In 2020, my partner and I bought a house in Portland, Ore., with a backyard consisting of little more than a crisped and patchy grass lawn. We immediately began transforming the barren lot into a lush wildlife garden. At the time, we included a few native plants — those that have long evolutionary histories in our region — but did not make a point of prioritizing them, instead focusing on hardiness and profuse blooms, regardless of origin. Over the years, however, as I heard more and more about the increasingly fervent native plant movement, I began to question our approach. Native plant champions, like the entomologist Douglas Tallamy, the community’s de facto guru, argue that natives are much better adapted to their surroundings than foreign species, and have vital, long-established relationships with local wildlife. I started to worry that our garden was not nearly as ecologically beneficial as I had thought. But before ripping up our flower beds, I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the relevant issues. My story for the magazine this week is an investigation into the native plant movement, the science underlying it and the debates it has inspired — as well as the changes I’ve made in my own yard. THE INTERVIEW I’m an enormous Rolling Stones fan. I’ve studied each of their 25 studio albums (1986’s “Dirty Work”? Underrated!) and all their live ones (“Brussels Affair” is secretly the best), and I can honestly say I’ve heard all 400-plus songs the band has officially released — and plenty that they haven’t. I’ve also seen Mick, Keith, Ronnie and the gang — R.I.P. Charlie Watts — in concert a half-dozen or so times. In fact, theirs was the first rock show I ever went to, when they played Toronto on the Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994. But despite my abiding fandom, one element of the band has always remained a mystery to me: What is Mick Jagger really like? Read, listen or watch my interview with Jagger here.
MORE IN THE MAGAZINE ON THE COVER
FROM THE ARCHIVES Groundhog DayBack in 1988, Michael Pollan detailed his efforts to maintain a vegetable garden, his war against a hungry woodchuck and his discovery that nature had swallowed an abandoned 19th-century settlement named Dudleytown: Domination, in suburban or rural terms, means lawn, a demilitarized zone patrolled weekly with a rotary blade. The lawn holds great appeal; it looks sort of natural — it’s green, it grows. But, in fact, it represents a subjugation of the forest as utter as a parking lot. Every species is forcibly excluded from the landscape but one, and this is forbidden to grow longer than the owner’s little finger. A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. On the other side is acquiescence: the benign gaze of the naturalist. Certainly, his ethic sounds nice and responsible, but have you ever noticed that the naturalist never tells you where he lives? Unless you live in the city or a tent, the benign gaze is totally impractical — sooner or later it leads to Dudleytown. The trick is somehow to find a middle ground. That is what gardening is, or should be: a midspace between Dudleytown and the parking lot, a place that admits of both nature and human habitation. COMMENT OF THE WEEK A World Cup Dispatch From LatviaA comment on last week’s World Cup diary from Sam Anderson: I live in Latvia, where I host a nightly television news program on foreign issues. I was delighted to report on Lionel Messi’s new record. I was delighted to report on Norwegian fans dropping to the floor at the drop of a hat to demonstrate Viking rowing. I was delighted to report on Scottish fans who drank Boston dry, perhaps as some form of revenge for the Boston Tea Party. I was happy to report about how Japanese fans cleaned up the stadium after the game. I’ve never been much of a fan of a game in which people go running up and down a field for 90 minutes, and something interesting happens only occasionally. But it was the fans this time around who rescued the World Cup from the vast corruption of FIFA and the Host Country, and for that I will remain ever grateful. That’s all for this week. Email us at magazine@nytimes.com with your thoughts, questions and feedback. Stay in touch: Like this email? Forward it to a friend and help us grow. Loved a story? Hated it? Write us a letter at magazine@nytimes.com. Did a friend forward this to you? Sign up here to get the magazine newsletter.
|
