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    Imminent Horizons
    Tuesday, November 05, 2024

    Stonington High grad wants Americans to rethink their lawns

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    Margit Burgess looks at grapes growing up an arbor as she tours the wildlife garden she cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    A bee on a cosmo in a wildlife garden Margit Burgess cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    Perennials in a wildlife garden Margit Burgess cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    Margit Burgess points out flowers from a native perennial seed mix she planted as she tours the wildlife garden she cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High school graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    A “bug hotel” in a wildlife garden Margit Burgess cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    A pond made out of a kitchen sink in a wildlife garden Margit Burgess cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    Margit Burgess looks at a bee on a sunflower as she tours the wildlife garden she cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    Annuals in a wildlife garden Margit Burgess cultivated at her parents’ home in Stonington Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. The Stonington High School graduate is pursuing her master's at the University of Rhode Island in sustainable agriculture and working on a thesis project about biodiverse landscapes on Mason’s Island in Mystic. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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    Stonington — On an early August morning it is hard to imagine there is science among the butterflies and buzzing bees flitting around Margit Burgess’ garden.

    Nonetheless, the explosion of dahlias, nasturtium, sunflowers, and plentiful food crops like tomatoes, grapes and squash are part of a living research laboratory the 24-year-old started last year on part of her parents’ sprawling Stonington property.

    Burgess, a Stonington High School graduate, became interested in gardening during the pandemic. She said it was good for her body and mind, and when she began her graduate studies at the University of Rhode Island, she incorporated her passion into her graduate studies at the University of Rhode Island, where she is studying biology and environmental sciences.

    In what she calls her “biodiversity garden,” she uses native flowers and food crops to create an aesthetically pleasing and productive habitat and food source for pollinators, insects, birds and other wildlife.

    In one half of her garden, a mix of native annuals form a cutting garden interspersed with food crops, while the other half is native perennials which will come back year after year, require little to no care, and do not need to be watered.

    Over the last year, Burgess has used her garden to experiment with growing techniques, weed suppression approaches and different types of native plants as a way to demonstrate what can be done with minimal effort and skill and change how people think about their lawns.

    To date, she has learned it is easier to start native plants from plugs than seed, marigolds help to keep harmful pests away, plastic tarps are better at suppressing weeds than layers of cardboard and a number of other lessons, all of which tie in to the thesis research she is doing on Mason’s Island.

    “It’s such a unique ecosystem,” she said, recalling that she grew up visiting her grandparents’ home on the island and has seen a loss of habitat and diversity over the years, from fewer bird species to fewer crabs in the water around the island helped focus her area of study.

    “I wanted to see what people are doing with their yards, why they’re doing it, what their interest in biodiverse landscaping is, what would motivate them to incorporate that into their yards and what the barriers are,” she explained.

    She said she generally found that people are very interested in biodiverse landscaping, and her research will help her develop actionable steps communities can take to increase biodiversity.

    Stefan Martin, conservation manager with the Connecticut Audubon Society, said he has seen an uptick in people interested in biodiverse landscaping.

    “I definitely have seen an increase in awareness and a desire to start to incorporate more native plant communities in people’s backyards,” he said.

    The problem with lawns

    Martin said that lawns have historically been an indicator of social standing.

    “It’s been lawns forever since colonization brought over this notion of boxwoods and English gardens and grass lawns as far as the eye can see; that was a sign of wealth,” he said earlier this month.

    Burgess explained that grass lawns take up three times more acreage than any other single crop in the country, and, as a non-native species, grass has little benefit for the environment.

    “It’s more useful than a dirt yard, but it’s pretty useless for insects and wildlife,” she said.

    Martin agreed, saying the lack of biodiversity in landscapes is the leading cause of population decline among birds and the insects they feed on.

    He pointed specifically to the monarch butterfly, which like many other insects, requires a specific host plant to survive.

    “This butterfly needs to eat milkweed. If there’s no milkweed around, there are no monarchs around. They can’t successfully reproduce,” he said, explaining that a decline in insect populations ultimately impacts the entire food chain.

    “Because they have evolved side by side for millennia, they need these plants to successfully complete their life cycle and turn into an adult, and while they are in their larval form, while they are caterpillars, they are going to be a very important food source for our birds,” he said.

    Burgess explained that the well-manicured grass lawns that homeowners aspire to are expensive to maintain and require extensive time and natural resources.

    On Mason’s Island, where many homeowners employ landscapers, thousands of dollars and harmful chemicals are just part of the heavy cost to maintain grass lawns.

    “The lawn is the most irrigated crop in the United States, more than corn. It’s pretty wild,” she said.

    The Environmental Protection Agency agrees, noting that 30% of residential water use is landscape irrigation for gardens and lawns, and that totals nearly 9 billion gallons of water per year, or 46 gallons per day per family.

    But the water use is the least of Burgess’ concerns.

    She said many landscapers advertise that they use natural products, but she cautioned that those claims are very misleading.

    “Natural doesn’t mean anything. It means it’s not supernatural, which means there’s no ghosts in it,” she laughed.

    Specifically, she worries about the impact of imidacloprid, a pesticide used to treat soil that is banned in the European Union. While it is regulated in Connecticut and a handful of other states, the product is found in over 400 products available to consumers nationwide under brand names like Bioadvanced and Bayer.

    Burgess explained that bee populations have been declining rapidly leading farmers to transport them across the country just to fertilize their crops, and a 1% concentration of the chemical is enough to impair bees’ memories and make it hard for them to find their way back to their hive.

    According to Ohio State University, imidacloprid is very toxic to bees and contact with the chemical need not be direct to harm other beneficial insects including ladybugs, which demonstrated reduced survival and reproductive rates if they ate aphids from plants grown in soil treated with the chemical.

    “You can also get stuck in this pesticide treadmill, so the more pesticides you are putting on, the more you are going to need them,” Burgess said, explaining that insects can build up a tolerance to the chemicals.

    She doesn’t expect homeowners to give up their lawns altogether but hopes they will see the benefits to their wallets, but especially to the environment in incorporating more native plants into their landscaping to increase diversity.

    The Connecticut Audubon Society notes that native plants provide food and habitats for up to 15 times more native pollinators, birds and wildlife than non-native plants. They are also more disease resistant, lower maintenance and require less watering because they are used to local conditions.

    Burgess said small changes like planting native species around the edges of their properties, setting the blade height of their lawn mowers a bit higher and allowing clover to creep into lawns can make a big difference.

    Additionally, she hopes homeowners will question their landscapers about chemical use, read ingredients before treating their lawns and gardens, and use native plants and flowers like milkweed, Joe Pye weed, asters, and marigolds for flower beds.

    Next year, before furthering her work with biodiversity in a doctoral program at the University of Vermont, Burgess plans to expand her garden by converting more lawn into meadow, taking a small bite out of the 40 million acres of lawn across the country.

    She hopes to use her education, and all the practical information she has gained, to inform municipalities and policymakers of ways to make biodiverse landscaping more accessible in communities.

    Editor’s note: This version corrects the first name of Margit Burgess.

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