Introducing – 5 Ways to Help Your Local Ecosystem

Hey! You’re a person with a heart who wants to help the world around you! There’s so much that needs to be done, but sifting for the right thing to do for your land, at the right time of year can be a lot.

We’re not meant to figure everything out alone. So, I’d like to take some of the pressure off with this: a list of five things you can do at the right time of the season for Atlanta and our Outer Piedmont ecoregion (timing may vary for the rest of the country). I’ll send it out on the early and late sides of each season (and still send occasional essays, too). There are, of course, more than five things you could do, and this list can’t be a substitute for building community and challenging harmful power structures. It can, however, make a collective impact on the beautiful, biodiverse world around us and, hopefully, take some of the guess work off your shoulders.

LATE SUMMER

I like to say that August is for weeding and dealing with water. It’s too hot for much else. The main thing I want you to remember when weeding is this: the invasive-versus-native fight is about achieving better balance in the landscape. This doesn’t mean eliminating entire species or romanticizing some kind of “pure” environment, free of non-native plants (that’s tiptoeing into eco-fascism!) We want to take careful steps to help tip the scales so that native plants and the wildlife that depends on them have a chance to thrive. 

Don’t work too hard and stay hydrated!

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Pull invasive annuals • Turn off outdoor lights at night • Don’t spray for mosquitos • Don’t cut back native flowers • Prepare for storm season

Pull invasive annuals

Preventing non-native, aggressive species from seeding is a major part of helping natives thrive. So many invasives, like stiltgrass, mulberryweed, and chamberbitter, are going to seed this month, and we don’t want those seeds to grow in the next 7 years (they can last that long!) This means that you shouldn’t compost what you pull or leave it on the ground; you have to bag and throw it away. Remember to press the soil down and cover it with nearby leaves after pulling.

Turn off outdoor lights at night

Artificial light at night damages insect populations, like fireflies and other beetles, bees, and moths, the latter of which are very important pollinators. It also decreases plant pollination, disturbs vital plant circadian rhythms, and kills birds by pulling them off their impressive migratory paths. We don’t have to live in total darkness, but lighting needs to be used intentionally. Have parties and visible pathways but don’t leave lights on by default. Our world depends on darkness. 

Beyond turning off lights at night, you can:

• install motion sensors for lighting at exterior entrances 

• set up timers

• use the dimmest lights/settings possible

• direct light at walkways and structures (not up toward the sky or at plants)

• install red spectrum light bulbs or filters – studies show red lights interfere less with insect life than blue spectrum light, so cue up some TLC and warm up your lighting!

Don’t spray for mosquitos

Look, I know how awful mosquitos are; I’m outside all the time. But the chemicals used in these treatments, even those marketed as “natural,” indiscriminately kill almost all insects in the spray area. They affect bees, butterflies, fireflies, even some earthworms, harming every creature that depends on those bugs as a food source. 

Mosquito fogging is also ineffective! It kills adult insects in the immediate area for about 72 hours. It doesn’t prevent larvae from growing or nearby mosquitos from nesting after that window. You might get a quick day or two of relief, but it comes at a high price. 

Try the mosquito bucket challenge instead! It’s easy: 

• take a bucket (have your kids paint it!) and fill it with water and a couple handfuls of straw, clippings, leaves, hay, etc.

• cover the bucket with something like chicken wire (to block critters but not mosquitos) or put a big stick in (to allow critters to get out)

• keep it somewhere shady and out of sight, let it sit for a week to serve as a mosquito nesting spot, then add a mosquito dunk, which contains bacteria that stops mosquito larvae from growing

• add a new dunk every 30 days or start over if it gets too gross

Prepare for storm season

It’s not too late to look into potential stormwater issues before the hurricanes pick up. Keep your gutters and downspouts clear. Water inundation puts homes at risk, and erosion disturbs the complex web of life in the soil that takes eons to develop. While we can always plant new plants, or help regenerate new soil, we can’t replace history. Haphazardly constructed rain gardens are also a concern, but these are a little more complex. If you need help with one, reach out to me for a consult. 

Stormwater is complicated, but it’s so, so important for us to absorb as much of it as possible on our land before it flows into storm drains and out into the ocean. I’ll have more on this in my next newsletter.

I hope this was helpful! I cover more practical ecological tips in my consults. Reach out to me if you’d like more site-specific, in-depth guidance on how you can make your land ecologically healthier, prettier, and easier to manage.

Thank you for reading,

Alex Lampert

P.S. if you’re wondering if August is an okay time to plant, here’s a handy flowchart I made to help you make that call:

P.S.S. Please share this newsletter with your plant nerd friends, that colleague or neighbor you talk to about gardening, the one that got away, and anyone else you think might be interested.

_________ . . _________ . . _________ . . _________

If this email was forwarded to you and you’d like to subscribe, click here.

Unsubscribe note: if you’re interested in only receiving essay newsletters or this list (but not both), let me know here — the link at the bottom will unsubscribe you from all emails from me.