By Mike Renzella
The Haldimand Press
HALDIMAND—In honour of Earth Day, celebrated this year on Friday, April 22, Haldimand Stewardship Council is asking residents to consider rethinking their approach to at-home landscaping and gardening, moving away from neatly manicured gardens and yards toward a more naturalized setting that comes with a number of benefits.
Field biologist and Stewardship Council member Cathy Blott listed some of those benefits, including creating the physical habitat to support common and rare native species, reducing required maintenance and mowing expenses, creating beautiful vistas of colour and layers, providing opportunities to see interesting wildlife, and promoting healthy living integrated with nature.
“Haldimand County is host to resident wildlife, but also the twice annual mass of migrating birdlife. Haldimand County is also a part of the long linear Lake Erie shoreline and near-shore habitat that wildlife travel along,” said Blott. “Some of the wildlife in Haldimand County are rare, and in most cases, giving back space with native habitat is what can reverse the declining population trajectories of the rare animals.”
Additionally, Blott said that insects, while not often well-thought-of or admired for their presence, play an important role as pollinators and as “the basis of the food web that moves nutrients into longer lived organisms, like our beloved swallows and bats.”
Protecting that food web is crucial in ensuring a natural balance and avoiding scenarios where one species can dominate or overrun an ecosystem.
“Natural areas and an assemblage of native wildlife provide us with environmental services of keeping our water and earth clean, purifying the air, storing carbon, and providing us food,” said Blott. “Making space with a diversity of natural habitats is the key to supporting the wildlife and the services they provide for us, and everyone’s yard is important and can contribute.”
According to Blott, there are several easy ways to get started, such as adding native shrubs or flower species to an existing garden: “I often recommend a thick shrub layer around the perimeter of the yard to start … and then work inward to make inner native areas with pathways.” Doing so provides food and habitat, while also providing a shield to and from your yard of “unwanted windborne seed transfer.”
Blott recommended including clumps of year-round green conifers, which provide a rich food source and important shelter in the winter.
“The other very easy thing for landowners to do is to simply stop mowing areas,” said Blott, advising to instead simply mow pathways throughout the growing season. “Native ecological systems have a resilience of their own, if we give them a chance…. I have seen trilliums reappear after many years in urban backyards that have been grown in trees.”
Making the change to a naturalized space will allow for native grass and meadow species to eventually return to your environment: “There are many ways to convert a lawn. One way is for the lawn or a section of the lawn to be tilled or worked continuously (once a week) over the spring, summer, and fall seasons to clean the area of existing growth and remnant roots, and then seed and plant the native species that fall.”
For more information on how to get started, reach out to HSC at rm@haldimandstewardshipcouncil.org.
