ReWilding the Lawn: Lessons from My Neighbor’s Yard
After moving across the country from Brooklyn, New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma, I finally finish unpacking. I shove the last of my moving boxes into the recycling bin and decide to explore my new neighborhood. Like many suburbs, I find rows of neutral-colored houses flanked by squares of lawns. Everything is orderly and still, each home consistent with the next.
Until one yard stops me in my tracks.
A rainbow of flora spills from this yard into the street. Golden petals of black-eyed Susans bask in the sunshine, and blue-green strands of Russian sage gesticulate in the breeze. Bright red cardinals sing alongside the hum of foraging bees, providing ambient music to the monarch butterflies as they feed upon milkweed nearby.
Like Dorothy’s emergence from Kansas into Oz, the world appears suddenly sharper and brighter to me.
A series of signs adorn this yard’s fence, bearing the seals of prominent nonprofit organizations like the Humane Society and the Audubon Society. They proclaim, “I’m a Humane Backyard,” “I’m a Wildlife Sanctuary,” and “I’m a certified Pollinator Garden.”
