Let it Go Wild: On the Subject of Uncut Grass, Native Plantings, and the Education of Neighbors

In the tidy New York state suburb that spawned me there lived a white-haired woman known to all as Miss Lewis. She never married, lived alone, and her only family was a brother half a continent away in Texas. Singular on many counts, Miss Lewis presided over the most talked-about yard in town. It was a jungle--a jungle in a community defined by buzz-cut lawns and neatly barbered hedges. In the middle of it stood a neglected house, the paint peeling, the shingles on the roof blistered and broken.

In 1968 or thereabouts, Miss Lewis, a retired kindergarten teacher, asked me to help her with outdoor work. Should I accept? The woman's strange habits and resemblance to the Wicked Witch of the West hinted at danger. Yet I needed pocket money, and my parents insisted that the old lady was harmless. My labors had little in common with the yard chores I'd performed for other neighbors. At Miss Lewis's there was no weeding, no pruning, no hacking of "brush." My employer taught me that weeds were wildflowers, that they were far more interesting to her than imported turf grasses, and that "brush" was a mean-spirited name for an array of beautiful shrubs and saplings, nearly all of them native. One Saturday morning we spent an hour transplanting a jack-in-the-pulpit that had sprouted in the path leading from her mailbox to the front door. Miss Lewis supervised the operation as if it were heart surgery.

Over time my sense of Miss Lewis's strangeness gave way, in part, to understanding. Everyone seemed to think of her as a crank, an eccentric so incorrigible that speaking with her was pointless. But truth was kinder than fancy. The old lady was no kook. She was a naturalist, and her madness was method. Miss Lewis was busily engaged in the conversion of an ordinary suburban plot into an extraordinary habitat for wildlife.

The tragedy of Miss Lewis was not, as neighbors muttered, that she neglected her lawnmower. It was that she failed to implement one of the most important features of any backyard wildlife gardening program: a public relations campaign. Miss Lewis was ostracized because, while daring to be different, she made little effort to educate her neighbors about her differentness. She might have invited passers-by to tour her yard. She might have encouraged the interest of the local press and offered guided tours to school groups and neighbors. She might have put up a sign, saying "Wildlife Garden and Native Plant Sanctuary."

But she did none of these things, and people feared and avoided her.

As far as I know, no neighbor ever tried to force Miss Lewis to conform, to tame and prettify her quarter-acre by destroying the wildness she prized. Yet this kind of culture clash has been known to happen. When backyard wildlife gardening and mainstream habits butt heads, the results can be ugly. Consider the case of Don McKee, a genial, soft-spoken insurance agent who lives in Moss Point, Mississippi. An avid naturalist and bird watcher, Don decided to make the portion of his yard behind the house congenial to wildlife. To do so, he did the kinds of things, reasonable things, that most of us do in undertaking similar efforts. He stopped mowing-not the entire yard, just the back. He encouraged native plants already growing on his property and introduced others-ordinary, easy-to-get-along-with species such as red maple and blueberries. He put in trails and hung bird feeders.

In my view, Don's work improved the neighborhood. He restored beauty and biodiversity, resisted and reversed erosion, and helped the sandy Gulf Coast soil to retain moisture. But not all saw it that way. "The neighbors kinda got upset with me," he said. "They decided my yard was a nuisance-I wasn't keeping it, they said, in a safe condition." One of the worries was snakes. Along the Gulf, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, pigmy rattlers, cottonmouths, and coral snakes are known to occur, not to mention a great variety of nonvenomous serpents. Surely Don's uncut grass would attract them.

Complaints were made, and Don was forced to defend himself-first before the town's Board of Aldermen, and twice in court. In the middle of it all, the nature lover experienced chest pains and checked into the hospital for triple coronary bypass surgery. His story might have had an unhappy ending, but Don recovered and maintained his equanimity.

Rather than counterattack or give in, Don McKee stood his ground. He showed town officials and the judge published materials that explained the science and aesthetics behind what he was attempting. He told of bird watchers and schoolchildren who had come to his revitalized Eden to learn about the wildlife there. He explained that there had been no sudden spike in the snake population, and no one could prove otherwise. He talked about things he had learned in a master naturalist class offered by the local Cooperative Extension. He pointed to the fact that part of the curriculum at the local high school required students to let plots of land in their yards go wild, then record the subsequent rise in biodiversity.

Meanwhile birds that Don and his wife, Dena, had never seen in their yard began to turn up. Among them were painting buntings and a groove-billed ani. One day a female turtle waddled up and laid eggs near the garage door.

Snakes get people stirred up in Mississippi. Don needed help in convincing authorities that his wildlife management project wouldn't cause an infestation, so he sought comment from Tom Mann, a herpetologist with the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson. Mann endorsed Don's efforts and scoffed at the idea of reptiles running riot. He said that neighbors leaving out cat food for their pets probably encouraged snakes (by attracting rodents) far more than Don's unmowed lawn. In the end, good sense prevailed. "The judge threw out both cases and commended me," said Don. "The guy across the street was warned not to turn up in court again, and today, one of the complaining neighbors loves my wild yard."

If there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of Miss Lewis and Don McKee, my wife Debbie and I aimed to heed them as we launched our own re-wilding project. We had bought 181 acres along the Saranac River in New York State's Adirondack Mountains. Most of the land came to us in a wild state, except for three cleared acres. The previous owner had allowed the house to deteriorate to the verge of collapse, but he had ruled the lawn with an iron hand and a John Deere riding mower. The grass was groomed like a putting green.

From the first night we moved in and camped on a sagging floor, our mission was clear. The lawn, or most of it, would go. We'd put the John Deere into semi-retirement, dig up big patches of turf for vegetable gardens, and turn the rest into a shaggy meadow dotted with fruit trees, hazelnut bushes, and sugar maples.

What would the neighbors think? This was a concern. We were new to our dead-end road and new to the Adirondacks, and it was our desire to form warm relations with neighbors, not alienate them with strange ways. Thus began a P.R. campaign that continues to this day.

Up and down the road we knocked on doors, introducing ourselves and our project before unkind impressions could be formed. We invited people over to see the place, told them we were naturalists who planned to restore some of the property's wildness, and enthused without preaching. Nearly everyone was receptive. Meanwhile we launched a biological survey of the place, attempting to identify every species of living thing. Soon kids down the street and around the corner were offering to assist us.

To spread the word, I wrote a feature story about our project for a regional magazine. This stirred interest locally as well as farther afield and led to an invitation to speak about our wildlife studies and gardening at the public library. The response was warm, and a videotape of my library talk extended its influence via local cable television.

There were, however, two dissenters. The old man who sold us the place (let's call him Mr. Smith) lives in Ohio but still comes back to the neighborhood every summer to visit. We have expressed interest in meeting Smith to mutual acquaintances, but to date he ignores us. One neighbor, the real estate agent who had executed the transaction between us, reported that Smith asked why he had sold the place to "those damn people." The sore point, we're told, is our inattention--or what seems to be inattention--to the lawn.

The other skeptic is our next-door neighbor. Although he is warm and welcoming toward us, "Jones" lets us know his displeasure with the uncut grass. Snakes worry him. We respond that the nearest population of poisonous snakes lies an hour's drive away, but he is not mollified, insisting that dangerous reptiles occur locally. To illustrate, Jones tells how, once, not far from our door, his father lured a hissing rattlesnake out of its hiding place with a bowl of warm milk, then shot it. I know that rattlesnakes don't hiss and am tempted to question their thirst for milk, warm or otherwise, but it's plain that arguing will get me nowhere. So I nod politely, respectful of my neighbor's concerns even though I'm convinced they're groundless.

From these case-studies, those who turn their backyards wild are advised to glean the following lessons. Tell the neighbors what you're up to in advance. Let them know your project is not one of neglect or laziness, but exactly the opposite.

Document your project. Gather printed materials that support projects like yours and record what you plant, what you discover on hand, and what new things arrive. Take photos. Make a map. Spread the word. The more people know about your efforts, the less likely authorities or neighbors will be to harass you.

Finally, share the fun. Welcome all comers. Let people see for themselves that an acre of "weeds" is really an acre of wildflowers, creeping, crawling, flapping, and bounding with interest.