Mitzi Mason Lee and Thomas Wakefield began rewilding their Hanover County property by replacing the fence line and part of the lawn with a wildflower meadow of native plants. (Photo by Mitzi Mason Lee)
For generations, the image of a neatly manicured front lawn with foundation plantings and thoughtfully placed perennials has been the ideal. Now a growing number of gardeners are eschewing those picture-perfect landscapes and are rewilding instead — giving up control to allow nature to take its course.
The much-publicized decline of the honeybee and monarch butterfly populations has sparked interest in pollinator and butterfly gardens. Rewilding takes things a bit further to consciously create an environment that fosters the land’s return to a natural habitat that supports many species of insects, birds, small mammals and reptiles.
In an April 2020 Smithsonian magazine article, Douglas Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware who has studied the effects of rewilding on the local ecology since 2005, states that we’ve lost sight of the importance of nature in our quest for green lawns, adding that we can’t rely our national parks and forests to maintain a healthy ecosystem by themselves. In response, Tallamy created the Homegrown National Park initiative to encourage everyone to lend a hand by replanting their gardens — whether big or small; in cities, parks or suburban streets; in backyards, on rooftops, or in container gardens and window boxes — with native North American flora. A resource for everything rewilding, the Homegrown National Park website includes an interactive map where participating gardeners can add their property to the patchwork of natural habitats and monitor the progress made toward Tallamy’s goal of 20 million acres of native planting in the United States.
You don’t have to be a trained scientist or have a green thumb to successfully rewild your garden, you just have to choose the right plants. “Locally grown native plants are important to use, ones that are adapted to the local conditions as opposed to native cultivars that are available in big box stores but grown in far-off places that often do not provide local wildlife benefits,” says Juliellen Sarver of Plantae Gardens, who coaches clients on the planning, planting and upkeep of ecologically minded kitchen, pollinator, rain and butterfly gardens.
“I try to educate people and show them that they can incorporate native plants and ecological maintenance practices that are beautiful and beneficial, and that they don’t [necessarily] have to give up their lawns entirely,” Sarver says, “that there’s a range between manicured and wild.”
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Native plants recommended by Plantae Gardens include ageratum. (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
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Baptisia or wild indigo (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
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Rudbeckia or coneflowers (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
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Obelia (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
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Passionflower (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
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Trumpet vine (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
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Maidenhair fern (Photo by Juliellen Sarver)
Rewilding might be described as a lesson in organized chaos. Sarver says that even though a garden might look wild, this doesn’t mean that it is out of control. It takes research, planning and regular maintenance, just as traditional gardens do, and an adjustment of your aesthetic ideal.
“We realize that in the winter, [our wildflower meadow] … doesn’t look very nice out there — it’s very brown,” says Mitzi Mason Lee, who is working with her husband, Thomas Wakefield, to rewild their Hanover County property. “But that’s a short time when you consider the longer-term number of months that it is thriving and providing food for all kinds of bees and beetles, butterflies and birds.”
Inspired by their longstanding interest in wildlife and ecological conservation, the couple completed the Department of Forestry’s program for Virginia Master Naturalists, which Mason Lee describes as “A-to-Z bricks and mortar for understanding what it means to be a naturalist and our native environment.” They had put in a butterfly garden and had talked for years about planting a wildflower meadow before they began rewilding their land in earnest in 2019.
Mason Lee planted 17 species of native wildflowers where their fence line once stood, including butterfly weed, partridge pea, lanceleaf coreopsis, purple coneflower, rattlesnake master, lemon mint, drummond flox, black-eyed Susan, scarlet sage and spiderwort. The couple recently gave away the mature boxwoods that were growing around the house, in preparation for a new pollinator garden. “There won’t be anything in there that doesn’t attract insects or bugs,” Mason Lee says. Wakefield is also nurturing 30 baby oak trees with the goal of extending the woods around their home onto the area that’s been more cultivated.
“I personally love boxwoods, in a way,” Wakefield says, “but they don’t provide any benefits other than bird nesting areas — there’s virtually no insect that will feed on it. So just putting something in there that you might have five to 10 different insects that will feed on it drastically improves the biodiversity just in that one little shift.”
Photo by Dennis Church
Rewilding
Ways to rewild in your own backyard:
- Include a variety of plant species indigenous to Central Virginia.
- Reject chemical pesticides.
- Install feeders and nesting boxes to attract birds.
- Create a water feature to encourage biodiversity.
- Leave part of your lawn unmown; plant grasses and wildflowers.
- Collect rainwater coming off impervious surfaces like the roof and use it to water plants.
- Plant a window box with wildflower seeds.
Pollinator garden:
A garden or bed featuring specific plants that attract beneficial insects that pollinate flowers also provide habitats and food sources for butterflies and larvae.
Rain garden:
A shallow basin planted with native plants that captures water from impervious surfaces (usually a roof
or driveway) and allows it to infiltrate the soil instead of running offsite into storm drains.
Books:
- “The Living Landscape,” by Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke
- “Planting in a Post-Wild World,” by Claudia West and Thomas Rainer
- “Garden Revolution,” by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher
For more information on rewilding:
- Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, dwr.virginia.gov/wildlife/habitat
- Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council, chesapeakelandscape.org
- Homegrown National Park, homegrownnationalpark.com
- Virginia Native Plant Society, vnps.org
- American Botanical Council’s Sustainable Herbs Program, sustainableherbsprogram.org
Find local resources for native plants:
Plant Virginia Natives, plantvirginianatives.org
