Native Gardening: A Community Effort
Plantstock is a gathering at Hamlet Organic Garden in Brookhaven Hamlet centered around native gardening. It’s aim is to bring together native plant lovers and environmental advocates from all over Long Island so that we together can continue to build a movement centered around habitat restoration and local stewardship in every community.
Learn Native Gardening at HOG Farm
This would be Plantstock IV. “HOG Farm,” as it’s called, is a 20 acre farm in Brookhaven Hamlet (319 Beaver Dam Road) that is in it’s 27th year of operation. It is a “CSA,” which stands for “Community Supported Agriculture.” The produce grown at The HOG Farm provides CSA members with their fruits and vegetables, and so indirectly contributes to the health of the community. Here is a USDA directory of CSAs across the country so that you can find the CSAs near you.
Hamlet Organic Garden: A Community Hub
HOG Farm not only provides the community with healthy produce, but also is the site of countless gatherings that support our local music scene (Check out Farm Jam, below), as well as rolling events to support local artists and restaurants. It radiates a spirit of community. It was for this reason that we chose HOG Farm for Plantstock. It was a place we could “grow with.”
Community Native Gardening: Replanting Together
From it’s outset, the intent of Plantstock has been to help the native planting communities on Long Island to coalesce into a movement around native gardening. We know we are going against the grain when we plant native in our yards, and indeed we are concerned as to what the neighbors will say. But meeting people who are also going native, or shall we say “rewilding,” we feel we are no longer laboring alone, but that we have found our community, our tribe.
Sourcing Our Native Plants
As more and more adopt native gardening, the issue of how we can all source them seems to grow. We don’t want to be sourcing our plants from the big box stores. Even when they have native plants, they are unlikely to have the local ecotypes. The garden stores, similarly, generally sell what most people seem to buy, that is non-native ones — ornamentals, trees and bushes from China and Japan.
The Consequences of Not Practicing Native Gardening
And so it has been for 150 years — as gardening went global, people wanted exotics on their estates, then in their yards. For our nurseries and landscapers, and for the consumer, such plants are cheap to import, and insects won’t bother them. Can we stop doing that at last?
Not practicing native gardening but instead planting native and planting lawn and introducing such invasive garden escapees as Porcelainberry, Japanese Knotweed, Japanese Honeysuckle, English Ivy, Lesser Celandine, etc has triggered an ecological disaster that few are even noticing here on Long Island. It all looks green after all.
Native Gardening Means Building Habitat
It is part of Plantstock’s mission to educate Long Islanders as to how to make the right plant choices for their yard and their community. It is our mission to heal Long Island’s habitats by returning our native plants, community by community, yard by yard, so that the future of Long Island will include it’s wildlife.
Some here may be familiar with the work of Professor Douglas Tallamy, author most recently of Nature’s Best Hope (It can be borrowed from a number of local libraries as an ebook or as an audio book). Below is one of his presentations. He is tireless in advocating for Nature and for our local plants, our insects, birds, and for local wildlife generally. The presentation below will change how you think of Nature and the role you and your yard can play in habitat restoration by practicing native gardening:
Advocating For Natives: Doug Tallamy
Professor Tallamy, an entomologist at The University of Delaware, argues that we must replant with natives everywhere we can, especially in our yards, if we are to create enough habitats for our local wildlife. The imported plants we have in our suburban yards are ecologically nearly useless. Our insects here are not adapted to feed from these foreign plants.
The nursery and landscaping industry has yet to understand or address the issues caused when we don’t practice native gardening but instead plant and sell non-native plants. Have you heard of the phrase “Two Thirds For the Birds?” Scientists (yeah, those guys and gals) have determined we need to have 70% native plants (and in variety) if we are to have enough food sources for local wildlife. Suburban Long Island is clocking in according to some informal surveying at 25%. A lot of that is lawn.
Our Yards Are Now Practically Lifeless. Native Gardening Changes That
Kentucky Blue Grass is Eurasian. Insects leave it alone. That’s great for the lawn, but not much else. It is in fact considered an invasive in the High Plains as it drives out our native grasses. A second “Silent Spring” has resulted. On summer nights, what are you seeing and hearing? Where are the fireflies and the cicadas? Mostly dead in the soil from our fetish with lawn, and the herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers that come with it.
It takes a world of effort to keep alive and thriving a plant that doesn’t belong here. Native meadows are what we need. Even planting a 10’X 10′ plot will make a difference, both for Nature and for you. When you reintroduce Nature, wonder returns.
Plantstock: Planning Native Gardening At Scale
Plantstock is where we organize and plan our ‘rewildings,’ building on a local movement that is also national. What are best practices for native gardening? What plants, and what plants go where, and for what ecological purpose? Prof. Tallamy’s Homegrown National Park, a 501(c)3 non-profit that aims to scale this to a national movement where yard by yard people “go native” or “re-wild” if you will, mapping their plantings while sharing their native planting knowledge.
The site’s tagline is “Plant Native — Regenerate Biodiversity.” The native species we have growing, the more complex the local food web becomes. What we have now is a dangerous game of Jenga, where as we lose species locally, the local ecosystem moves inevitably to a collapse. What we need, and what Plantstock offers, is a common effort towards a restoration of our degraded local biome, with as broad a palette of natives as we can find and grow.
Plantstock: Meeting Local Needs
Concretely it’s about creating a source of native plants for groups such as Bellport’s Thousand Yards Campaign, and now Brookhaven Hamlet’s Thousand More Yards Campaign. We assemble at Plantstock so we can begin to address such questions as “What are the staple native plants for our yards?” More particularly, what do we intend to plant for the coming spring? “What makes sense to grow?” “What are best practices for growing them?” “How can we make it easier for people on Long Island to plant native?
Native Gardening: What Will The Neighbors Say!
A recent New York Times article was about how a suburban couple in the Bay Area went about replacing their lawn with a meadow: Can You Get Rid of Your Lawn Without Offending Your Neighbors. It’s a catchy title, but the article is really about the various methods the couple employed to create their native meadow and what they learned along the way. Anyone contemplating this conversion would do well to read the article.
We should be working to learn from all these disparate efforts, locally, nationally, and globally. Species collapse is a global phenomenon driven by habitat destruction, that is the loss of the native biome. The undoing of this starts yard by yard.
The Post-Morrow Foundation: A Champion For Plantstock and for Native Gardening
Here is where I offer the Big Reveal: The Post-Morrow Foundation, a Land Trust that has supported HOG Farm’s efforts while also acquiring and stewarding properties around Brookhaven Hamlet, is offering up some acreage along Edgar Avenue a short distance from the farm.
The Meadow: Let’s Learn Native Gardening Together
Post-Morrow has some five properties along this road that would be converted to meadow. Here, working with other native plant growers, we intend to plant these grounds with the plants we will need not only for our yards, plants that together will constitute a meadow. In this, we will be relying on our collective expertise. Owen Williams, who founded Native Meadows in Brookhaven Hamlet, and who grew up there, is very eager to create this community resource.
An American Chestnut Orchard: Native Gardening Can Rescue A Species
Aside from planting the meadow (with all your help!), The Long Island Conservancy will be planting an American Chestnut Orchard as part of our continuing mission to return this tree to our forests and to our cuisine. In 1904, it is estimated that 1 of 4 trees, or 3-4 billion trees on the Eastern Seaboard with American Chestnuts. It was the major forest feeder for the wildlife, standing often 100 feet tall, and 10 feet around.
A sick Chinese Chestnut was imported from China, and within two decades, the airborne fungus had all but wiped them out. This is sadly only one incident where the nursery and landscaping business brought disease to us. As Prof. Tallamy has pointed out, it is almost impossible to screen all this imported plant material for pathogens, and that is wreaking havoc on our environment.
So the Edgar Avenue meadow will be part of a historic effort to restore this magnificent forest giant. The meadow will be also a place where we can grow not just the most common native plants, but some of the more uncommon ones. There are some marvelous plant experts in our community. Imagine what could be grown!
Relearning Native Gardening With The Shinnecock
We’ve been in dialog with The Shinnecock Nation about the plants that grow on their land. There are some rare ones, certainly. We need to cultivate the rarer ones, or we lose the creatures that feed from them. The food web needs restoration. Their goal is to plant the vegetables, fruits, trees, and grains that constituted their traditional diet. They are led by trained ethnobotanists. Here is the land they plan to plant:
The Shinnecock Nation Native Garden and Restaurant
This is part of a ten acre plot that was cleared to build a gas station / plaza in Hampton Bays along The Sunrise Highway. Here would be the site of The Shinnecock Nation Native Garden and Restaurant. The tribe is committed to restoring native habitat here, and with the involvement of the tribe’s youth. Nothing creates a bond to Nature like getting some dirt under one’s fingernails.
But how does one grow Paw-Paw or Persimmon, or the many other native foods? We need to figure that out. We are all seeking to recover lost knowledge. The meadow then would be a testing ground for growing our native foods so that HOG Farm could start to carry this produce and grow some as well.
Native Gardening: The Show Must Go On. Nature is Counting On Us.
There is a scant six days until Plantstock. I was ready to cancel due to a health issue. Julia Villacara, HOG’s Event Manager and overall dynamo (she’s extraordinary, trust me here) wasn’t having it. The fact of the matter is that now above all we need to stand for the environment, and the community needs native plants!
Good afternoon,
I am Julia Villacara, the events coordinator for HOG Farm. I and the farm would like to welcome you all back to Plantstock, our native plant sale and environmental fair.
Marshall Brown has taken the lead on organizing our past two Plantstocks over the last year. He is unable to do so this October. He’ll be back for the Spring edition. The HOG and I would like to move forward with an offering for October 12. It won’t be as grand or certainly as fun without Marshall but we will hold him in spirit and in our thoughts. Marshall is organizing the most important aspect of all environmental work; the doing. He is organizing a community native planting with the Post-Morrow Foundation in Brookhaven Hamlet. I look forward to the beauty and benefits of the project. Thank you, Marshall and Post-Morrow.
Plantstock has been scheduled for October 12 11am-2pm. It’s important to keep the environment at the forefront of people’s minds as we move towards Election day. Plantstock is an opportunity to engage our kids and communities in sign painting with environmental messaging as well as take this opportunity to educate folks about the Clean Water Proposition on the ballot. Sheila, we invite the Clean Water Council to host a table with information, if possible. It’s also a great weekend to get people to buy native with a three day weekend.
I hope to see many of our plant sellers there along with our community organizations.
Please let me know if you are able to participate.
With gratitude, Julia Villacara, H.O.G Events Coordinator gather@thehogfarm.org https://thehogfarm.org/events Good food. Good People. Good music. It’s all growing at the H.O.G Farm!
Let’s Keep Planting
Needless to say it is tough to be sidelined for this, but I am buoyed by everyone’s energy and support. This isn’t a “one-off,” but a persistent effort, a generational effort to create a commons that would benefit all. We will constantly adding (and subtracting) from the meadow, planting and sowing, learning how communities can become nutritionally self-sufficient while healing local nature.
Please reach out to Julia. Terribly short notice, but one could say we don’t have a lot of time left. Let’s plant our way out of this and leave a revitalized Long Island for our children and theirs.