Flower Moon Newsletter

Hi Plant People,

Woo hoo! Newsletters are back!

It has been an incredibly marvelous and busy time: I designed and installed a massive native wildflower garden in front of the Brooklyn Museum. I’ll write a proper post and share some links soon, but Brook Klausing, the chicest landscape designer I know, brought me in to do the garden portion of this reimagined public plaza. I saw it as a gift for my once and future city, as well as an opportunity to show the world that native plants have the beauty and brawn not only for Brooklyn, but for art-world Brooklyn (dun dun DUN!). There will be lots of nail biting until this behemoth blooms, but it’s going to be pretty, just you wait.

I was also thrilled to give advice for starting a native plant garden in the New York Times on Earth Day! In a nutshell: start small, use short plants, plant butterfly host plants, don’t forget woody plants.

And lastly, an interview I did with Jill Sowards of the Garden People Podcast went live. It was fascinating because we recoded it in the last weeks of my time at Brooklyn Bridge Park, so it’s fun to hear what past-me thought this fellowship would be like. Thanks Jill!

GARDEN NOTES

Ah spring, that time of the year when flowers bloom, gardeners are frantic, and we all start arguing about No Mow May. Is it helpful? Is it lazy? Does it matter?

The Washington Post published a piece on the topic that was… ok? It tried to share all perspectives and ended up confusing. While WSJ opted to report on the controversy.

Better Homes and Gardens did a perfect piece for their audience: meeting people where they’re at and then giving them the resources to move forward if they choose to. And Xerces Society essentially did the same thing, encouraging people to move beyond May, mowing less year-round and shrinking lawns.

Margaret Roach took it one step farther in the Times, with clear instructions for folks ready to reduce lawns. She consulted with Benjamin Vogt and Owen Wormser on tactics to shift a lawn to a meadow. It’s a great piece to send to folks who are ready for the plunge.

But then! Lorraine Johnson and Sheila Cola wrote a solid take down of the practice in North America explaining that our chemical-soaked turf weeds are rarely native and simply do not significantly support wild pollinators. They argue that the “dandelions feed the bees” message actually harms the movement, convincing people that negligence can stand in for stewardship.

I remain optimistic about the practice. These people are out here fighting HOAs, talking to their neighbors about bees. They’re new recruits! Changing aesthetics is a HUGE part of this effort. And the leap from an un-mown lawn to a native plant garden is a short one. These are new ideas for many people. Messy lawns are essentially cues for us to step in and guide these well-meaning folks to the next level.

And OMG people, literally every major newspaper in the country is talking about reducing lawns and encouraging wildlife! This is a major win! Our movement is really growing.

RESOURCE SPOTLIGHT

• Wild Ones has put together a truly incredible resource: they asked some of the best native plant gardeners in the country to design archetypal gardens for their regions, and then posted them free online, along with explainers, philosophy, and even videos. More are in the works as well!

• Heather Holm has made another fantastic storymap, this time about “Soft Landings,” the term she uses for cultivating a garden bed under trees that allow insects to complete their lifecycles. You see, planting an oak tree is marvelous for the >900 butterflies and moths who use them as a host plant, but most of them drop to the ground to pupate and then emerge as adults. If the trees are located in a lawn or over a sidewalk, many animals drop to their demise. Heather illustrates this beautifully and even shows which plants make good cushions for falling caterpillars.

• Nancy Lawson, the Humane Gardner, came out with a new book and it’s marvelous. Entitled Wildscape, it’s filled with the secret lives of the organisms in your garden. Curious? Here’s an interview with Margaret Roach.

• Is your Aquilegia canadensis blooming? Then chances are that hummingbirds have returned to your areas from their overwintering sites. Here is this helpful map from Hummingbird Central, that tracks all species of hummers through their migration. It’s fun to watch in April in New England, as we anticipate their arrival.

IN THE NEWS

• The Washington Post published a mea culpa from a gardener who recently switched from exotic and even invasive ornamentals over to using native plants. Is it the world’s most sophisticated look at ecological gardening? No. However it is absolutely *perfect* for reaching people who have yet to join the movement. Progress!

• New research has seemingly upended past theories about why insects circle lights at night. Apparently, they think that lights are the bright sky. Insects orient themselves by keeping their backs to the sky, so when they keep their backs to a light, they just circle. Cool video in link.

• Like many of you, I am slowly working my way through Piet Oudolf’s new book “At Work.” It is a beautiful and generous offering by arguably the best living garden designer, inviting us to learn from his process. It’s marvelous to see garden design recognized by Vogue, Piet’s rise to prominence detailed in Chicago Magazine, and interviewed by our favorite new-perennialist, Tony Spencer.

• Margaret Roach interviewed Jared Rosenbaum of Wild Ridge Plants for her NYT garden column, for gardeners, who garden. They discuss how native plants can be harmed by uninformed or profit-driven foragers, suggesting that, if you have access to land, planting the native plants you’d like to eat is a good way to protect wild plants like ramps from our overzealous appetites, thereby keeping them accessible for the folks who’d like to eat them. Anyway, ramps are tired. Onion grass is the new ramps. Get with it.

• An Irish study found pesticides in the nectar and pollen of untreated fields of flowers and hedgerows. The most abundant were fungicides and insecticides, including neonicotinoides, despite their ban in 2018.

• But great news: many states are poised to limit some of the most harmful insecticides. New York has a bill banning the general use of neonics that passed the Assembly. Next up, the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee has to bring it to the floor. With only a few weeks left to the legislative session, we have to put pressure on that committee to act. If you live in Suffolk county and or the Mid Hudson region, YOU MUST CALL YOUR SENATORS because they’re on that committee. They only care about you. Call your friends. And everyone, sign this petition. I don’t ask for much around here. But this is important.

• How much do people love Camellias? In 1776, political ties between England and Germany were strengthened by Kew donating 3 specimens to German royal gardens. Gardeners wrapped the small plant in blankets insulated with straw, but as it grew large, they built a wooden house around the shrub each winter. They did this for >100 years, until the house caught fire and nearly killed the plant! Finally, in 1992, the garden built a 40’ temperature controlled greenhouse on tracks, to slide back and forth over the Camellia when it got cold.

• Pulitzer-winning reporter Elizabeth Kolbert covers Phosphorous in the New Yorker. I can’t even pull fun-facts, everyone in hort should just read it. But (spoiler!) it includes the “pee-cyclers”…

• Heartwarming overload: In 1992, an incredibly handsome and charming gardener started a mini-botanical garden in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Called, the Narrows Botanical Garden, this public treasure hosts a turtle sanctuary, and a circle of redwood trees. But! This gardener’s boyfriend ALSO happened to be a handsome gardener, AND they just got married, at the redwood circle, last month. It’s too cute! Congrats Jimmy and Richard. All the love to you!

• Plants first colonized the terrestrial rocks of Earth 500 million years ago, but soon (100 million years) grew to massive forests. How did they do it? Well, first they had to evolve proto-roots called rhizoids. And then, as entangled rooting stems decayed, fungi moved in, and - voila! - the first soils formed. Roots and soils evolved together, growing deeper over time and pulling so much CO2 out of the atmosphere, that they changed the course of life on Earth. More from the World Economic Forum (of all places) here.

• It can be hard to find people who write about plant consciousness from a scientific perspective. Neourobotanist Stefano Mancuso threads that needle well. He talks about plant communication via volatile organic compounds, “Every single molecule means something, and they mix very different molecules to send a specific message.” His opinions on memory and consciousness are both magical and grounded. Interview here.

• Bird food in the US is a >$4 billion dollar market, resulting in millions of tons of non-natural resources funneled into ecosystems each year. But in the UK, a full 64% of households put out a birdfeeder, tripling the populations of the island's’ most common feeder species, who then push out other woodland birds. Birdfeeders seem to help “aggressive generalists take over entire bird communities and spill out from gardens into unprovisioned wildernesses.” More on the far-reaching effects of bird feeding (and how to help) from Scientific American, as well as a great opinion piece from Nancy Lawson here.

• It doesn’t require land to help support regional ecology. There is a growing (ha!) movement to plant native plants in pots, and it’s beautiful! Here is a lovely success story out of Los Angeles. Want to know more? Graham Laird Gardener wrote a book! Tiny + Wild is a marvelous guide to cultivating pocket meadows and potted prairies.

• This month’s Dig Delve explores the importance of planting only organic tulip bulbs. Not only do the phosphate fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides used in bulb production harm the people and soils who grow them, but some persist in bulbs after lifting. Organic bulbs are twice as expensive, so Huw Morgan simply recommends to plant half as many.

• A cool new study found that insects do not simply fall into Pitcher Plants while drinking nectar on the slippery rim, as previous thought. They are lured to their deaths by various scents: sweeter monoterpenes attracted more bees and moths, while meat-y fatty acids attract ants and flies. Study here.

• Cherry petals have long since fallen from their branches, but this historical story about Sakura remains powerful and timely. The author describes the way anti-japanese racism was enacted against DC’s cherry trees in 1941, as well as the way the same sentiments, and even the same actions, are still present in the US today. It’s a long read, but it’s stunningly beautiful and worth it.

• New pollination syndrome alert! The first known instance of amphibian pollination was discovered in Brazil: a tree frog visits the flowers of the Milk Fruit tree, seemingly pollinating the flower while drinking nectar.

• Researchers have developed ways to hear drought stress in trees: “Surface tension keeps water moving through a tree’s thousands of tiny vessels — But if there’s insufficient water in the soil, this upward pull can generate embolisms that clog vessels… faint acoustic waves were bouncing off air bubbles deep within the trees’ vasculature.” Their studies found that certain species recover from drought well (Beeches) and other do not (Spruce).

• Research keeps mounting that honey bees are ecologically damaging in floral-limited regions like cities. Bravo to the Washington Post for covering it. “It’s a bit like gentrification: When new honeybees move in, life gets harder for the native pollinators that were there first.” And here is a more in-depth look at the latest study out of Montreal: “We found that the sites with the largest increase in honey bee populations across sites and years also had the fewest wild bee species.”

• THAT SAID, honey bees are still incredible, and if you’ve ever wanted to learn the waggle dance, I’ve got you covered.

• Congrats intrepid readers! You’ve reached the end and the reward is honestly amazing: researchers have found that Cellophane bees will use the Lactobacillus bacteria in Agave nectar to ferment the pollen provisions they collect for their babies. The fermentation acts as a preservative, keeping the food fresh, providing added nutrition to larvae, and cultivating their microbiome. This illustrates how all floral resources are not created equal! Who knows what other complex and undiscovered relationships exist among flowers and pollinators? When bees visit particular plants for the bacteria in the nectar, we simply cannot look at a bee on a dandelion and say that exotic plants provide the food / medicine / provisions that these animals need to thrive. Paper here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

• Long Hill Garden Symposium

  May 6. Beverly, MA

  In person and open to the public

  Curious about garden management strategies to promote wildlife? This is the lecture that shows you how to do it. Looking forward to seeing fellow speakers Abra Lee, James McGrath, and Tom de Witte.

• In conversation with Katie Holten

  May 10. Cambridge, MA

  In person, free, and open to the public
  I’ll join Irish activist, artist, and author Katie Holten at the Harvard Bookstore to discuss her new book, the Language of Trees.

• Landscape Pleasures at the Parish Art Museum

  June 10. Water Mill, NY

  In person and open to the public

  I’m excited to speak alongside Charles Birnbaum and Raymond Jungles at this idyllic fundraiser for the Museum. I’ll be speaking about ecological horticulture and Brooklyn Bridge Park, of course.

www.rebeccamcmackin.com