Rewilding – or just lazy

We thought we were doing everything correctly with our front yard. We turned the soil, then laid down that black plastic you can buy in any big-box store. Following that we brought in wheelbarrow-loads of decomposed granite and put that on top, smoothing it out neatly. Three open circles were reserved for the rose bushes that were here when we moved in. For a while it looked nice. Neat and clean, albeit a bit sparse. Then a funny thing happened.

Nature happened.

It started with the grass (it always seems to start with grass). A few green strands poking their way up through gaps between the sheets of plastic. Naturally (that’s an oxymoron here) I pulled them. Back to the look of sere desert-granite fragments. A while later, more grass. More pulling. Wouldn’t use herbicide because of the danger to the roses, and to the dark-green vinca that was now spilling from the brick planter we had left untouched. Pull, return, pull, reprise, curse, pull ….

Like an assortment of monsters from cheap 1950s black-and-white monster movies, the things wouldn’t die.

After some years of this, and interminable frustration accompanied by much loud declamation of increasingly repetitive expletives, I gave up. It was only grass, and the bulk of the yard remained unaffected. Whereupon a second funny thing happened.

Something other than grass poked its stem through a tiny split in the plastic. The newcomer was a bit twisty, a bit ragged compared to the smooth-sided grass, and it terminated in — a daisy. Or something very like a daisy, though smaller and less sophisticated. But it was undeniably a flower. It was white and bright and utterly out of place among the decomposing granite. I considered pulling it, hesitated, and left it alone. It was pretty. Prettier than the granite, for all that it was a chromatic interruption in the unbroken swath of yellow-red rock. I left it alone.

After a while, it invited some friends.

Year after year there was less sun-blasted stone and more green, accompanied by more wildflowers. Or weeds, as our gardener called them. One time they were accidentally pulled, and I was surprised at how deeply I regretted their absence. But they came back the next season.

Soon enough they were joined by others of their expansive tribe. Yellow variants. White phlox. Scarlet trumpet. Orange mallow. And, in the shadiest corner, so delicate as to hardly be believed, blue Asian dayflower. Weeds, one and all. Or wildflowers. It all depends on your point of view. My point of view now says they are a lot more attractive than raw rock. I can see plenty of that up at the Canyon or over in Sedona. I’d rather have the color in my front yard.

There’s an old adage that says you have to destroy before you can rebuild. If so, we’ve done that to the grasslands all over the planet. Not just on the Great Plains, but in east Africa, Patagonia, and many of the lands with richer soils where large-scale irrigation and planting have taken place. In the US about half the original grasslands have been plowed under. But that still leaves half of them. In the absence of the nearly exterminated American bison, much of that has been overgrazed by sheep and cattle.

Rewilding says that we should take a bunch of that and let it regenerate, with our help where possible. Bring back the grasslands, goes the thinking, and Nature will help do the rest. This is a relatively new concept, not only bringing back a natural biome but actively helping to reestablish what was once there. Such a change of approach and attitude toward the management of the land certainly carries with it economic considerations. Also ethical ones. No farms and no ranches equals a lot less food. Yet, shouldn’t it be possible to have both?

Besides, all those resurrected bioengineered mammoths and other Pleistocene mammals will need a simulacrum of their original environment in which to thrive. But that’s a subject for another column. Know who are going to be among the biggest supporters of that forthcoming scientific breakthrough?

Hunters.

Meanwhile, my wife and I can’t rewild the Dakotas. But now that we’ve let our front yard “go,” it teems with wildflowers in spring and summer. The chipmunks love the cover, the rabbits and deer love the edibles, birds relish the variety of seeds, and we don’t worry about the javelinas mowing down our natural landscaping. Occasionally we’ll throw a little water on the area, because Arizona. Admittedly, we don’t have neighbors to worry about, and neighborhood aesthetics are certainly a consideration for some. But even in neighborhoods, a little rewilding can provide a plethora of visual benefits.

Leave the grass for the golf course, and bring a little Nature home. She’ll find ways to thank you, and you’ll certainly come to thank her.