Time and money are the two biggest restraints most gardeners face when they want to take on more projects in their yards to become better stewards of biodiversity. My guest this week, “Nature’s Action Guide” author Sarah F. Jayne, aims to overcome those hurdles by identifying easy yet extremely effective actions anyone can take to support wildlife.
Sarah has worked intensively with plants and wildlife for over four decades from California to the East Coast, where she now lives. She earned a degree in agriculture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and went on to own and operate an organic market farm and nursery. Recognizing the pivotal role that each person can play in addressing the biodiversity crisis, she trials methods to manage ecological landscapes that enable people who may have limited resources and little or no gardening skills to encourage biodiverse ecosystems that support wildlife where they live.
Sarah F. Jayne wrote “Nature’s Action Guide” to identify simple actions anyone can take to support biodiversity.
Photo Credit: JP Studio
Sarah has been gardening for as long as she can remember. “When I was 8 years old, I made my living, so to speak, picking dandelions,” she shares. “I got paid a penny for one dandelion, and if I picked five plantains, I got a penny as well.
“So I’ve been with plants my whole life, and that morphed into running an organic market farm and then later just always having wildlife habitat and gardens wherever I lived.”
In her book, “Nature’s Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem,” Sarah spells out low-cost DIY actions anyone can take, no matter how much time or money they have available.
Sarah was born in Pennsylvania and spent half her life in California, but she moved back to Pennsylvania as an adult. She is a neighbor of friend of the podcast Doug Tallamy, the entomologist and conservationist who has authored popular books such as “Bringing Nature Home” and “Nature’s Best Hope,” and he also wrote the foreword to “Nature’s Action Guide.”
She had reached out to Doug via email before they ever met and she shared a sample chapter from the book she had envisioned. She told Doug that she had read all of his books and thought they needed a “how to” guide. He was thrilled and told Sarah, “Write it!”
Doug and Sarah brainstormed and came up with what the book needed to say. I must say, I am so impressed with the amount of information Sarah packs into “Nature’s Action Guide,” which is broken down not into chapters but into “actions.”
Sarah’s book, “Nature’s Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem.”
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Turn Off the Lights
The first action to take is simple and effective: “Turn Off the Lights.”
“We gardeners, we really are the vanguard, but we’re going to need everybody,” Sarah says. “We’re going to need non-gardeners in this effort if we’re to do what we need to do to save biodiversity in our local ecosystems. So turning off the lights, we can all do that right away.”
Artificial lighting disorients migrating birds, she points out. “The birds are migrating using the stars and constellations and the other things that nature provides,” she says, adding that disruptions from artificial lights are fatal to the tune of billions of birds.
Red lights are suitable for bats, and yellow lights won’t disrupt moths. But for birds, turning lights out completely whenever possible is best. When outdoor lights are necessary, DarkSky International encourages using fixtures with shields to block light from going straight up.
A table in “Nature’s Action Guide” details how in 1949, a moth trap could catch over 50,000 moths in a single night. By 1978, that same trap would take all summer to catch 50,000 moths. And by 1997, 18 traps over the entire summer caught just 6,205.
Because younger generations don’t remember how things used to be, they don’t always have a sense of the ecological devastation that has occurred and how much needs to be fixed to get back to the way things used to be.
“That’s called shifting baseline syndrome, and it’s actually a problem in conservation efforts because the younger people aren’t aware of what they’ve lost,” Sarah says.
Offering shelter to birds and other animals invites them to stick around. Artificial lighting disorients birds who use the stars and other natural cues for navigation.
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Protection
“Turn Off the Lights” was originally chapter eight or nine as Sarah was planning the book, but she decided the guide should have a “protection first” mindset. She explains that before we plant the plants that will attract wildlife, we need to take steps to protect wildlife in our yards.
“If we haven’t done the protection, it’s like putting a toddler in a kitchen and the knives are accessible,” Sarah says. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Gardeners, unintentionally and innocently, do things that become “ecological traps,” she says.
If you make your yard an attractive place for frogs, it’s imperative that you put a wildlife escape ramp for them in your pool or pond.
“There are devices that you can make yourself with supplies that you have on hand, such as fake lily pads and then connecting them to an exit ramp,” Sarah says.
Simple things like ensuring that you don’t leave a bucket upright can save the life of an animal. A bucket can fill with water in the rain and become a drowning hazard.
If you invite birds into your yard with feeders and seed-bearing plants, you may experience birds crashing into your windows. Sarah says you can prevent this by marking windows with stencils and dots — no further than 2 by 2 inches apart.
Before weed-whacking or mowing your lawn, scan for wildlife, like rabbit nests in the grass or a browsing turtle.
The caterpillar of the red-spotted purple butterfly is a generalist that feeds on a variety of plant species
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Remove Invasives
“Invasive plants really are one of the biggest challenges we all face,” Sarah says. “It’s time consuming to remove them, and they really are a problem because they overtake our natural wildlands and the plants we try to grow. And they don’t serve the wildlife that’s native to the property.”
Tackling invasives requires good resources. Sarah likes the USDA National Invasive Species Information Center list at invasivespeciesinfo.gov.
“If you have a plant on your property that you recognize from that list, then that’s a really good one to start removing right away. Because if it’s on that list, it’s a problem,” she says.
For a plant that she’s unsure of, she checks out BONAP.org, the website of the Biota of North America Program. She likes the county by county list in BONAP’s North American Plant Atlas.
“If you have the identity of a plant, you can put in that plant’s genus, for example, and it will tell you whether that plant is introduced, noxious, or … if it might be native or even rare. And that’s always so exciting. So that’s a very handy resource, both for beneficial plants and damaging plants.”
Another useful site is invasive.org, which offers photos of seedlings and removal methods.
A useful app for identifying invasive plants is iNaturalist, which users contribute to as they photograph and geotag plants.
When you positively identify plants, you can ensure you are getting the bad guys out while not pulling the good ones.
Identify Keystone Plants
“Keystone plants are plants that Doug and his colleagues have identified as superhosts for caterpillars,” Sarah says.
Caterpillars are the primary food source for many birds, including songbirds.
The National Wildlife Federation lists Keystone Plants by Ecoregion on its website. NWF also offers the Native Plant Finder, which lists the most valuable keystone plants by zip code and shows what butterflies different plants will attract.
Oaks are the top keystone species of most U.S. counties.
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Choose Plants for Specialist Pollinators
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation helps gardeners identify the best plants to nourish native pollinators.
“It’s super important that we plant trees and shrubs and lots of flowers so that the pollinators have a sequence of blooms,” Sarah says. “Without the bloom that they need, that pollinator won’t survive. That specialist that specializes on the shape of the flower will just simply perish without the host plant that they need.”
Sarah recently learned from wildlife biologist Sam Droege that it takes an average of five blooms to support a baby bee, and a big flower such as a large sunflower will support 100 baby bees.
“If you just have a container on your balcony, you might make a difference for a bee that’s traveling, trying to find nectar and pollen. You could have the plant that saves that bee,” Sarah says.
Keystone plants meet the needs of many native bees, but some native pollen specialist bees require non-keystone or rare plants.
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Design a Layered Landscape Full of Plants
For a non-designer, creating a landscape design can be a daunting task. That’s why WildOnes.org teamed with landscape designers to offer garden plans that are free and easy to follow.
“That’s an incredible resource because those of us that really can’t afford to bring in a professional landscape designer often look at that as sort of a veil of mystery: How’s that done?” Sarah says. “And then to get to see these renowned designers and their plans … it’s amazing to me. It’s just such a fine resource.”
For maintenance help, the Ecological Landscape Alliance identifies companies that adhere to landscape management practices that are ecologically sensitive.
Planting out to the edge of a tree’s canopy creates welcoming pupation sites for caterpillars.
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Propagate Keystone Plants
If you can learn how to divide and propagate yourself, you’re off to the races. The sky is the limit because once you know how to propagate, you are empowered.
Learning how to propagate native plants may be the single most important thing we can do, according to Sarah. “There’s no way that the average homeowner can fill their property generously from ground to sky with plants without being able to propagate, due to the cost,” she says.
The Native Plant Network Propagation Protocol Database is a valuable resource that details how to propagate all sorts of native plants. You can create your own native plant nursery.
Sarah advices planting nectar plants near a species’ host plants.
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Use Non-Toxic Home and Yard Products
“When it comes to avoiding toxic chemicals, really the first decision is just deciding, ‘I’m not gonna engage in using these chemicals,’” Sarah says. “If you make that decision, then that commitment leads you to find the resources you need, and it inspires you to take the extra efforts that it does require sometimes to avoid using chemicals.”
Gardeners can design and manage wildlife habitat in a way that requires fewer chemicals, she says. “In fact, many of the chemicals that people are using, such as fertilizers, actually are not beneficial for native plants,” she adds. “They cause native plants to grow too robustly and then flop over, or just not perform as well. Many native plants require a leaner soil.”
Herbicides too pose an environmental problem. They enter the watershed, contaminate our waterways and affect aquatic life down the road, Sarah notes.
“At a residential level, it’s actually possible not to use herbicides that others claim that they have to have,” she says. “At a residential level, it’s really quite doable to use manual methods and other ways to control weeds and pests.”
According to the integrated pest management model, known as IPM, you work your way to the worst case scenario — using chemical pesticides — only after you’ve checked off all the boxes prior to that, such as manual removal or using physical barriers.
BeyondPesticides.org identifies the least-toxic chemical measures for whatever insect pest you’re trying to manage.
Sarah toxin-free garden.
Photo Credit: Sarah F. Jayne
Orderly Frames and Cues to Care
Aesthetics are objective. What looks like a beautiful garden to you may rub others the wrong way, especially if they are accustomed to very orderly traditional ornamental gardens and your native garden is more wild.
Joan Nassauer, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, coined the term “cues to care” to describe visual indicators of human stewardship and intentional design in a landscape. Cues to care help overcome neighbors’ and authorities’ objections to native gardens.
“We ecological gardeners have this huge responsibility to help our properties look acceptable to our neighbors because we’re ambassadors for this biodiversity movement,” Sarah says.
“Orderly frames” is another concept to make our own properties more familiar, welcoming and acceptable to our traditional neighbors.
“If we place our natural looking plantings, which can sometimes look kind of messy in a frame, it makes the viewer recognize that it’s an intentional planting,” Sarah says. “So this might look like a small meadow surrounded by mowed lawn. It might even be a pathway through a meadow so that it gives the viewer a sense that there’s a human involved in this.”
The frames can be a border — crisp, clean edges — but it can also be conceptual, such as framing a view with trees, she says, and even a deck or a stone patio can frame a natural planting.
Pathways in an ecological landscape welcome viewers and foster acceptance.
Photo Credit: Design by Dan Songster
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sarah Jayne on “Nature’s Action Guide.” If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
What actions have you taken to serve wildlife in your yard? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 237: Ecological Gardening: Creating Beauty & Biodiversity
Episode 314: Native Gardeners vs. the HOA: An Important Victory for Wildlife
Episode 317: Native Gardeners vs. the HOA, Part II
Episode 331: The Ecological Garden Blueprint: 10 Essential Steps That Matter Most
Episode 400: Defending a Native Garden From Misguided Laws
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Nature’s Action Guide on Facebook
Nature’s Action Guide on Instagram | @naturesactionguide
“Nature’s Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem” by Sarah F. Jayne
BONAP’s North American Plant Atlas
iNaturalist app
National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
The Native Plant Network Propagation Protocol Database
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Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you make a purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Corona Tools, Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Earth’s Ally, Proven Winners ColorChoice, Farmer’s Defense, Heirloom Roses and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
