Opinion: My garden was ruining the Earth; yours is probably no better; all you really need to do is plant an oak tree

Flowers on a dogwood bloom in Bethesda.
(Photo by Bonnie Jo Mount, The Washington Post)

Dana Milbank, political columnist for The Washington Post, has a confession to make.

"For 20 years, I found the latest, greatest horticultural marvels. . . . In between them flowed my lush, deep-green lawn. I core-aerated, I conditioned," Milbank writes. "When it comes to the world's biodiversity crisis — as many as 1 million plant and animal species face near-term extinction because of habitat loss ― I am part of the problem. I'm sorry to say that if you have a typical urban or suburban landscape, your lawn and garden are also dooming the Earth."

Now that he understands "the magnitude of my offenses. . . I'm in 'basic training' with the state-sponsored Virginia Master Naturalist program," Milbank reports. "While others sleep in on rainy weekend mornings, my unit has us plebes out in the wetlands distinguishing a yellow-bellied sapsucker from a pileated woodpecker."

Matt Bright, who runs Earth Sangha, a nonprofit native-plant nursery, walked Milbank's yard, and the homeowner reports:
He aimed my daylilies: 'I would remove them all. Those have also become badly invasive.'
He spied my creeping jenny on a slope: 'Another nasty invasive.'
He condemned to death my Rose of Sharon shrubs (natural areas 'have really been torn up by these guys')
Worst was my row of nandina: 'You definitely want to remove it.' Its cyanide-laced berries poison birds.
And Bright assured me, I wasn't a particularly egregious offender; my one-sixth acre lot in town is typical of the urban/suburban landscape.

Landscaping is just the beginning of problems. Milbank writes, "'Forty percent of the world's plants are at risk of extinction, and we know that's being driven by climate change and habitat loss,' said Jennifer Bernstein, chief executive of the New York Botanical Garden. . . . Here in the United States, urban sprawl is worsening both of the interrelated crises of climate change and habitat loss. . . . Lawns suck up water, and they don't sequester as much carbon as forests and prairies."

In sum, "The deck is stacked against nature in this fight," Milbank adds. "Demand for native plants outstrips supply. A native plant sale last month at the National Arboretum, for example, was scheduled to run for six hours, but the place had been cleaned out after just three."

Milbank offers some words of hope: "Despite the daunting obstacles, it doesn't have to be that hard to do the Earth some good. In fact, it's as simple as this: If you want to save the planet, all you really need to do is plant a single oak tree. Doug Tallamy, the godfather of the native-plant movement, told Milbank, "You can plant one tree. Plant a tree, put a bed under that tree, and all of a sudden, you've got less lawn. If you make it a good tree, you've got a powerful addition to your yard. And if that's the only thing you do in a year, you've still made an important contribution."