The spring after we moved to Mississippi was the pandemic lockdown. It was the perfect time to begin our new 1850s prairie homesteading pesticide-free lifestyle. I had spent some time over the intervening winter reading about various rewilding strategies: how to introduce and support native plants, cultivate prairie grasses, achieve chemical-free weed control, plan your own butterfly garden. But the approach that appealed to me the most was: do nothing. A couple of websites I read advocated simply sitting back, refusing to mow, and waiting to see what happened. One blogger claimed that after a few months of complete lawn-and-garden slackerdom he noticed native orchids blooming in his yard. Orchids! Now, this was a gardening strategy I could get behind. So we set our intention to do nothing, informed our lawn that we would like it to become a beautiful native meadow, and waited.
After the orchids failed to appear, I went back to the original blog and noticed that the writer lives in the midland counties of England, a country whose every square millimeter has been under relentless cultivation for the past 1000 years. Sure, if you live in what is essentially an island-sized lidless terrarium, you can probably just sit around and wait for rambling roses, sweet honeysuckle, and fields of bright wildflowers to pop up “naturally” the second you turn your back. But here in Mississippi, where our dominant plants include kudzu, poison ivy, and a merciless creeper called Kill-Your-Puppy, you probably have to intervene in your rewilding project if you don’t want to be strangled in the night by murderous vines.
You’ve just read an excerpt from my current book project, Lawn: An Environmental Memoir. I’ll keep sending these to y’all on a semi-regular basis. I hope you enjoy (I’m having a blast writing it)!