By Margot Brinn
All images courtesy of author
I am currently converting our two acre [more or less] land in the city of Ithaca from non-native plantings and large lawns to lawn paths though large native beds. This article is about how I made the transition.
To start in the beginning, in elementary school in Queens NY in the ‘50s, the powers that were showed a documentary about a midwestern wheat farmer. I came home and told my parents that I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up. I asked them if they were laughing [which they were] because Jews did not farm–we were an urban first-generation Jewish immigrant family. But they assured me that there were Jewish truck farmers in New Jersey. It took me fifty years or so to realize that it was my gender [female] that was to them the laughable obstacle.
I did not follow that dream for that reason and many others including lack of imagination but did eventually become an enthusiastic gardener of vegetables and flowers. Each year I would buy vegetable and flower seedlings from the yearly sale here in Ithaca, NY, one with many vendors. Among them was the Tompkins County Native Plant Society whose seedlings I’d quickly peruse and pass by to the more dramatic flowers at the other vendors.
One year, it was before covid so maybe 2018, my friend Lois Levitan, a volunteer at the native plant stand, saw me disinterestedly pass by. She grabbed me by the arm, introduced me to Krissy Boys [some of you may know her; she and Todd Bittner recently did an ELA webinar on native lawns], and told me I have to start volunteering at the Cornell Botanical Gardens with native plants where Krissy led the volunteers. The combination of Lois’s strong arming me [literally and figuratively] and Krissy’s sweet warm welcome was irresistible. So I started volunteering on Tuesdays.
Thus began my education. I had had no information about bugs and birds, their collapsing populations and the connection to the loss of native plant species. Krissy was a wonderful teacher. As volunteers we were able to take home many of the plants that we were caring for, seed we were collecting, plants that we were planting, or transplanting. Although most of Cornell’s extensive gardens are not native, Krissy and her other native plant nerds, professional and volunteer, planted some beautiful gardens. All the asters, the milkweeds, and the goldenrods, especially the well-behaved goldenrods, as Krissy called them, got started in my garden. I also began to determine the fate of the non-native species that I had unwittingly planted in my days of ignorance. Some notables included: non-native viburnums–which I pulled and replaced with natives, including Viburnum acerifolium (mapleleaf viburnum) and Viburnum trilobum (American cranberry)–and embarrassingly, vinca, which I am STILL pulling.
To make room for the plants and to reduce the ecological desert of the lawn, I put cardboard down on large areas and stuck in plants as I got them, adding a bit of compost mixed into my heavy clay soil. By the time I started planting, for better –easy to plant–and worse–more weeds to contend with, the cardboard was part of the soil. This process was horribly assisted in wet years by the jumping worms.
I can’t remember who recommended reading some of Doug Tallamy’s books to me, but I did, which got me started on planting more trees among the perennials. In 2021, I ordered several hundred native trees and shrubs: oaks (Quercus sp.), black cherry (Prunus serotina), river birch (Betula sp.), viburnums, ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius), dogwoods, both Cornus florida and C. alternifolia , Virginia and swamp rose (Rosa virginiana, R. palustris), sumacs, including winged sumac, (Rhus copallinum.) and witch hazels (Hamamelis sp.) from the New York Department of Conservation. I posted on our neighborhood listserv that I was giving away native trees to anyone in the neighborhood, explaining in the email the need for native plants to foster the native insects to feed the native baby birds. A couple of dozen people showed up over a couple of weeks. And I planted several dozen trees and bushes myself . The following year, I did the same but charged neighbors the cost of the plants [about $1.50/plant]. People were particularly fond of the red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea), witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), and the American cranberry (Viburnum trilobum).
And yet, my neighborhood is still covered in lawns; I want to make a bigger impact. So, a few months ago I contacted a neighbor, Pat Dutt. Pat, after some years working as a geologist for the oil industry, decided that we needed a more sustainable way to live. Pat was a great choice for my co-conspirator in a plan to reduce lawn and increase native plantings. We had a meeting with about eight other people on her lawn in September and discussed strategies and then met on my property in October and did the same. We had about 15 neighbors after hand delivering flyers designed by my granddaughter. We are going to meet here again in the spring where I will distribute the DEC trees and have a presentation on the importance of native plantings. That will be easier than what I had been doing the last two years which was a constant dribble of neighbors over several weeks.
We’re eager to make West Hill in Ithaca an ecological haven. This year I will add black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa), red osier dogwood, witch hazel , highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum), ninebark, silky dogwood (Cornus amomum), and Virginia rose, a total of 165 plants for $191 plus maybe $30 in shipping. Although NY DEC selections are limited, I am grateful for their very affordable plants.
About the Author:
I grew up in Queens and Long Island-the eastwarrd trek–started by my parents in Brooklyn, went to SUNY Binghamton when it was Harpur College and majored in English. I later got my Montessori certification and am still amazed that her method isn’t universally adopted. After marrying, living in Tuskegee, Alabama, and Ecuador, and having several children, we moved to Ithaca where I worked for a couple of decades for the BOCES adult ed ESL program. Raised a communist Jew, I am currently a Baha’i. And also enjoy teaching co-counseling [rc.org].
