It never ceases to surprise me the resiliency that life on earth has to renew itself, day after day, season after season. As a gardener, I rejoice at each shade of green the grass turns after a March and April rain followed by the rays of sunshine. I see the grass grow faster than I wish in the summer months telling me that it is time to cut it back, just so that it can grow even thicker than before. The blistering sun of August slows the growth and makes it turn brown; the grass will no longer have the force that previously had and will, as the nights get colder and the days sorter, begin to weaken until it goes dormant once the first frost of October arrives.
As I nip the leading stem of the black-eyed Susan (
Rudbeckia hirta
), the new growth generated from each of the nods will reward me at a later time with that many more blooms. Simultaneously, the root system is strengthened, making the growth horizontal instead of vertical. Thus, the plant shows its resilience, and instead of dying back, it comes back with that much more strength and development.
Backyard habitat
These last few years, I have been working in naturalizing the lawn that surrounds my gardens and the house. I have begun introducing other plant species into the lawn, mainly for aesthetic reasons, with the awareness in mind, that as I mow the lawn, I decrease the amount of biological diversity.
So now the lawn has these patches or islands where these new plant species that I introduced, or that for the first time, I am allowing to grow so that they might have a chance to complete their life cycle, depict a very much more diverse ecosystem. At the same time I am fascinated by the way that the garden's colors have increased, the amount of bees, butterflies, and other visible life is also on the increase; I cringe at the idea of the destruction I bring to all these environments with the lawn mower in hand, I shave off all the life three inches above ground level. Bormann et al. (2001) would label this the Freedom Lawn in juxtaposition to the Industrial Lawn.
The Freedom lawn seeks to create a healthier and more diverse environment, while the Industrial Lawn, seeks uniformity at any cost to the environment. Therefore, through the use of many chemicals and pesticides, overuse of limited water resources, and the side effects of washed out pesticides into drinking wells, rivers and oceans, the Industrial Lawn has serious direct and indirect consequences to the environmental problems we face nowadays.
The metaphor of the lawn as the earth, the lawnmower as progress and unchecked over-exploitation of natural resources, and myself as the human component, will depict some of the fundamental ecological, and biodiversity concepts that I would like for my students to begin to understand. I find it unlikely that my students will be able to study a savanna, a prairie, a coastal or any other type of habitat and understand the relationships, factors, characteristics of the interdependence of the web of life unless they can see very simple and concrete examples that demonstrate the intricacies and importance of all forms of life. As a means of discovering how nature works, the students will gather clues by becoming active participants with the habitats that surround their lives. This will be accomplished through the study and year-round direct observation of two or three permanent plot samples located in the school backyard and a community garden.