Wild and American - An Introduction to Wildscaping

Mary jogged beside me, huffing at the scenery as we went on our weekly Lose Ten Pounds Or Kill Ourselves Trying Trot. "Have you ever thought much about how Rachael Carson's book, SILENT SPRING, might be coming true?" she asked suddenly.

I almost tripped. "What do you mean?" I asked, waving my hands at the green trees and immaculately clipped lawns and hedges around us. "There's birds, there's squirrels, there's lots of stuff around here. If anything we're making progress. Just look at that fat robin."

She gnawed her lower lip. "I dunno. I read that they're converting up to a hundred acres a day into parking lots and housing areas. There's this lovely field not two blocks from us where some ... group... came in and built a church and completely destroyed the meadow. It made me mad. I didn't see why they couldn't have used someplace already built."

"Have you thought about wildscaping -- building back some of those areas?"

"Mel... I've got one small yard, not a farm!" she protested.

"It's not the size that counts -- it's what you do with it," I grinned. She giggled at the tired old joke.

"So tell me about this wildscaping stuff," she said. "What makes you think it's so good?"

Wildscaping's hardly a new topic, but it's becoming an increasingly popular one. In simple terms, it means taking a small plot of land (even a windowbox) and growing flowers and plants that will benefit the wildlife in the neighborhood -- preferably something that originally grew in the area. Native plants that once were rooted out and mulched into the soil to make room for imported exotics, are now being seen as sensible and environmentally healthy options.

In fact, the objective of wildscaping is to reduce the amount of grass you have to mow each week. Instead of encouraging the suburban dream of short clipped hedges and one inch tall grass, wildscaping means making more creative arrangements of greenery around your home that invites animals to fly, crawl or hop on over to visit or to stay. Visually, it's a far more interesting landscape than Suburban Standard and from a practical sense it's not very hard to do -- or to maintain.

How difficult is it? Actually, it isn't that hard at all. Wildscaping can be as simple as providing feeders, birdbaths, and nest boxes for birds, or planting trees and flowers native to your area -- plants that take less time and effort to maintain than the exotic imports. In a wildscaping sense, no site is too small or unimportant. Even children can wildscape a small area around their homes.

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