Does forgetting to cut your lawn for weeks on end count as rewilding? What about *not* hazing the coyotes that I regularly see biking home from school? In thinking about how to support more ecological integrity in urban spaces, I feel like there’s a whole bunch of everyday things that we can not intervene in to protect natural systems around us.
I have a few colleagues and neighbours who are rewilding their lawns, which sometimes causes neighbourhood conflict (because the grass looks "messy"). But this is something we know promotes fantastic bird and insect biodiversity compared with Kentucky Bluegrass monocultures. It’s great to see certain parks in Vancouver do this too – the NW Marine Drive hill I bike past every day has a lovely wildflower meadow situation going on where a few years ago, it was just patchy bare grass.
I want to see more cities and marks organizations engage on this. Our votes in municipal elections, and our own actions in the places we live, to promote increased ecological integrity in the places in which we live.
@CoSphere #UnleashValues
Hi Declan! I like your point about rewilding lawns - that's definitely something that we as citizens can start doing today to promote biodiversity!
Yes I love this movement!!
I think lawns do have a place for things like sports and common picnic spaces, but in small-otherwise un-used parcels of land, rewilding these spaces seems like the obvious solution. Ignoring the instrumental uses and ecosystem functions of a rewilded lawn, I wonder how best these "messy" spaces could be reperceived as something beautiful, if it's the aesthetics people care most about?
In my eyes, biodiversity, flowers, a flurry of pollinators, and the sweet smell of the sage that we have growing in our yard is all infinitely more beautiful than a lawn anyways, but I wonder how we can inspire this perspective to whole neighborhoods. Perhaps social media?
I really like this point. The amount of times I've seen people complain about messy lawns is frustrating! I think there is beauty in rewilding and that we just need to shift the public perception.
Hi Declan,
I love your post and I really hope that going forward more people will adopt this way of thinking. The amount of water wasted and biodiversity lost due to monoculture lawns is wild, and in my opinion a lawn of wildflowers and clovers can be far more beautiful. We have a long way to go, but spreading awareness and advocating for policy changes in local stratas in support of rewilding seems like a great place to start!
Thank you for the post Declan. Your post reminded me a lot of one of my urban geography classes, where are talk about the inherent rift between humans and nature in a lot of modern urbanized societies. There are certain things deemed as "good nature" that have to be kept (eg bees and birds, or even the Kentucky Bluegrass on your lawn), and there are the "bad nature" that needed to be tamed (eg the "weedy" clovers on your lawn and coyotes). In my opinion, the biggest part of rewilding involves a change in mindset, to embrace human society and nature as one big system. You don't have to tear down cities in order to "rewild" a place. If you are interested, I recommend giving Sarah Church's article on urban bioregionalism a read, where she touches on connecting environment with urban development.
I really like that there are more and more rewilding initiatives regarding urban gardens and meadows. Personally, I really love the look of more "wild" areas because they just look so full of life- and that's because they are! I'd love to see more areas adopt this idea, not only for the sake of aesthetics but because we're finally realizing that monocultures aren't that great for any of our natural systems, not just agriculture.
Hey Declan, I thought this post was really interesting. I definitely support Your idea of re-wilding urban landscapes, however for someone who works in the horticulture and landscape architect business I believe in alternative ways to promote urban re-wilding without having messy lawns lol (cause tbh seeing a messy lawn really bugs me). With that being said these alternative ways include replacing regular Kentucky blue grass lawns with local moss lawns or clover. Another way to promote this re-wilding is to introduce wild seed mixes into portions of this moss lawn. This in turn helps to keep a manicured look by also enhance the idea of re-wilding!
Hi Declan, thank you for sharing this take on rewilding! Personally, a garden with wild flowers, weeds, bees and butterflies is the more beautiful thing a garden could be. It's a shame that we've been shown that golf-green lawns are what gardens should be. I'm glad there's real action being taken here and I hope to see more gardens like this in the future!