Detox Your Garden E-book

There’s been a lot going on in the nation lately and I’ve been thinking about what, if anything, I can do to help in this moment. I’ve been to protests and I have done my best to stay informed and resist disinformation, but one thing I keep hearing is that we should all be building community right now. What does it mean to build community? To me it means getting to know your neighbors and other people in your community; gathering with them, learning from them, exchanging ideas, and standing together against an increasingly tyrannical government.

In my mind, building community also means taking care of our environment and taking steps collectively to ensure that the air and water in our communities are clean and that our cities are livable for all. One big way we can work towards this goal is to stop using so many chemicals in the garden and to plant more native plants to improve the soil and support the food webs that are increasingly in danger of collapse.

Last year, NatureServe, a biodiversity data company, led a study that found that over 1/5 of all North American pollinators are at an elevated risk of extinction, with bees being the most threatened (1/3 of bee species are at risk!). These stats should be deeply alarming but with everything that’s going on politically, it seems the environment has taken a permanent back seat. We simply cannot wait for the government or an environmental organization or a state agency or whoever to step in and stop this extinction event, we must all do something right now! Those of us fortunate enough to own some land can reduce or eliminate our lawns in favor of native plants. If you can’t plant directly in the ground, the next best thing is a container garden and there are many native plants that grow well in a container, some examples are butterflyweed (asclepias tuberosa), tickseed (coreopsis lanceolata), and coneflower (echinacea purpurea).

If you don’t have access to land or can’t create a container garden, then reach out to your local park or church, or any place that has some lawn or weedy land that can be converted to a native plant garden. This action will go a long way towards preserving the water supply, the air quality, and the overall well-being of our communities. Most importantly, this act of solidarity will push back on the current climate of violence, dominance, and despair that is afflicting our nation and that in itself is healing to those who feel so hopeless in this moment. In this vein, I have put together a short e-book that talks about methods for removing lawn and improving the soil naturally as well as some wildlife-friendly suggestions for planting and dealing with “pests.” I also provide some links like this one to find planting plans for your state, which include plants lists and pollinator information. The e-book is available on Amazon Kindle or as a PDF in Linktree.

I hope you will check out the ebook and send it to someone who is new to the topic of native plant gardening. Let’s go hard for pollinators this year!