Pondering the ‘idle wild’

On Mother’s Day, we brunched with blended family to celebrate the matriarch of the family as well as the other mothers in the group. The gathering was festive and continued well past the meal. Late in the day, we left Wilmington and drove back to Kimberton.

Not that we hadn’t passed plenty of corporate buildings and business centers on the drive down, but suddenly — as we passed yet another office building — it seemed that all that I could see was the massive parking lot, empty and unused on the weekend. “What a wasteland,” I commented to my husband.

My own word hit me strongly. “Wasteland” is a word often used to describe a natural area. The MacMillan online dictionary defines wasteland as “an area of land that is empty or cannot be used.” Generally, the word is used to describe an area that is not suitable for building upon, as if putting up buildings and paving over acres of wilderness is somehow “de facto” the highest and best use for the land.

This connects with the concept of the “idle wild,” as in Idlewild, NY and the Idlewild Airport*, built on marshlands. The pastoral side of nature calls to us, draws us outside on warm, sunny days. But as calm and soothing as they may be to us, forests, marshes, or unmown meadows are anything but idle. These places are teeming and busy with life; we just don’t see it. And so of course it’s fine to build (a.k.a. “develop”) land that seems to be just sitting there, unproductive.

As I reflected on that parking lot, empty and barren, I realized that these are the real wastelands. And it’s not just the fact that they produce nothing. It’s also that these large impervious surfaces carry off rainwater at such a fast rate that they contribute to stream flooding and erosion. But we keep appropriating more land to be converted from “idle” to our human concept of productive: jobs, real estate taxes, etc.

These thoughts led me to consider Professor Doug Tallamy’s idea that as homeowners we have the power to choose what grows on our property. And if we plant with wildlife in mind, and if enough of us do this, we could create what Tallamy has dubbed “Homegrown National Park (HNP).”

Along with describing the personal benefits of creating HNP, Tallamy shares two basic statistics. First, lawns in the United States occupy about twenty million acres. Second, twenty million acres is bigger than the combined areas of the Everglades, Galveston, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Badlands, Olympic, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Denali, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. Says Tallamy, “If we restore the ecosystem and function of these twenty million acres, we can create this country’s largest park system.”

It’s not just that this is a really cool idea. There’s a need to steer us toward a new approach to conservation. Tallamy says “Conservation that is confined to parks will not preserve species in the long run, because these areas are too small and too separated from one another.” He points to the huge ecological value of the land between these isolated habitat fragments. “Restoring habitat where we live . . . will go a long way toward building biological corridors that connect preserved habitat fragments with one another.”

There are many steps along the way from nothing-but-lawn to something you might call a national park. It might seem a daunting project, but the steps don’t have to be huge, and they don’t all have to be done at once. Here are a few resources to help you plan: Tallamy’s book, “Nature’s Best Hope”; Herb Society of America’s GreenBridges™ program, https://www. herbsociety.org/get-involved/greenbridges-initiative.html; Wildlife Federation: (https://www. nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife); Pollinator Partnership, https://www.pollinator.org/7things.

*Renamed the John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963. Pam Baxter is an avid organic vegetable gardener who lives in Kimberton. Direct e-mail to pamelacbaxter@gmail. com, or send mail to P.O. Box 80, Kimberton, PA 19442. Share your gardening stories on Facebook at “Chester County Roots.” Pam’s nature-related books for children and families are available on Amazon, at Amazon.com/author/ pamelabaxter.