Island Home and the Native Plant Movement

  Taproot recently converted a backyard in Island Home, Knoxville from a mix of weeds, grasses and invasives into an eventual wildflower oasis complete with meandering walkways and a 30 foot fallen tree or “snag”. Most of the time fallen trees are cut up with a chainsaw and hauled off to a green waste site but these snags can have serve as a very productive piece of the ecological environment around it. In the realm of the usual suspect projects this one was definitely out of the box, but surely welcomed. Through the years, my dislike of turfgrass has grown quite intense. The amount of fossil fuels that are used up every year to fuel lawnmowers and the trucks/trailers that wind through our urban streets 9 months out of the year is staggering. Not to mention the grass treatment companies that make millions a year pumping poison onto our nicely manicured lawns or after a heavy rain, down the drains and into our watersheds. Unfortunately I worked for one of these companies many years ago and witnessed firsthand the sheer amount of product that is pumped out of these trucks every year. Think about 15 trucks a day carrying 300-400 gallons of weed killer/fertilizer that is sprayed onto lawns 360 days out of the year. Do the math, or on second thought, don’t. We have enough depressing things to deal with these days.

  Through years of being involved in the industry and observing the changes our local environment has undergone over my lifetime it is clear to me that we must make changes to our own personal landscape impact. We can effect not only our small ecosystem around us (backyard) but by learning and teaching can spread to our neighborhood, then to the community and beyond. The aforementioned Island Home neighborhood is quickly becoming one of these type communities. If you drive through the neighborhood there are several lots that have rid themselves of turf altogether. Some of them have been done by local designers, others by the homeowner with a little help from Stanley’s Greenhouse (a local company that specializes in native and obscure plants) and non-profits like NPRS (Native Plant Rescue Squad) who collect native plants from sites all over Knoxville and replant or sell them to locals for native plant installations. Sometimes all it takes is a mentor or information source (with the right information) to steer a potential homeowner who is looking to make changes in their landscape towards an all native landscape rather than going to Lowes and buying what looks cool.

  Keep in mind these are relatively small lots but the impact is still quite strong. The architecture of the neighborhood combines nicely with the native plant aesthetic – you have Craftsman style homes with subtle lines and simple elegance. Overall, the neighborhood has embraced the native plant movement and idea that you can help improve the environment by starting with your own property, big or small. The property we did this past fall was on Maplewood Drive which backs up to Baker Creek just before it empties into the Tennessee River. We eliminated invasive plants (Shrub Honeysuckle, Privet and Autumn Olive) that had grown between the new wildflower area and the property line. The Baker Creek watershed is a perfect example of a wildlife ‘corridor’ as it runs behind Maplewood Drive and through more residential areas on its way to the Tennessee River. Wildlife corridors establish ‘safezones’ for animals and insects as they move through our environment that are not interrupted by roads, railways or other human establishment. These corridors are essential when it comes to overall wildlife health by allowing individuals to move through populations cutting down on inbreeding and other factors that arise in isolated populations. Established corridors would also help cut down on road kill, reduce the local flora devastation done in small areas where deer are isolated and allow an overall healthier diet for animals by providing them with a larger area to forage. The idea is to eventually connect enough of these corridors together to form large, uninterrupted wildlife zones that serve as wildlife management areas that are managed by the community and individual landowners.

  

  

  Knoxville, as a whole is becoming more open to this type of landscape aesthetic. More and more homeowners are at least considering non-turf landscapes because of the impact to the environment, no lawnmowers to pay every week and in the end a more pleasing overall look to your property. Keep in mind there have been numerous studies done that affirm that we as humans are healthier when we are in nature, amongst the trees or in a wildflower meadow. We were not meant as a species to only walk through asphalt paved streets and only see plants when we venture out into the country someplace. We can have what we need to be happy right there in our own yards – trees, shade, flower blooms and occasional wildlife. Lawns as we know them today represent vanity in its purest form, they originated when farmers or landowners became so wealthy that they did not have to farm all of their land every year. Instead they grew turf in these areas as a form of pride to show that they had more than they needed. Instead of using these unneeded areas as grasslands or wildflower pastures, the landowners began the practice of creating environmental dead zones, a practice that is still being used today.

  From an economic standpoint, the practice of mowing our yards once a week is either too costly or time consuming depending on if you do it yourself or pay someone else to do it. Over time it would certainly save money to spend the upfront cost of naturalizing our yards whether it be with plants or some other form of groundcover like clover, sedum or creeping juniper. Or it can be done in stages by spreading the cost out over several years. Just allow yourself to think about how much healthier our environment would be if we all eliminated turf or at least the mowing of it 20 times a year. By eliminating turf mowing we also eliminate lawn care companies that spew poison all over the place that kill our insects and encourage a stagnant landscape. The worst problem this presents is what do we do with all the lawnmowers we no longer need, but that would be a good problem to have.

Stay tuned to see how the Island Home wildflower garden comes together in 2024 and all of our future projects that fall in this category…