Keeping Nature Wildly Beautiful

The 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. Following are seven easy steps to native organic landscaping. 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 a 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 had we allowed 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, we have completely shortchanged our quality of life.

We bought houses with lawns we admire, but have little idea how to healthfully maintain.

Chemically sprayed lawns consist of a single species of grass. 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. Further, carbon-releasing herbicides and synthetic fertilizers (and pesticides) that emit greenhouse gases from manufacture through application may be accountable for more than a third of climate change.

Fighting against nature has led to the wholesale pollution of our air and soil, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes and coastal areas. This has also jeopardized the safety and well-being of humans and animals, forests and essential plants and pollinator insects.

How do we restore and protect our natural environment? Plant native organic woods, tall meadow grasses and wildflower-rain gardens. These ecosystems provide healthful habitats for the diverse organisms that make up the bulk of our food chain.

In suburban areas where lawns may 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 

By Aggie Perilli

 1. Allow chemically addicted landscapes to lie fallow for up to three years to withdraw from their destructive chemical dependency.

Raise your standards. Enjoy the healthful tranquility of restorative parks in your own yard and community.

2. Before you treat any property, test the soil to determine what, if any, 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.

In richly alive organic soil, aeration or oxygenation 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 diseases and dysfunctions, 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, herbicides counterproductively exacerbate the deadening conditions that cause weeds to spread.

Eliminate equally harmful synthetic fertilizers that emit greenhouse gases from manufacture through application. If necessary over the summer, lightly apply an organic mix of the fertilizer that 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. Hand weed and grow organic native trees and unsprayed self-seeding meadow grasses and pollinator flowers and plants. Use autumn leaves as mulch.

To reduce the need for hand weeding and mulch that can attract termites, plant native woods, spreading shrubs, and fields of pollinators. In autumn, cost-effectively spread fallen leaves as mulch. This adds and retains a balance of nutrients, and allows the beneficial insects who live in our leaves to thrive.

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 to 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 those areas that are weedy or bare.

Buy safely organic uncoated seeds suited to your soil, climate and land use. Be sure to select seed varieties native to your area.

As we shift to safely organic native landscapes, encourage land owners and landscapers to persevere.

It may take up to 3 years for a chemically deadened property to return to its wildly beautiful nature.

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.