Rochester Area Interfaith Climate Action
Greening Your Grounds
Reasons to plant Native Species and Reduce the Size of Your Lawn
Helping our landscapes to provide essential ecological services
To sustain life on earth, our landscapes must provide essential ecological services. These actions will help our landscapes provide these services in the following specific ways:
-
Support Wildlife Food Webs
-
Support Pollinators
-
Protect and Manage the Watershed
-
Build Soil and Sequester Carbon
-
Care for Creation
According to Douglas Tallamy, a professor of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, if each American landowner made it a goal to convert half of his or her lawn to productive native plant communities, even moderate success could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than twenty million acres of what is now ecological wasteland.
Green the Grounds at Your House of Worship
Creating a Pollinator-friendly garden. Tips from the Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Planting Spirituality in Pollinator Gardens. National Wildllfie Federation. Then take the NWF Plant Native Plants to Care for Creation Pledge. Or join their Sacred Grounds Program.
Learn More about Native Gardens and Lawn Reduction
How to build a pollinator garden from US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Get Started Planting Native guide from Homegrown Natinal Park.
The Northeast Native Plant Primer, by Uli Lorimer.
Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard
Grow Native at Home
There are some great resources available whether you're looking to add a few native plants or redo your whole landscape.
Homegrown National Park is a grassroots call-to-action. Lots of good solid information to help you add native plants and remove invasive ones everywhere that you live, work, learn, pray, and play.
More locally, check out Healthy Yards Monroe County for practices that support and restore biodiversity and habitat connectivity.