For nearly half a century, the renowned entomologist Dr. Douglas Tallamy has been teaching new generations about the foundational players in terrestrial ecosystems: insects and native plants.
It is from this base that biodiversity blooms. While the fundamentally important ways in which these players interact are well documented, it is a concept that has evaded most people’s interest.
Yet it is a critically important one, as all life on Earth—including human life—requires healthy ecosystems in order to survive.
While there are headlines about the biodiversity crisis that make their transit through the media, as well as the collective consciousness, the significance to humans has not yet taken root among the general populace. Nor has a sweeping sense that there is anything for individuals to do about it.
“We have got to turn this biodiversity crisis around because we are not independent from nature. We need functioning ecosystems, and ecosystems will not function without biodiversity,” Tallamy said in a recent interview with Kinute.
“It's a critical challenge to the planet. That makes it a critical challenge to me, and it's all based on a culture of misunderstanding … we can overcome that with education, and that's what I'm all about.”
Meadow featuring native plants. (Photo: Jeff Myers, Churubusco, Indiana)
Armed with his passion for education, Tallamy has taken his message out of the classroom and into the world at large. First through his public lecturing and the authoring of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Nature’s Best Hope.
He is also the co-founder of Homegrown National Park (HNP), a grassroots non-profit that’s inspiring the action he sees as necessary in turning the biodiversity crisis around, and empowering people with the tools to make a difference.
Homegrown National Park
In describing the ethos of the organization, and his edict in general, Tallamy said, “I focus on personal responsibility. Everybody requires healthy ecosystems—it's not a red or blue issue, it doesn't matter whether you're a tree hugger, everybody requires it—so I think that makes everybody responsible for good earth stewardship.”
He noted that while people understand the importance of nature, many assume that protecting it is what national parks and other public lands are for. “They think Yellowstone's enough. It's not. We need it everywhere, absolutely everywhere.”
Monarch butterfly on asters. (Photo: Ann Lankford | Martinsville, Indiana)
This is the principle that Homegrown National Park is founded upon. While our public lands are a rich resource, they are simply not enough. Additionally, they are sequestered from one another, making migration between them unfeasible for many wildlife populations.
This creates population islands that are vulnerable, especially as storms, weather patterns and temperature fluctuations have continued to become increasingly more erratic.
Tallamy’s proposed solution is for individuals to put their land to valuable use as critical habitat for the very creatures that are the foundations of our ecosystems, thus supporting biodiversity while simultaneously creating migration corridors that connect public lands.
After studying the issue for decades, Tallamy argues that the most obvious area on privately held land, to transition to more ecologically supportive habitats, is the lawn.
“Lawn is a status symbol,” Tallamy said. “We’ve got 44 million acres of it in this country. So I try to convince people that you can have lawn, but we need to reduce the amount that's out there. We need more functional plants in our yards.”
“I had this idea that if we cut the amount of lawn in half, and restored the other half, that would be enough area to make the biggest national park in the country, by far.”
Home landscape converted to incorporate native plants. (Photo: Yvonne Kolarik | Ponca City, Oklahoma)
Thus, with the idea of creating the equivalent of a national park on home sites across the nation, the concept of Homegrown National Park was born—though the non-profit entity was still years in the making.
It was while extolling his message to a likeminded group in Connecticut, that Tallamy met the partner he needed to take his dream to the next level.
In the audience was Michelle Alfandari, a recently retired, New York ex-pat whose neighbor had convinced her to attend Tallamy’s talk.
Until then, Alfandari would’ve been described as a member of the “non-choir”—someone who had not already metabolized this message and been moved toward action. However, she connected with the message, and the science, that Tallamy is a master of laying out for the layperson.
In approaching him after the presentation, she convinced him to join forces. While he had the science and the message, she had the marketing and branding prowess to not only launch a non-profit, but to create a movement.
A Royal Walnut Moth. (Photo: Doug Tallamy)
Now in their fifth year, HNP has indeed become a movement, flush with abundant educational resources, interactive maps and a community of caring individuals who are endeavoring to bring about a homegrown national park, one native plant at a time.
“The goal of it is to reach that non-choir. It's to get the message to people like Michelle who had no clue, no interest, but when she learned something about it, she said that all of a sudden she saw this is an issue, and that she can help. So, we're counting on that being true for a lot of people,” Tallamy said.
Chickadee with a fresh catch. (Photo: Doug Tallamy)
Mapping the Park’s Progress
With the goal of reaching the non-choir, HNP realized that they had to create resources that would walk newbies through the process.
If folks are interested in doing some planting on their own, the HNP website offers plant guides for all bioregions in the United States and Canada, with special designation given to keystone plant species—native plant species that make a particularly significant contribution within a given ecosystem.
For individuals in search of further assistance, there is a searchable catalogue of resources and services ranging from nurseries that carry native plants to landscapers who will install them.
In fostering a sense of community in the movement, there is the HNP newsletter and social media channels however, there is also The Homegrown National Park Biodiversity Map. This enables participants to register their property and track the progress that’s being made toward habitat creation.
Homegrown National Park Biodiversity Map
The Biodiversity Map is a special pet project of HNP Executive Director Tim Snyder.
Snyder was initially drawn to HNP by a friend who sits on the board for the organization. After delving into Tallamy’s work and seeing the light of the biodiversity crisis, along with the clear framework laid out for action, he knew that the non-profit was an ideal intersection for his environmentalist ideology and his background in tech.
“What I really liked about Homegrown National Park was that they were providing ways in which anybody could take meaningful action to improve biodiversity and that the steps to do that were all available for anyone to partake in,” he said. “And I think that's a real difference between some of the other movements out there.”
While Snyder and the HNP team have been continuously working to make the map more engaging to individuals, they have also been able to track their progress with it.
While laudable headway has been made, with registered users of the map hovering near 50,000, the organization acknowledges that it will take millions of participants to move the needle as dramatically as it needs to be, to make the necessary difference.
Thus, while the map tracks advancement, it also reveals gaps, which help inform strategy for reaching more people moving forward.
A planting from an HNP participant. (Photo: Yvonne Kolarik | Ponca City, Oklahoma)
On what the biggest issue in the biodiversity crisis is, Tallamy and Snyder are united: awareness.
“We still believe that awareness of the actual problem is one of the biggest issues. People haven't actually quite gotten their heads around how big the biodiversity crisis is,” said Snyder. “Even among garden enthusiasts, there isn't the awareness, necessarily, of the importance of what role native plants play in the overall ecology.”
Spreading the News
In efforts to reach a broader audience, HNP has created several videos of Dr. Tallamy, laying out the issue at hand, in his characteristically clear way, with the intention of native plant initiates hosting watch parties in their communities.
While this is an excellent resource for individuals to spread the message to one another, it is also a powerful tool that can be shared with organizations.
“If you can find a champion within an organization, that's yet another way in which you can reach out beyond the choir,” Snyder said.
Beds with native plants border a lawn. (Photo: Mike Christiansen | Ames, Iowa)
In addition to the tens of thousands registered with The HNP Biodiversity Map, there are more than 300 diverse organizations including churches, community centers, businesses, and even homeowners associations (HOAs).
HOAs often tend to be known for upholding strict aesthetic standards for their communities however, as Tallamy says, “How you landscape is a design issue. It's not a native versus non native [plant] issue.” Citing that, “Formality is a function of the design … So I show some really formal landscapes, 100 percent native plants, but nobody would know that because it's all formalized. So these are barriers of ignorance that we try to get rid of.”
Planting a garden is an innately hopeful act. The increasing number of participants in the native plant movement is a beacon of hope, like the emblematic firefly that is the organization’s mascot.
It is indeed the growth of this movement, and the messages of affirmation, that continue to inspire all those involved in HNP and spur Tallamy on in his long and productive career.
It is this same sense of hope that moves individuals, as well as organizations, to transition their modern, hyperindividuated view of property ownership to one of shared responsibility.
Leading to actions like discontinuing herbicide and pesticide use (that pollute the environment and often make no distinction in the plants and insects they harm), ceding lawn for the sake of incorporating native plants into landscapes, and sharing the urgency of the biodiversity crisis and the hopeful path of action with others.
A native meadow borders a solar array. (Photo: Ellen Terwilliger | Eau Claire, Wisconsin)
“When you put in native plants, you're doing something that not only improves your health and the biodiversity of your space, but it actually improves that for the entire community. Hopefully, that message will resonate with people,” Snyder said.
While The Homegrown National Park Biodiversity Map currently represents the U.S. and Canada, the organization has recently had interested parties reach out from Mexico and England lobbying for the map to expand to their areas—putting HNP on track to becoming a global movement, while attesting to the resonance people feel with its message.
“If you listen to the news, you get discouraged. If you listen to the latest data about climate change, it is awfully discouraging but, you know, if you are in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean and it starts to leak, you bail. You don't just give up and sink, you bail, and that's what we're doing, we're bailing,” said Tallamy.
“I do have hope in that, this culture change that I'm looking for is happening much faster than I thought it would. That's very hopeful. Every time somebody says, ‘you have completely changed the way I think about this,’ I'm encouraged. And I hear that a lot.”
A bumble bee foraging nectar. (Photo: Linda Krygiel | St. Louis, Missouri)
For more information on HNP, visit them at homegrownnationalpark.org