Good news

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I blogged about the depressing case of Deborah Dale, a past president of the North American Native Plant Society whose Toronto garden was destroyed by over-zealous officials who did not understand or appreciate her natural landscaping.

So imagine my joy upon checking the NAPS website this morning, to discover that a couple in Ottawa just won a battle to preserve their own half-acre meadow of pollinator-friendly plants! On July 25, 2009, the Ottawa Citizen reported that the city of Ottawa had rescinded a bylaw that would have forbidden Hank and Vera Jones from retaining their environmentally friendly, wildlife-friendly plantings.

Equally encouraging is the amount of public support the Joneses received: They received legal advice and representation from the Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Ottawa; the Ottawa Citizen published an excellent editorial and an equally excellent opinion piece supporting their cause; the Green Party wrote a letter of support; and the Citizen also published several letters to the editor supporting their cause. For a cheer-making experience, I highly recommend reading some of the articles, letters, and editorials the Citizen has published:

Garden bylaw rescinded (news item)

Councillor calls for scrutiny of bylaws (news item)

Wildlife gardens get new life before council (news item)

Lawn row with city has been won before (news item and photo)

Green Party backs Jones with naturalized lawns (letter)

Lawns growing wilder than lawn weeds (opinion piece)

We can go with natural lawns (letter)

Let's enjoy nature in the middle of suburbia (letter)

We need to redefine an "attractive" lawn (letter)

Farewell to the lawn (opinion piece)

Changing tastes give new meaning to the word "lawn" (news and photo)

Wildlife garden row could end up in court (news)

Let the garden grow (letter)

The artifice of the "lawn" (editorial)

Sneezing time

THIS IS A MISERABLE TIME of year for many allergy sufferers. Unfortunately, people with allergies often blame the wrong plants, which does nothing to relieve their suffering and may prevent them or even their neighbors from planting harmless species.

Left, the pollen of Common ragweed causes most respiratory allergies at this time of year. This photo is by Forest and Kim Starr, via the Wikipedia Commons.

As it happens, a wildlife-friendly garden is likely to be an allergy-sufferer's best friend. Why? Because plants that are pollinated by insects tend to have heavy pollen. Because it’s heavy, this pollen is not carried on the wind, which means that it does not have a chance to get into your nose and start the immune-system reaction known as an allergy attack. So a wildlife-friendly garden full of flowers that are being visited by butterflies, bees, and other pollinators is not likely to cause allergic reactions.

In late summer, the chief cause of respiratory allergy symptoms is ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia). This is an annual weed that’s common in the Northeast, Midwest, and South. Although it’s native to North America, I’ve never heard anyone recommend it as a garden plant!

Ragweed pollen can travel hundreds of miles but most of it lands near the plant, so the closer the plant is to you the more likely it is that the pollen will end up in your nose. If there is any ragweed growing near you, the best way to dispose of it is probably to wet it down (to make the pollen grains heavy, so they don’t scatter), then cut it back carefully and again carefully put the stems into a plastic garbage bag, which can be put out with the trash. The best time to do this would be early on a chilly morning, when pollen production would be at its lowest.

For future years, the best way to keep ragweed off your property is to plant aggressive perennials, preferably ones that are pollinated by insects, because these plants can prevent the annual ragweed from getting a foothold in your garden. In other words, have a wildlife-friendly garden! Goldenrod might be a good choice because it is insect pollinated and extremely aggressive.

One warning: People who are allergic to ragweed pollen may also be allergic to the pollen of other plants in the Aster family. Now, the Aster family is huge and includes many wonderful wildlife-friendly plants with heavy pollen, including Goldenrod and Purple coneflower. It would be a tragedy for any wildlife-friendly gardener to give up these plants altogether. But if you are allergic to ragweed, you may want to plant these species further from your house and avoid bringing the flowers into your house or working right next to them during pollen season. Sniffing the flowers of plants in the Aster family would also be ill-advised, as that would pull even heavy pollen into your nose.

Meanwhile, here are a few ways to keep allergies under control this time of year. Most of them come from the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.

• Try to stay inside with the windows closed when pollen counts are high. This is generally between 10 am and 4 pm on dry days. (Rainy days are safer because the rain washes the pollen out of the air.) You can get local pollen counts from the National Allergy Bureau at (800)-9-POLLEN, or http://www.pollen.com/.
• An air conditioner helps because it cools and dries the air, an HEPA filter can clean the pollen out of the air.
• And of course you need to avoid anything that would stir up pollen or bring pollen into your house during pollen season, from raking leaves to hanging clothes outside to dry (because pollen collects on the clothes). If you've been working outside, change your clothes when you come inside.
• If you do go outside when pollen counts are high, you could try wearing a pollen mask.
• Another tip is to keep your bedroom closed up during the day and then bathe before you go to bed. This will prevent pollen from getting into your bedding.
• Also, I'm sure any allergy sufferer who is willing to take drugs has already tried all the over-the-counter drugs, but have you tried nasal rinsing? This will wash pollen grains out of your sinus cavities. Here are instructions from the AAAAI.

Meet the Natives: Common Milkweed, part two

A pasture such as the one shown above could easily be overrun by common milkweed, ruining its value as food for livestock.

Click here for part one.

BANS ON COMMON MILKWEED, a plant that is vitally important to the monarch butterfly, are a sad reminder that the needs of humans and the needs of wildlife do sometimes conflict. However, this dilemma also gives us a chance to explore ways of trying to meet the needs of both. One important lesson is that gardeners in cities, suburbs, and other areas where there is not a lot of agriculture going on have a vital role to play--if they can get over their all-too-common obsession with "neat and tidy" landscaping practices.

The (Sad) Case for Milkweed Bans

Monarchs are threatened, but so are small farms. And as a resident of farm country, I cannot help but recognize that common milkweed might pose a threat to my neighbors' livelihoods.

There is a large (but family owned) dairy farm where I live, for example. The cows seem to be treated well, with access to pasture throughout the growing season. For winter feeding, the farmer cuts hay on a number of local properties. If these fields were to become infested with milkweed (which could easily happen if someone were to introduce it to the area), this hay would be useless. The only way to keep milkweed out of the pastures would be to use one of the few herbicides that's effective on this plant, a solution that would be expensive and that I doubt anyone in the community would want.

This is why several Canadian provinces have passed bans on common milkweed. (But please don't get the idea that Canadians are backward. As far as I've been able to find out, the main reason such bans are almost nonexistent in the United States is that U.S. farmers use more herbicides, making the bans unnecessary.) I think this is excessive, using a chainsaw where a scalpel would be the ideal tool. But I grudgingly admit that I understand how the bans came to be passed.

The Possibility of Compromise

Canada isn't oblivious to the potential impact of these bans on monarch butterflies. Thus far, most of the provinces seem to have dealt with the dilemma by using selective enforcement. In other words, the bans are on the books for use when milkweed becomes a problem, but they aren't enforced unless somebody complains. For example, in 1996 a researcher for the Monarch Watch organization was told that in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, milkweed was being controlled only on a "complaint" basis. Only Nova Scotia had an active eradication program at that time.

Ontario has taken this policy one step further by publicizing its policy of tolerance. In a FAQ at the Ministry of Agriculture website, the province explains, "As long as the population of milkweed planted doesn't negatively affect agricultural or horticultual land by spreading seed and new vegetative plant material (i.e. root stock) into fields, nurseries or greenhouses then it is acceptable to plant milkweed in your garden. It is recommended that you consult with your local weed inspector and/or neighbours so that all parties involved are comfortable that the impact to agriculture or horticulture is negligible."

This is laudable up to a point, but of course any gardener familiar with the Deborah Dale case can see the pitfall: All you need is one complaint by one uninformed neighbor, and the monarch habitat you've been lovingly cultivating will be toast.

Better Options

A better option would be for the authorities to start making more fine grained, more informed discriminations. If a plant is a genuine problem in agricultural areas, for example, perhaps it should be controlled in those areas. But that doesn't mean that it should be banned from areas where there are no farms. On the contrary, property owners in those areas should be encouraged to plant milkweed and other native plants with value for wildlife, all the more so if the plants are banned in certain agricultural zones. In fact, milkweed is an excellent example of why it is so important for people in urbanized areas to create wildlife oases in their own backyards.

Mind you, I'm not saying that I support bans on native plants. What I support is creative compromise, a search for ways of meeting both the needs of humans and the needs of wildlife without causing too much damage to either one. One possibility is to ban certain plants in agricultural areas only, while encouraging or even mandating the creation of wildlife oases in urban zones. But that's not the only option.

Another might be the "lemons into lemonade" approach: Why not turn a plant such as milkweed into a commercial crop? Common milkweed has been cultivated in Europe as a source of fibers* that can be used to make paper, cloth, rope, or a soft insulating material that was used in life jackets during World War II. The flowers have been used to make wine.

The point, again, is that we can find solutions to (apparent) conflicts, as long as we are open to creative compromise. What we cannot afford is simplistic solutions or solutions that pit one group, such as farmers, against another group, such as wildlife lovers. If that happens, both will lose.

* According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Milkweed stems are collected after the stalks senesce in late fall-early winter. The dried stalks are split open to release the fibers; milkweed fibers are sometimes mixed with fibers of Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum). The bark is removed and the fibers released by first rubbing between the hands and then drawing the fibers over a hard surface. Twisting the fiber opposite each other and twining them together forms the cord. Often this is accomplished by rolling the fibers on the thigh while twisting them together."

A bad thing, but a good test

TORONTO HAS DESTROYED A PRIVATE GARDEN. Blogger Jodi DeLong alerted me this morning to a story on the Treehugger website about a woman whose 10-year-old native plant garden was destroyed by the city of Toronto. Gardener Deborah Dale is a biologist and past president of the North American Native Plant Society. She is also a public speaker who has been employed by the city of Toronto itself to give seminars on natural landscaping! Before-and-after photos show a perfectly lovely native garden in the "before" photo and, after the city crew was done, a scene of devastation. Knowing how distressed I can get if someone so much as steps on one of my plants (unless, of course, it's me), thinking about how Dale must have felt makes me want to weep.

The silver lining to this cloud is that many gardeners, even ones who aren't particularly keen on the natural style, are outraged by what the city did. Dale is a good representative for the native plant movement--a good "poster girl," as they say. And it appears that Canadian courts have sided with homeowners in cases such as these in the past. (Among the comments on the Treehugger story is a very interesting post by a Douglas Counter, discussing these court cases in detail. It was posted on August 31, and if you live in Canada and are at all concerned about these issues, I recommend that you look for it.) If Dale decides to take this to court (and it appears that she will), her chances of winning seem good. In the meantime, controversy over this incident may help to educate people about the value of natural landscapes.

If this incident distresses you as much as it did me, you may want to pay a visit to the Wild Ones organization. They have been leaders in the movement to get "weed control" laws changed so that natural landscapers do not have to endure what Dale has had to put up with. Their website includes model ordinances that allow for natural landscapes and tips on how to get your municipality to update its thinking on this subject.

In the long run, however, sad events such as this are a reflection of a much larger problem, which is the fear and hostility with which too many people still approach the natural world. This allows not just the trashing of someone's private garden but, ultimately, the destruction of the ecosystems on which we and other animals depend for life.

Reading the comments on the Treehugger article (most of which were highly supportive but a few of which were sadly ignorant) reminded me of an article I wrote about a year ago for the online magazine Terrain, in which I talked about the extent to which many people are dominated by their fear of nature. Believe it or not, the article is pretty funny (and it's not just my friends--hi Jodi--who tell me so). Here's a pertinent quote:

"A surprisingly large number of homeowners seem to think that nature wants them dead. This is reflected in a large number of questions that a natural landscaper must learn to answer cheerfully and with a show of sympathy for the anxiety that lurks beneath.

"Will a natural landscape cause allergic reactions, make the home vulnerable to forest fires, or attract criminals who will lurk in the shrubbery and mug/rape/murder anybody who walks by? Will children or pets be scratched by thorns or poisoned by delicious-looking (but deadly) berries? How about venomous yellow-and-black insects (referred to almost universally as ‘bees,’ although only some of them are)? Won’t they sting and, as day follows night, bring on respiratory failure followed by cardiac arrest? How about snakes? Bats? (Snakes and bats don’t have to do anything; their mere existence causes fright.) How about rodents? What’s the name of that disease you can get from mice? Avian influenza hadn’t hit the headlines when I was doing this kind of work but I’m sure that birds have now joined the list of potential assassins.

"Now, the hazards these homeowners fear are mostly real, and a well-behaved natural landscaper is quick to say so. But they are unlikely. Except in rare circumstances, you are about as likely to be killed by a natural landscape as by any other environment in which you find yourself (except possibly your bathroom—which, according to reports, is a lot more dangerous). There is no more reason to worry about being killed by your naturalized front yard than to worry about being run down by a car when you step into the street. Yet even the most devil-may-care pedestrian may blanche at the thought that planting a flower might, in turn, attract a ‘bee.’

"Eventually, the majority of homeowners find reason to not practice natural landscaping, no matter how many inducements they’re offered. They retreat behind closely clipped lawns with perimeters of shrubs that have been pruned into geometric shapes. Do I need to explain just how unnatural this is, how few animals can live here, how much environmental pollution the maintenance of these spaces can cause? Let me make just one point before moving on: A manicured landscape can be as hazardous as any other. Many of these hazards involve the very pesticides, herbicides, and power tools used to keep these spaces looking—and I use this word in its most ironic, air-quotes sense—safe."