Toward Harmony with Nature Conference presented by Wild Ones Fox Valley Area - Keynote Speaker

Guided by the philosophy of Lorrie Otto . . .,

“If suburbia were landscaped with meadows, prairies, thickets, or forests, or combinations of these, then the water would sparkle, fish would be good to eat again, birds would sing and human spirits would soar.”

Wild Ones continues to lead the natural landscaping movement as we explore, teach, and change the practice of gardening in our communities and around the country to using native plants.

The keynote speaker for the 2014 Wild Ones Fox Vally Area conference was Doug Tallamy who made 2 presentations to the attendees:

The Value of Having Native Plants in our Yards

Doug Tallamy

Doug Tallamy's message:

   "By favoring native plants over aliens in the suburban landscape, 

    gardeners can do much to sustain the biodiversity 

    that has been one of this country's richest assets."

He points to a model advanced by Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1981 as one of the earliest attempts to justify complex over simple ecosystems.

"In most cases an ecologist can no more predict the consequences of the extinction of a given species than an airline passenger can assess the loss of a single rivet. But both can easily foresee the long-term results of continually forcing species to extinction or of removing rivet after rivet. No sensible airline passenger today would accept a continuous loss of rivets from jet transports. Before much more time has passed, attitudes must be changed so that no sane passenger on Spaceship Earth will accept a continuous loss of populations or species of nonhuman organisms."
-Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species by Paul and Anne Ehrlich

Tallamy suggests Peter de Ruiter's Jenga metaphor improves on the Ehrlich's airplane.  The role of any given species in maintaining the stability of its ecosystem is similar to the role individual blocks play in keeping the Jenga tower from tumbling down, so that almost any species can play a keystone role under the appropriate circumstances.

Biodiversity runs the ecosystems that support us, determine the carrying capacity of the earth and our local spaces. It is biodiversity that generates oxygen and clean water; that creates topsoil out of rock and buffers extreme weather events like droughts and floods; and that recycles the mountains of garbage we create. With human induced climate change threatening the planet, it is biodiversity that will help suck carbon out of the air and sequester it in living plants.

Creating Healthy, Biodiverse Neighborhood Corridors

Doug Tallamy

"Today's gardeners are so concerned about the health of their plants that they run for the spray can at the first sign of an insect. Ironically, a sterile garden is one teetering on the brink of destruction. It can no longer function as a dynamic community of interacting organisms, all working smoothly to perpetuate their interactions. Its checks and balances are gone. Instead, the sterile garden's continued existence depends entirely on the frantic efforts of the gardener alone."

We have fragmented the habitats that support biodiversity by the way we have landscape our cities, suburbs, and farmland. Because isolated habitats cannot support populations large enough to survive normal environmental stresses, we should reconnect viable habitats by expanding existing greenways, building riparian corridors, and by changing the landscaping paradigm that dominates our yards and corporate landscapes.

Tallamy promotes planting native species that support and produce more insects than alien plants and therefore more animals that rely on insects in the food web. As exotic ornamentals leap the garden fence and out-compete the native plants, many creatures are starving to death because they did not evolve with the exotics and simply can’t eat them.  

Woody plants supported more species of moths and butterflies than herbaceous plants, native plants supported more species than introduced plants, and native woody plants with ornamental value supported more Lepidoptera species than introduced woody ornamentals. Tallamy provides rankings provide that provide a relative measure that will be useful for restoration ecologists, landscape architects and designers, land managers, and landowners who wish to raise the carrying capacity in mid-Atlantic by selecting plants with the greatest capacity for supporting biodiversity.

Favorite woody plants for mid-Atlantic butterflies and moths. 

Common Name	Plant Genus	Butterfly/moth species supported
Oak	Quercus	534
Black cherry	Prunus	456
Willow	Salix	455
Birch	Betula	413
Poplar	Populus	368
Crabapple	Malus	311
Blueberry	Vaccinium	288
Maple	Acer	285
Elm	Ulmus	213
Pine	Pinus	203
Hickory	Carya	200
Hawthorn	Crataegus	159
Spruce	Picea	156

Favorite herbaceous plants for mid-Atlantic butterflies and moths. 

Common Name	Plant Genus	Butterfly/moth species supported
Goldenrod	Solidago	115
Asters	Aster	112
Sunflower	Helianthus	73
Joe pye, Boneset	Eupatorium	42
Morning glory	Ipomoea	39
Sedges	Carex	36
Honeysuckle	Lonicera	36
Lupine	Lupinus	33
Violets	Viola	29
Geraniums	Geranium	23
Black-eyed susan	Rudbeckia	17
Iris	Iris	17
Evening primrose	Oenothera	16
Milkweed	Asclepias	12
Verbena	Verbena	11

(Tallamy and his colleagues are working on developing similar rankings for other areas of the country to encourage selection of plants that support broader numbers and species of insects to feed the other animals that depend on them for survival in the food web.  He hypothesizes that many of the plants most topping ranking charts for the mid-Atlantic will top rankings in other areas of the country.)

I look forward to Douglas Tallamy's new book, The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden, written in collaboration Rick Darke to be published later in spring of 2014.

The Living Landscape promises to help gardeners learn how to create the biodiverse home landsccape promoted in Tallamy’s award-winning book Bringing Nature Home.