The Master Gardener’s Bookshelf
Nature’s Action Guide: How to Support Diversity and Your Local Ecosystem by Sarah F. Jayne
Review by Susan Wilhelm, Extension Master Gardener
Images used by permission
Readers of Doug Tallamy’s books (Bringing Nature Home, The Nature of Oaks, Nature’s Best Hope, How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard) or regular followers of the Master Gardener of Northern Virginia (MGNV) website or of MGNV on social media, know the importance of sustainable gardening practices to support the insects, birds, and other wildlife that keep our gardens growing. For many of us though, it is difficult to know where to begin. A good place to start is Sarah F. Jayne’sNature’s Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem. Building on Tallamy’s work, especially Nature’s Best Hope, Jayne provides gardeners (and armchair gardeners) with 15 do-it-yourself actions that anyone can undertake to create or restore ecologically functioning wildlife habitat in a yard or other space.
The actions fall into four general categories: support wildlife food webs, support pollinators, protect and manage the watershed, and build soil and sequester carbon. For each, Jayne explains what the action is, why it is important, and provides a checklist of implementation steps with detailed information about how to carry it out and how it contributes to the overall objective. For example, Action 1: Turn off the lights, lists six steps for reducing light pollution, a significant contributor to the drastic decline in insect populations and the death of migratory birds. The steps include closing drapes or blinds at night to keep light from escaping your home or office, changing outdoor lights to amber, yellow, or red bulbs, and switching to wildlife friendly lighting where light is needed.
Jayne notes that the changes necessary to make your landscape more welcoming to wildlife can sometimes be daunting. She advises being realistic about your circumstances in terms of time, resources, and opportunities. At the same time, no step is too small, such as adding a year-round, raised, or in-ground water source, leaving the stems of perennial plants standing in the fall to create native bee nesting sites, or planting balcony containers with native plants.
Larger projects can be implemented in stages. For instance, rather than remove a lawn all at once, shrink it a little at a time by expanding an existing flower bed or creating an island bed in the middle of the lawn. Plant these areas with one or more keystone plants that support multiple pollinators. Not sure what to plant? Jayne has you covered with resources to help you identify and select the best plants for your area and objectives, whether in-ground or in containers. (Also see the MGNV Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic). Have a limited budget? Nature’s Action Guide contains planting charts and propagation guides for growing your own plants and adding them to your yard over time.
Nature’s Action Guide is an empowering read. The action steps are clear, and the corresponding tools, charts, and step-by-step instructions are easy to use, whether it is how to locate information on a website, where to put a birdbath to protect birds from neighborhood cats, nontoxic methods for removing lawn, or the best techniques for removing invasive plants. Everything you need to know to get going is in one place, and readers can choose what to implement based on individual circumstances.
Nature’s Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem (Old Garden, 2024) is available from national booksellers.
Want to learn more? Watch this website, or follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky) for the MGNV Restoring Nature series. The series will share monthly action items for creating natural landscapes welcoming to pollinators and other wildlife, building healthy soil, and protecting our watershed.