Living in the Commercial Zone of Suburbia
I hear people in the suburbs talking about their gardens and their landscaping, and I realize more and more that I am not a part of the suburbs in the traditional sense.
Many things other residents complain about I don’t identify with. For example, people are worried about tall buildings being built in my town because, among other things, the buildings “destroy the suburban character of the area.” Well, all the factories around me already do that. The heavy delivery trucks that pass by my home and rattle it causing tiny cracks in the walls, the forklifts moving heavy cargo to and fro, the roads blocked by UPS and other delivery trucks, the cars that speed down my block into the strip mall parking lot, all the littering and dumped garbage and abandoned shopping carts in my driveway, the constant wail of police and firetruck sirens- all these things are visual and noise nuisances that destroy the suburban character of this area every day. Add in leaf blowers and its a real hot mess. The daily cacophony of leaf blowers is probably the only thing linking me to what everybody calls “suburban life.”
It’s taken me a few years to realize that I’m on the outskirts. And you know what? I don’t mind. It makes me feel all the more determined to improve my garden and add more native plants each year. After all, my garden is an oasis among the concrete and pollution; a little island surrounded by cracked sidewalks, parked freight trucks, and a tangle of overhead wires.
Another issue people complain about in my local neighborhood Facebook groups are raccoons and rats. “Oh my God” they say, “what is the town going to do about all these rats?” Well, here on my side of town, I’ve seen rats for years because they love the supermarket loading docks down the block, and they also make their rounds around the factories and the new construction projects late at night. My way of coping with them has been to trap, neuter, and return the stray cats that wander onto my property and then keep them around to keep the rats away. I’ve often wondered if other nearby residents use this strategy to deal with the problem while the people on the other side of town are gasping and clutching their pearls in horror over a rat they saw on the surveillance camera in the middle of the night. I live near a strip mall and a bunch of restaurants. There are lots of overflowing dumpsters everywhere. The other day an unidentified man walked over to the corner of my block and poured a bucket of goo into the storm drain. I saw it on my security camera and I think that definitely ruined the suburban character of the area 😄. But getting back to the rats, about 10 years ago a beautifully fluffy white cat wandered into my yard and I had her fixed. She became known to us as ‘Chiquita’ and she kept the yard free of vermin until last winter when my neighbor found her frozen under a car in his backyard. That was one of the few times I spoke to my neighbor because around here there are also no block parties or friendly hellos. Once in a while, on a good day, one of us might wave or say hello, but usually everyone just ignores each other. Yet another clue that this is not the suburbia I once imagined it to be. It seems the most interactions I’ve had has been with the construction company next door who had the terrible habit of blocking my driveway with their trucks until one day I angrily confronted the owner and suddenly became a “problematic “b*tch.”
I mention all of this because whenever I join gardening meetings, particularly meetings about promoting the use of native plants, people tell me that it’s vitally important to get your neighbors on board in order to effect change, and I immediately think of the dead zone I live in and all the people who couldn’t care less. Getting my neighbors to adopt a peaceful gardening style- one that emphasizes native plants, natural methods, low noise/low polluting landscape maintenance, and a general regard for wildlife- feels like an insurmountable task. So I have chosen to focus on what I can do (versus what everyone else should do) and over the past few years I have taken refuge in my garden. If you follow me, you know that I have devoted my garden to wildlife, not to keeping up appearances. A few years ago, I realized I had common milkweed growing on the side of my house and it was a blessing. That year I witnessed the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly, which I had never seen around my home until then. I realized that there was a whole world around me that until then had been completely invisible to me, a world of wildlife that was dependent on the plants on my property and this sparked an intense curiosity about the ecology of my immediate area.
After having my front garden professionally installed with native plants, even more incredible creatures started to appear and I had a front row seat to some incredible sights, such as watching ladybugs mate on a milkweed leaf and watching a rare praying mantis species (carolina mantis) hide in the branches of a prairie willow hoping to catch its next meal. Many of the insects and birds that suddenly appeared in my garden were completely new to me, which fascinated me, but what was truly fascinating to me was seeing how hard these beautiful creatures were fighting to survive in this polluted, concrete corner of suburbia. In that regard, I felt a sort of kinship with them. I know what it’s like to live in situations that are not ideal or are unwanted altogether, but you make the best of it. These creatures are masters of making the best of things but they are still dying out because they just can’t compete with our destructive behavior. If we’re not paving over everything, we are chopping down trees and replacing them with non-native plants, or worse yet, grass lawns that provide little to no sustenance or habitat to wildlife. Then we are dumping and littering and revving our engines towards the strip mall, we are hiring landscaping crews to come in a make an incredible amount of noise and exhaust, and to spray chemicals that drift all over the place and coat everything. It’s a deplorable situation that is made worse in the suburbs and much worse in the commercial zone of the suburbs. We need drastic changes!
So for now, I will continue to focus on improving my garden, tending my property in an environmentally friendly way, and doing my best to lead by example. I’m hoping to open my garden up for a few informal tours this summer. These “tours” will be specifically geared towards kids so that they may get to see a magnificently chubby bumble bee stuck head-first in a flower or hear the cardinals clicking in nearby trees. My greatest hope is to teach them about native plants and the wildlife all around them so they will grow up and choose ecologically sound landscapes, but part of me knows that this may also be one of the last times they get to observe these creatures if we don’t make some drastic changes in landscape maintenance and how we think about nature.
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Last year, I did a little tour around my neighborhood to showcase just how drab it is and why a garden like mine is so important. Check it out here. And while you’re at it, please like and follow me!
