Keep Nature Wildly BeautifulThe author of the introduction below is Dr. David Dobbins, Emeritus Professor of Plant Anatomy and Development, Morphology and Horticulture at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. Below are seven easy steps to create native organic landscapes. Enjoy the many ways our wildly beautiful environment so restoratively awes and sustains us! -Aggie Perilli
March 2025 Update
By Dr. David Dobbins
I grew up in the city of Indianapolis, with little exposure to nature, and had no real interest in our environment. All of that changed when I went camping with the Boy Scouts in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois.
Camping inspired my enthusiasm for nature, and, also, my career as a researcher and professor of biology, botany, horticulture and environmental science.
For 20 years, I engaged in research in the rain forests of Australia and Central and South America. While studying and teaching, my mind kept returning to the same question: “How did we allow our world to become so nonbiological and unnatural?”
Throughout my career, I’ve noticed stark changes in people’s attitudes. In our headlong rush to raise our own standard of living, many of us shortchanged our quality of life.
We bought houses with lawns we admire but have little idea how to healthfully maintain.
Sprayed grass lawns consist of a single species. No thriving ecosystem in the world consists of a single species!
To maintain what is unnatural, some poison their grass with increasingly toxic herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides linked with deadly diseases. These carbon-releasing herbicides and synthetic fertilizers (and pesticides) that emit greenhouse gases from manufacture through application may be accountable for a third of climate change.
Fighting against nature has also led to the wholesale pollution of our air and soil, and streams, rivers, ponds, lakes and coastal areas. This is jeopardizing the safety and well-being of humans and animals, forests and essential plants and pollinator insects.
How can we restore and protect our natural environment? Plant native organic woods, meadow grasses and wildflower-rain gardens. These ecosystems provide habitats for the diverse organisms that form the bulk of our food chain.
In suburban areas where lawns are still the landscaping standard, maintain safely organic native properties. Like wild parks, organic landscapes are most beautiful and allow all life to thrive.
Create Native Organic Landscapes in 7 Easy Steps
1. Allow chemically addicted landscapes to lie fallow for up to three years to withdraw from their harmful chemical dependency.
Raise your standards. Enjoy the healthful tranquility of restorative parks in your own yard and throughout your state.
2. Before treating any property, test your soil to determine the nutrients it needs.
Many states test soil at no charge. In Pennsylvania, you can buy a $9 testing kit at the county offices of Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and submit your soil samples for a free analysis.
3. If your soil is compacted, aerate it and improve your land’s natural drainage and vitality.
Use an aerator with hollow tines. Solid tines may further compact your soil.
Aeration and oxygenation in richly alive organic soil can naturally sustain itself.
4. Transform all or part of dull unhelpful lawns into inspiring wildlife habitats!
Avoid carcinogenic and other costly carbon-releasing killing agents linked to deadly diseases, climate change, and that repel and kill our essential pollinators. They also kill the healthy microorganisms in richly alive soil, and poison our air and water.
Rather than prevent weeds, counterproductive herbicides exacerbate the deadening conditions that cause weeds to spread. Similarly eliminate harmful synthetic fertilizers that emit greenhouse gases from manufacture through application. If necessary over the summer, lightly apply the organic mix of fertilizer your soil analysis recommends.
Help create a critical mass of certified gardens that attract and protect our pollinators and wildlife. It’s easy and fun to provide the four basic elements needed: food, water, shelter and sustainable homes within our gardens and landscapes.
5. Use leaves where insects also live as mulch. Hand weed and grow organic native trees and unsprayed self-seeding meadow grasses and pollinator flowers and plants.
To reduce the need for hand weeding and mulch that can attract termites, plant native woods, spreading shrubs, and fields of pollinators.
Shop at organic nurseries. Other nurseries may spray dangerous killing agents.
If your garden has poisonous weeds you may be allergic to, place your weeding hand in two solid bags that extend past your elbow. Pull the weeds and place them in an opened garbage bag. From the top, slip the weeding bags off your arm and into the garbage and carefully avoid skin contact.
6. Avoid weakening your property by micromanaging it.
Allow grass to grow as tall as municipal law allows. Leave your grass with nutrient-rich blades tall enough to shade out weed seeds. A thick turf can sustain itself.
7. In autumn, seed or over-seed your lawn or just areas that are weedy or bare.
Buy safely uncoated organic seeds suited to your soil, climate and land use. Select seed varieties native to your area.
As we shift to safely organic native landscapes, encourage land owners and landscapers to persevere.
It can take up to 3 years for a chemically deadened property to return to its wildly beautiful nature. – Aggie Perilli
How is organic landscaping (and agriculture) raising the quality of all life in your area?
Aggie Perilli is president of Aggie Perilli Communications International (APCI).
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Recommended Media
Beyond Pesticides’ free Parks for a Sustainable Future program.
Products Compatible with Organic Landscape Management and Organic Lawn Care 101 by Beyond Pesticides.
Tools for Change from Non-Toxic Communities that thrive in wildly beautiful and cost-effective organic landscapes.
Alternatives to Synthetic Products for Managing Landscapes and Pests
New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer by Nicholas Kristof.
Pollinators Are in Trouble: Here Is How Transforming Your Lawn Into A Native Wildflower Habitat Can Help by Discover magazine.
Bringing Nature Home – How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Douglas W. Tallamy.
Documentaries: Down to Earth with Zac Efron, Kiss the Ground with Woody Harrelson, The Biggest Little Farm, and more.
Organic Manifesto by Maria Rodale.
Silent Spring and any communications by Rachel Carson.
