hands, and there’s an abundance of research now to show how beneficial gardening is for our health and even our happiness. Because we all deserve to live in a healthy and thriving ecosystem. But it feels even better when we’re part of those systems, supporting the plants and pollinators around us the way that they support us.

Alexis Kenyon: You’re right. We are weirdly controlling about what appears in our gardens.

Rebecca McMackin: So that inclination to control plants is arguably the definition of this strain of horticulture. Where it comes from is a desire to control. If you aren’t controlling the plants around you, do you really have a garden? Right? That’s a huge question.

And, early British ideas of horticulture were really based around going someplace else to another land, arguably often a colony, taking a plant and bringing it back and making it do something, propagating it in some capacity, pruning it into a shape, right?

It’s like an extreme sport. What can you do with plants?  We’re going to take those flowers and turn them a different color. We’re going to make those leaves bigger. We’re going to take a deciduous tree and turn it into an evergreen. That’s really a huge part of the horticulture industry is this level of control.

And so I’m really optimistic that this new wave of gardeners, new wave of garden design, landscape design, landscape architecture feels a little bit suffocated by that aesthetic, by that practice. It recognizes how harmful it can be and just likes being in a more natural environment and recognizes the health benefits of that, for instance.

And I’m pretty optimistic that that high level of control has its place in, you know, certain historical landscapes. But that we, as a broader movement, will start moving towards more naturalistic design that then can provide habitat for wildlife as well.
Encouraging Biodiversity in Gardens

The most important rules for helping pollinators:

Alexis Kenyon: Yeah, I mean, what are some of the ideas that you’re trying to teach and communicate to gardeners who, you know, may be making choices that aren’t necessarily healthy for the ecosystem where they are planting their gardens?

Rebecca McMackin: The big thing that I talked about in the TED Talk, and it really is the number one most important thing I think people can do, is plant native plants.

1. Plant native plants:

Make sure that the plants that evolved on the land that you are on are also on the land that you’re managing, in your garden, on your fire escape, etc. That those plants are able to stay on the land where they are supposed to be, quite frankly.

And that any animals who have relationships with those plants, or fungi or other plants that have those relationships are able to have those relationships on that managed land as well.

That is the number one thing. Those relationships and dynamics between different organisms are very threatened due to development, so trying to bring those back is very, very critical.

2. Protect wild spaces

But even for people, and maybe not gardeners, but for others, more important than that even is protecting what currently exists, what wild spaces, what, you know, plant communities. Build them with plants when you can in whatever scale that you’ve got the ability to.

3. Do not use pesticides. 

The next one is, to make sure that your gardening strategy is as organic as possible and not use synthetic fertilizers or chemicals, unless you’re a very serious professional and you know what you’re doing. There really should not be any reason to use those for homeowners especially. I’m always amazed that it’s even legal for homeowners to just go into a store and buy really, really toxic things that are bad for people and animals and soil organisms and all of it.

 I’m always amazed that it’s even legal for homeowners to just go into a store and buy really, really toxic things that are bad for people and animals and soil organisms and all of it.

Even when I look at turf and I see this like massive green lawn, you know, when you put down the nitrates that people use in order to fertilize lawns, those are assaults. They’re not good for water supplies. They’re not good for the plants surrounding there. They harm soil organisms as well.

You’d have to make like a really strong argument to convince me that it’s worth it, quite frankly, for you to have a green lawn, that it’s worth the level of pollution that you’re dumping down on the planet if you’re using herbicides, etc. When there are so many ways that we know now to manage gardens and turf organically. It’s, it’s completely doable. I did it at Brooklyn Bridge Park in an 85 acre public park that was just absolutely hammered by people. It was organically managed. You can do it in your backyard. It’s totally possible.

Alexis Kenyon: Rebecca, what would you say for people who are trying to garden? How do they fertilize their plants especially if they can’t have a compost area?

Rebecca McMackin: Hmm. Sure. Um, so if you have a garden outside and it’s a native plant garden, you don’t need to fertilize them. They are fine.

The way that plants get nutrients is that they take them up from the soil. If you have healthy soils, they should be able to get the nutrients that they need in order to grow from the soil.

The places that we do need to fertilize are sometimes when growing turf, growing food plants, sometimes those do need fertilizer and it can be organic in both instances, both fertilizers can be organic. Houseplants sometimes also need a fertilizer.

But when you have a garden outside, you should not be, that’s an ornamental garden, you should not be fertilizing anything.

Alexis Kenyon: Okay, so, so far we have, don’t use inorganic fertilizers or pesticides, plant native plants. What is the third?

4. Remove invasive plants

Rebecca McMackin: Oh yeah, so the last thing that is really important for people to do is also remove invasive plants. Plants that cause ecological damage jump outside of our managed gardens and landscapes and get into wild spaces where they push out other plants and take up that space.

And so where I am in Connecticut, we have plants like barberry and burning bush that now coat the forest understory and have pushed out many of our native shrubs and wildflowers. And so it’s critical if we’re talking about rebuilding these systems, get those plants out of there.

And it’s not every garden plant, right? Peonies are fine. Exotic plants are fine to have in your garden. But those that spread and jump out, we should be removing those from our landscapes.

Alexis Kenyon: What about if I wanted to plant roses which may not be native to Colorado? Although there is a wild rose that is native, I think.

Rebecca McMackin: Yeah, there are beautiful native roses for every single region of the United States and your native roses are gorgeous. And they have those special relationships with bees, so I can’t recommend planting native roses enough.

That said, if you have a rose from your grandmother, that is a, you know, English cultivar, that is perfectly fine. That is not going to escape.

There is a rose called multiflora rose that is one of the aggressive invasive plants around. And that was originally brought in as an ornamental. So we do need to be careful. I don’t often use plant plants that are new introductions or new species.

I like to use old plants that have shown that they’re not dangerous ecologically. I do have some cultivars of English roses and they’re all pretty old.

Rethinking Pests:

Alexis Kenyon: So part of this conversation that you mentioned in your TED talk is rethinking the way we as gardeners think about pests. And I want to share that piece of your talk for listeners:

Rebecca McMackin (Ted Talk): Now, I know that it might be a shock for some of you to hear that people like me want insects eating our garden plants. But even bugs we refer to as pests can be important for biodiversity.

Long ago at Brooklyn Bridge Park, our catalpa trees got covered in aphids. These are common garden pests that suck the sugary liquid out of leaves. People encouraged me to spray them with pesticides, but I didn’t. And the following year we found the two-spotted lady beetle on our catalpa. This was the first sighting of this ladybug in New York City in 30 years. And the thing about them is that they eat those tiny aphids that are on our catalpa.So if we had sprayed the trees, we would’ve harmed the ladybugs as well.

Gardening is a long game with patience. We can return balance to these systems when we allow pests to live in our gardens. Predators like ladybugs will soon move in. By building up biodiversity, pests are kept at bay.

Most gardeners try to maintain these clean, sterile environments that are the exact opposite of what wildlife wants. The more we can stop being tidy, the more wildness we can bring into our gardens and landscapes, the better habitat we provide.

Wherever possible, we should stop mowing. Why not get rid of your lawn? Or, shrink it drastically. Lawns should be area rugs, not wall-to-wall carpet. Leaves that fall to the ground should be left there. They’re literally called leaves. We should leave them.

Wherever possible, we should stop mowing. Why not get rid of your lawn? Or, shrink it drastically. Lawns should be area rugs, not wall-to-wall carpet. Leaves that fall to the ground should be left there. They’re literally called leaves. We should leave them.

Bumblebees nest in those leaves,… birds will forage in them, and butterflies overwinter in them as well. Seed heads can be sculptural while feeding the birds and old flower stems can be tucked away to allow tiny bees to nest in them.

Photo by Alexis Kenyon, Rocky Mountain Iris (Iris missouriensis): This native plant is known for its delicate lavender to purple flowers and typically grows in wet meadows, blooming in late spring to early summer. The Rocky Mountain Iris is also known for its grape-like scent.

Alexis Kenyon: There are a few different things I want to get into there. One, this idea of changing our concept of natural beauty, then the leaves and also, the lawn as an area rug, but before that, I want to stick with pests. In Colorado, beetles are a big problem.

Rebecca McMackin: Are you talking about Japanese beetles?

Alexis Kenyon: Yeah, and I know a lot of gardeners in Colorado, especially with roses struggle because the beetles can just devastate them. And I’m curious, you know, when we’re talking about pests, would you say that you would take the same approach to all pests, for example, to these Japanese beetles, as you did for the aphids? I mean, how should we think about this?

Rebecca McMackin: Sure. I’ll start with the beetles. At Brooklyn Bridge Park, when we first opened the park, we had a Japanese beetle infestation on our roses and many other plants as well. And we didn’t do anything. It was just me at that point. I didn’t have any staff. And then over the next year, the beetles disappeared. They just didn’t survive in the landscape.

And when I think, when I think back to that, the places where I see Japanese beetles having the biggest impact is around traditionally managed turf. And that is because their grub phase before they’re the beetle that you see, they’re like this white worm guy who lives under the soil. They’re often in managed land. They’re often in managed turf.

And when I think, when I think back to that, the places where I see Japanese beetles having the biggest impact is around traditionally managed turf. And that is because their grub phase before they’re the beetle that you see, they’re like this white worm guy who lives under the soil. They’re often in managed land. They’re often in managed turf.

And so, when we started managing our turf organically, it’s possible that we made it so that they couldn’t live there. Maybe they had predators that came in. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you, but we just had them for one year and then they were gone. And that’s really the basis of this approach is that no one’s trying to eradicate all pests. That isn’t what this approach is trying to do.

We’re trying to keep things in balance so that herbivores, the animals who eat your plants, have a healthy population of predators and parasites and parasitoids who keep their populations in check. So maybe your plants have some nibbles on them. They’re being used. They’re part of a healthy ecosystem, but they’re not actively getting killed by these pests pretty regularly.

And so the way that that relates to aphids. If you aren’t familiar with an aphid. There’s hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of species. They are these tiny little insects that have a little straw mouthpiece and they poke it into a leaf or a stem and they suck the phloem, the sugary liquid, out of a plant and they drink it.

That’s their whole life. That and reproducing. They reproduce like crazy. They’re parthenogenic which means that the females actually clone themselves in order to give birth. And they are so incredibly fecund that the females will give birth to females who are already pregnant. That’s why you see them so much is that they’re, they’re reproductive strategy is like off the charts.

Some of them are native and some of them are invasive and some of them are exotic. There’s all different kinds of aphids but gardeners are sort of taught to kill them.And I want to complicate that. And first of all, think about, maybe some of these pests, the animals that we call pests, are actually an important part of the ecosystems around us.

And I want to complicate that. And first of all, think about, maybe some of these pests, the animals that we call pests, are actually an important part of the ecosystems around us.

Maybe they evolved there. There’s a tiny red aphid that evolved with one of our native sunflowers, and that relationship between that aphid and the sunflower is just as old. And just as precious as the relationship between a monarch and milkweed, right? These are the relationships that these animals formed. And who are we quite frankly, to come in and just try to wipe them all out.

So when I do find one of those relationships between organisms that evolve together, sometimes, I’ll prioritize that relationship above traditional tidiness, traditional garden tidiness.

But if I am interested in diminishing those aphids populations, if I’ve made that call and I’ve decided that these aphids are worth getting rid of, the way that I think about it is very different than traditional tidiness with ornamental horticulture, and even organic gardening, quite frankly.

In ecological gardening, we are trying to balance out these ecosystems and understand the dynamics behind what’s going on.And so, when you plant a plant, it’s like a vacuum, right?

There’s herbivores that are going to come in and they’re going to eat your plant, and they’re psyched. That’s what they do. They’re herbivores. They come in, they’re going to eat it.

And, after a while, a population of predators is going to come in, or parasitoids or parasites is going to come in, and start to eat or attack those herbivores.And if we keep on wiping out the population of herbivores before any of those parasites or parasitoids or predators can get to them, we never allow that balance to be reached. We’re constantly resetting it over and over and over again. And so we never get to build up the populations that are going to keep those pests in check.

And if we keep on wiping out the population of herbivores before any of those parasites or parasitoids or predators can get to them, we never allow that balance to be reached. We’re constantly resetting it over and over and over again. And so we never get to build up the populations that are going to keep those pests in check.

And so it’s just one of the many reasons to be lazy, right? Is just to not do the sort of micromanagement that a lot of gardeners enjoy. And a lot of gardeners just do because that’s what they were taught to do without really thinking about it.

But in this instance with aphids, oftentimes, there’s a whole host of different organisms that will manage your aphids for you. There are parasitic wasps. There are lacewings, lacewing larvae. There’s ladybugs larvae. There’s flower fly larvae. There’s birds. All of these different predators will come and manage your aphids for you if you just let them go.

And again, I want to be clear that I’m talking about ornamental ecological gardens here. If you are growing lettuce to feed your family, it’s going to be a different calculus to how you manage those pests and what treatments you use and how highly you, you prioritize a lack of aphids in your landscape.

But in an ornamental garden and an ecological gardening, our thresholds are much, much higher for that sort of plant damage. And we can often turn a blind eye to a lot of the, a lot of the pests in our garden.

There’s this wonderful man named Doug Tallamy.  If you haven’t heard of him or read his books, he’s amazing. He has a lot of lectures online for free. And he says that there’s a 10 step program for dealing with a lot of plant pests.

And it starts by taking 10 steps backwards from your plant. And if you can still see the pest, then you can deal with it. But it solves most problems by just walking a little bit farther away.

Alexis Kenyon: But gardeners want to protect their gardens, you know? What actions can people take or how should they think about it?

Rebecca McMackin: So the plants in our gardens, if we’re doing it right, they’re part of the ecosystem around them. We do not want to manage plants like animals in a zoo. That is not part of this work. We want them to have pollinators. We want them to have seed distributors. We want them to have relationships with the fungi in the soil. And part of those relationships are the herbivores that eat the leaves, right?

All of the butterflies and moths that we love, every one of them was a caterpillar that was eating a plant. A lot of our cutest native bees, the Leaf Cutter bees will go, and especially on redbud, which is a tree with heart leaves. It’s so pretty. They will go and cut these perfect circles out of those leaves and use that to make their nests.

And so that’s our plants being good citizens. And we’re better plant parents and better ecological stewards when we’re encouraging those relationships, rather than trying to stop them, right? It’s more about making sure when I look at a garden or a landscape, and I’m taking care of it.

And so that’s our plants being good citizens. And we’re better plant parents and better ecological stewards when we’re encouraging those relationships, rather than trying to stop them, right? It’s more about making sure when I look at a garden or a landscape, and I’m taking care of it.

My question is, ‘Is everybody happy and healthy and doing what they’re supposed to be doing? Is anything out of whack? Yes? I’m going to manage that.’ Whatever is, you know, whatever input is off, if there’s not enough water, if there’s too much water, et cetera, if there’s a plant that’s taking over.

As long as everybody is happy and healthy, it’s not necessary for us to micromanage every single organism in the garden. That kind of gardening is, at this point, kind of passé. It’s just, it’s an older style that thankfully, I think this generation is evolving beyond.

Leave the Leaves

Alexis Kenyon: So Rebecca, I want to talk to you about leaves because it is hard to convince people to just leave the leaves. And as much as this is a simple concept, every fall, people are out there with their leaf blowers in city parks and office parks and homes and country clubs. What should we do about the leaves? And why is it important for the leaves to stay where they are?

Rebecca McMackin: Yeah. It’s amazing. And, you know, oftentimes, especially with landscape contractors, they will remove the leaves off of a landscape, take them back to a production facility where they shred them and compost them and then sell them back to you as mulch in the fall or compost. Sometimes, often, as a matter of fact, it is simply a way to make money. As opposed to anything that the landscape actually needs.

There’s a lot of leaves that can land on the ground, could even land on turf, and will kind of disappear into the landscape. But people are making money by mowing lawns and, you know, collecting those leaves.

And again, people want to futz around their yard. You know, people love, I love to futz around my yard. My dad also loves to futz around his yard and having those tasks to just pick up leaves can be a really nice way to spend a Sunday, if that’s your thing. But what they don’t realize is that those leaves are incredibly important parts of regional ecology.

When deciduous trees lose their leaves, a lot of people think that those trees are throwing their leaves away when what they’re actually doing is carefully placing those leaves on their root systems where they will break down and biodegrade and turn into soil and then all of those nutrients then become available for the plant once again.

Not only when they fall to the ground, when deciduous trees lose their leaves, a lot of people think that those trees are throwing their leaves away when what they’re actually doing is carefully placing those leaves on their root systems where they will break down and biodegrade and turn into soil and then all of those nutrients then become available for the plant once again.

It’s a cycle, really, where the carbon goes down into the ground, into the tree, into the leaves, and then back around and around and around. And when we interrupt that system, we’re not just, you know, harming the plants themselves who are using their leaves to build the soil, we’re also harming carbon sequestration in the soil, which is obviously a majorly important factor right now, given climate change.

But from a broader ecological perspective, we’ve now found that 95 percent of moths, which are those organisms that feed birds, right? Tthe majority of birds feed their babies a majority of caterpillars. And those caterpillars are mostly moth caterpillars. And most of those moth caterpillars spend part of their life cycle in that leaf layer.

We’ve now found that 95 percent of moths, which are those organisms that feed birds, right? The majority of birds feed their babies a majority of caterpillars. And those caterpillars are mostly moth caterpillars. And most of those moth caterpillars spend part of their life cycle in that leaf layer.

And when they fall to the ground and they fall into a sidewalk, or a lawn, or a pile of wood chips, that’s not an environment where they can really pupate and go through their entire life cycle.

And so, the more that we can leave the leaves, create kind of a layer that those caterpillars, when they do fall into the leaf layer, they can land softly and complete their life cycle, it’s very, very important to leave the leaves for that reason.

Alexis Kenyon: So, but another reason people like their lawns and don’t want to have a bunch of leaves on them is usability. Lawns are really nice because you can play in them or lay in the grass or put out a blanket and be in nature. And I want to play a clip from your TED Talk where you kind of address this…. Here’s the clip:

Rebecca McMackin (TED talk): At Brooklyn Bridge Park, where I was director of horticulture, we took these massive, derelict shipping piers out over the water between Brooklyn and Manhattan and turned them into an 85 acre post industrial public park it was designed by MVVA and built out over a decade.

It’s hard to imagine now, but this lush landscape was built on parched concrete. And yet, just a few years after construction, we welcomed migratory birds, rare insects, and clouds of butterflies, all among millions and millions of park visitors. When people go to Brooklyn Bridge Park, they’re usually there to play basketball or have a picnic. They have no idea that they’re walking through a monarch habitat or a firefly sanctuary.

It just reads as a beautiful park with lots of butterflies and magical evenings. And if we can do that, in the middle of New York City, amidst all that traffic and concrete, you can do it anywhere. Indeed, we must incorporate habitat everywhere, immediately, especially in our cities. We are facing a biodiversity crisis of catastrophic proportions. We’re changing the planet so quickly that plants and animals cannot keep up. You may have heard of the insect apocalypse, and unfortunately, it is just as terrifying as it sounds.

We have lost nearly half of insects on planet Earth just since I was a little kid. Now, you might not like bugs. But they are still keeping you alive. One in every three bites of food that you eat is the direct result of insect pollination. And this isn’t just a problem for humanity. Where we have the data? We’ve lost a quarter of our birds. In North America, it’s 29%. Most of these birds feed their babies exclusively on insects. So, it’s not just climate change that we need to solve right now. There is some existential multitasking required of us. Thank goodness that there are solutions, and many of them literally involve planting flowers.

You don’t have to kill your lawn but it shouldn’t be the entire yard

Alexis Kenyon: What I really like about this example is you’re kind of empowering people to consider thinking about the way they experience nature more creatively. And that can range from you know,  turning a concrete shipping pier into a garden, or just redesigning their backyards.

Rebecca McMackin: There is a really popular movement right now that is awesome, that is the Kill Your Lawn movement. And it’s kind of punk rock, it’s kind of, you know, in your face and catchy as well. And I like it. But I’m not of that ilk. I, especially as a public park person, think lawns are actually important.

I like to think of lawns as the habitat for people, right? They give people a place and a landscape where they say, this is where you belong. You can have a picnic here. You can do a somersault. You can actually hang out.

I like to think of lawns as the habitat for people, right? They give people a place and a landscape where they say, this is where you belong. You can have a picnic here. You can do a somersault. You can actually hang out. And whereas if you’re in a meadow or a forest or a garden, you know, that there’s not really a place to go sit unless there’s a bench. Whereas a lawn signals to a lot of people that this is the place where they belong in a landscape.

So, I’m not against people having a lawn, right? Like I, I have a section of lawn, but many people have lawn as a default for their landscape. That rather than just using the space, just having a lawn on the space that they’re going to use with their family and friends, the lawn is, anything that they don’t know what to do with it is lawn.

And the whole landscape becomes a lawn except for a tree over here and a garden over here and everything else is lawn.

And that’s why that phrase, it’s not a wall-to-wall carpet, it’s an area rug, is really important because  if you can go outside and look at your landscape and think, ‘Okay, this is how I use this landscape. I want to play catch with my kid. I want to have a barbecue, etc.’

There’s a defined footprint that you can figure out for those activities. And then the rest of your landscape can either be wild. It can be forested. It can be gardened. There’s so many different ways to manage those landscapes that are not turf. And if they are turf, they should be organic.

And now, they can be biodiverse as well. There’s a lot of plants, even a lot of native plants, that people have figured out how to incorporate into a lawn. So, it doesn’t mean that lawns are evil, right? Lawns are, are not. They are a problem. They’re a huge problem. But we can still figure out a way to have the functionality and the beauty, if that’s your thing, of looking at a green carpet while supporting the ecosystems around us.

You can start small

Alexis Kenyon: Are there smaller changes that people can make to start bringing pollinators back into their native ecosystem? You know, I live in a condo, but can I just put up some flowers on the, some native flowers on the front porch? Or how complicated does it need to be?

Rebecca McMackin: Well, you need to do the work to figure out, you know, how much sun do you get? How can you water these plants? That’s important information to know. And that’s going to determine which plants you can plant. But once you have that information, there are so many plants that will happily grow in a pot that have real relationships with the animals around them and can be part of those dynamics.

The plants that I like to put in pots that I will see pollinators visiting are milkweed, of course. There are lots of different species of milkweed. You’ll have to do that research yourself to figure out what milkweeds are around you and what will grow in the conditions that you have laid out for them.

Asters are another plant. There’s got to be at least five asters where you live that are native. Again, not only will many, many pollinators come visit those asters to drink nectar and collect pollen, but there also might be moths and butterflies that will use those plants as a host plant as well.

So those are my top two always, which are asters and milkweed. After that, there’s a lot of wonderful plants like columbine. I just think they’re so cute and so pretty, and they have wonderful relationships with hummingbirds and bees, depending on the species, and moths as well. And they can grow in sun to shade, so if you have a kind of shady site, columbines can be helpful as well.

And then there’s that wonderful plant that I talked about in the TED Talk. I’m not sure if it’s native to Colorado, but there’s an anaphalis, it’s called pearly everlasting, and that is the most attractive host plant I’ve ever seen in my life.

Ever since the TED Talk, people have been emailing me videos and accounts of them planting it and having these butterflies just like, boom, right there. So that plant, the pearly everlasting. Again, do your research to figure out which species are around you, but I bet there are some right around your region or other plants that would be similarly attractive host plants for butterflies.

Alexis Kenyon: I don’t know if we have red columbines, but I do know that the blue columbine, which is actually kind of a purple color, is the Colorado state flower.

Rebecca McMackin: Oh, that’s so great. That’s a beauty. And that’s not hummingbird pollinated. Although hummingbirds will visit, like they’re not, they don’t only visit red flowers. They’re smart. They’re opportunists. You know, they’re going to visit as many flowers as they can, but they have those special relationships with those red flowers.

So you might occasionally see a hummingbird visit a purple columbine. They will visit, often they’ll visit lots of flowers in a garden or in a meadow, just testing them out. But those purple columbines, I believe they’re bumblebee pollinated. Also hawk moths. So hawk moths are big and they often have relationships with lots of flowers. They’re one of the biggest pollinating moths in this region. And they like to go to light-colored flowers. So it makes sense that the Colorado columbine is hawk moth pollinated as well as bumblebee pollinated.

Alexis Kenyon: Rebecca, thank you so much for talking with me. I really appreciate it.

Rebecca McMackin: It’s my absolute pleasure. I hope all your listeners are excited to go get their hands in the dirt.