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I got into ecological landscape design because we have the power to make a positive environmental impact plot by plot (and because everyone deserves to experience beautiful ecology), but there are limits to what we can do with our own land and who that helps. It’s easy for people in my field to frame the climate crisis as if we can save the whole world with our own backyard. It’s compelling, especially for the guilt-addled and sleep-deprived. I fell prey to it last week. I woke up before sunrise to the sound of water pouring from a crooked gutter outside my window during Helene. My partner and I dug diversion trenches in a record-breaking deluge of 11 inches of rain in 48 hours. I cursed my neighbors all the while. I’m downhill from so many of their almost exclusively turf lawn and concrete backyards. There’s little slowing the momentum of water across the slope and no deep root systems to soak it deeper into the ground. I’ve been working on a stormwater design at home using pretty native species that’ll host and feed wildlife, but I can’t catch all their runoff, and even together, we could never compensate for a storm of such unnatural proportions. My neighbors are nice people who have a different context for nature than I do, which feels more common than not. I can talk to them and model a pretty alternative. Turf lawns meet a specific need, but they shouldn’t be the US’s largest irrigated crop, collectively amounting to an area bigger than the state of Georgia(!!). My neighbors are responsible for their land, but they don’t hold the same power as turf and chemical industry lobbyists or the politicians they pay. My neighbors aren’t responsible for how lawns became the design default in the US, especially among developers, or for not having the skills to convert theirs. And they didn’t cause Helene. Planting the right natives is vital to local ecosystems and watersheds, and reducing lawns cuts down pollution and consumption. Leaving leaves helps to sink carbon. The list of benefits of ecological landscaping, especially in place of lawns, is big. But when we stay focused only on individual actions, we lose sight of really important factors, like who holds power and responsibility for climate damage and who bears the burdens of that damage. Converting lawns won’t help people in Conyers recover from a chemical fire or prevent the next one, and it isn’t enough to prevent another Helene. I get how people get lost in their own actions. We don’t have ways of upholding safe or sustainable standards for everyone, so we resort to the choices that we can control. But, choice is often an expression of privilege. Not everyone can choose to consume virtuously. Not everyone can choose to have an ecological backyard, much less not be poisoned in theirs, but that’s life this week in Conyers and has been for decades in Cancer Alley. This is, in large part, a problem of lacking power and accountability, and we won’t get either by acting alone. I read so much about the climate crisis, and popular literature focuses too much on individual change or on simply voting for structural change. Voting would have more power if we could hold who we elect accountable; the problem is bigger than an occasional visit to a booth. Even so, these are fundamental parts of a bigger whole, but they’re still personal choices made on our own. The prevalence of such isolationist advice seems like an expression of cultural apprehension to build something together, but what if we’re exactly the help we need? If we can respond to emergencies with the kind of care and coordination that people are giving in North Carolina, we can build a better world together, one that doesn’t keep increasing demand for extreme resilience. We can deal with the awkwardness of building the strong communities it’s going to take to get meaningful change. We can face our old mistakes, cope with new ones, and keep trying. A better world is possible. It’s not an easy task, but, thankfully, it can’t be a lonely one.
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