By Bill Duesing
Our lives are totally dependent on the air, water and food we get
from nature, primarily from the plants, soil and oceans that cover our
planet. Left alone, nature produces
greater biodiversity, stores more carbon, creates more structural complexity
and moves toward metabolic stability. Taken together, these effects lead to
more resilience in the face of environmental disaster and to healthy ecosystems
and a stable climate.
Unfortunately, Americans are largely ignorant of this
information. And our hubris means that most people don't think this ignorance
matters.
Otherwise we would reject the
commercially based way of caring for the earth with a default landscape of
large chemical
lawns and a few shrubs (selected for their static
appearance) in our yards and public spaces. This landscape is not in accordance
with nature's principles.
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| A default landscape in Woodbridge, CT |
NOFA's Organic Land Care
For more than 25 years CT NOFA has been promoting and educating
about organic land care (OLC). Organic land care extends the vision, principles
and expertise of organic agriculture to the care of the landscapes where people
live, work and play. Its methods can be applied anywhere there is landscaping:
small urban lots, suburban yards, estates, schools, commercial properties,
parks and farms.
(For a brief history of CT NOFA's work with OLC, see Note 1. The
internationally-recognized principles of organic care are cited in Note 2.)
Organic land care works with nature to
increase biodiversity and store more carbon while avoiding toxic substances and
excess nutrients. This is what nature
does if left alone. Increasing biodiversity and taking more carbon out of the
atmosphere create healthy environments and a livable climate. Our care of the land can participate in this
system and benefit from its energy, or it can fight nature using fertilizers,
monocultures and toxins.
From a global perspective, Earth's
most serious environmental problems are the quickly-changing climate, excess
nitrogen and the rapid loss of biodiversity (all caused by humans-see Note 3). These
problems are directly connected with the way we manage the land under our
care.
We can work to correct these
problems using organic methods. But most garden centers sell huge amounts of
high nitrogen fertilizers and poisonous biodiversity killers such as RoundUp,
as well as many combinations of fertilizers and pesticides which create two
problems with one product. And they all require fossil fuel to produce, package
and distribute which causes more climate disruption.
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| Earth's vital signs |
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| Lots of nitrogen and biodiversity eliminating
chemicals |
Biodiversity
Increasing biodiversity is at the heart of organic land care. A
diverse soil ecosystem, with billions of organisms in just a spoonful of soil,
is able to support plant health and
fight off diseases while helping to
pull carbon out of the air and store it in soil organic matter.
A diverse plant community, especially of
native plants, provides food and habitat for more birds and beneficial insects
(as well as bacteria, fungi and other organisms) which can in turn foster
pollination and provide pest control and other services. Caterpillars may eat
some leaves, but they are important food for birds. Native trees host many
kinds of caterpillars to feed more songbirds. Non-native invasive trees, not so
much.
There are 337 species of native
bees in Connecticut, all with a role to play in the ecosystem and a need for
habitat and food.
Storing Carbon
Plants extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They incorporate much of it into their
leaves, stems and roots. However, 20
percent or more of that carbon is released through the roots to nourish soil organisms.
Some of that carbon may be stored long term in the soil under the right
conditions. A greater diversity of
plants and an undisturbed soil full of life create these conditions. Lawns, that is chemically tended grass
monocultures, don't support those conditions. Raking leaves removes carbon that
could and should be added to the soil each year.
Many ways to manage landscapes
Working with nature can be done at a variety of scales and in
many ways. The
NOFA Standards for Organic Land Care provide preferred,
allowed and prohibited practices. They can be used for growing flowers, trees,
shrubs, lawns or food.
Organic methods
make it easier to grow food and flowers together. Growing food is a preferred
practice in the
NOFA Standards. Working with nature is also the key to
successful organic agriculture. The most successful organic farmers have
discovered the importance of native plants and pollinators, perennial crops and
hedgerows.
See
Dr. Sarah Little's article for even more reasons to use
organic methods and a convenient checklist of things to do with your yard.
Sarah is the author of NOFA OLC's
Introduction to Organic Lawns and Yards. The second edition has just been
published.
Learn more
here.
The NOFA Organic Land Care Program provides a number of resources
and publications through
organiclandcare.net.
For homeowners, there is a searchable
database of accredited professionals. For professionals, there are courses,
including a first ever courses in Maine this summer and on Long Island this
fall.
Be open to what nature has planned for your land.
After 40 years of being mostly left alone (Note 4), our steep,
rocky home lot along the Housatonic River has an incredible diversity of plants
which grow naturally here: ginseng, Dutchman's britches, aquilegia, Solomon's
seal, false Solomon's seal, many kinds of ferns, a nearly five-foot diameter
pine tree, hemlocks, white and red oaks, hickories, black birches, a beech,
choke cherries and red cedars as well as dozens of other plants (and some years
delicious morel mushrooms) all on just a fraction of an acre. What would grow
in your yard if you let nature be?
What does your land produce?
Clean air and water and healthy food come from healthy ecosystems
and very few other places. If everyone
on the planet managed their piece of Earth the way you do, would the world be a
more beautiful place with clean air, water and food?
Notes
Note 1. In 1990, the CT NOFA board realized that a number
of our members were landscapers who joined the organization to learn organic
techniques. As a result, organic landscaping was selected as the theme for the
winter conference.
The conference was so
successful that for the next two years, CT NOFA held an organic landscaping
conference in addition to the regular winter conference (focused on farming and
gardening).
These landscaping
conferences were well attended as interest in organic land care grew. However,
at that time, CT NOFA was an all-volunteer organization which certified organic
farms and had its hands full promoting organic agriculture. The board handed
the effort off to the Ecological Landscape Association (ELA) which was just
forming. It was hoped that ELA would carry on the organic tradition.
But by the late 1990s it was clear that ELA
wasn't strictly organic, so in 1999 NOFA members in Massachusetts and
Connecticut created the NOFA Organic Land Care Program.
First a committee of landscapers, scientists
and activists wrote the
Standards for Organic Land Care, and then they
created a multi-day course to educate land care professionals in the standards
and accredit those who completed the course and passed an exam. Visit
thispage for more history.
We all owe a
debt to the volunteers who created and guided this program.
ELA provides many valuable educational and networking
opportunities for professionals, organic and conventional.
Note 2. The principles of organic agriculture are Health,
Ecology, Fairness and Care, as stated by the International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
(The
NOFA Standards for Organic Land Care are part of the
IFOAMFamily of Standards.)
In organic
land care, these principles are stated this way:
- Steward the combined health of soil, plant, animal, human and
planet.
- Emulate living ecological systems and cycles and help sustain
them.
- Build equity, respect, justice and stewardship of the shared
world. And
- Act in a precautionary and responsible manner.
Note 3. Scientists around the world have identified three
very serious, global environmental problems: climate change, excess nutrients,
especially nitrogen, and the rapid loss of biodiversity. These problems are
interrelated.
Climate change is destroying biodiversity of coral reefs (with
warming oceans) and western US forests (with invasive insects and fire).
Nitrogen fertilizers release greenhouse gases (nitrates and carbon dioxide)
from the soil when they are applied, and then as they leach out of the soil,
create dead zones (with very low biodiversity) in places such as the Gulf of
Mexico. Loss of biodiversity leads to a loss of resilience in the face of
climate change. Loss of biodiversity in
the soil (as a result of using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) leads to less
carbon being stored to moderate climate.
Climate change's droughts and deluges, with resulting fires and floods,
further reduce biodiversity.
Note 4. Now that I understand the effects of invasive
plants, I've been working to remove them, by hand, to encourage the
aforementioned native plants. I pull out
wineberries and garlic mustard, as well as some of the English Ivy, crown vetch
and Forsythia (planted many decades ago) which continues trying to take over.
