The Beauty of Bio: Notes on Biodiversity for the Home Gardener

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As homeowners, gardeners and caretakers, we have the opportunity to reclaim our individual spaces as the slivers of nature that they are.

Note 1- The Relevance of Biodiversity

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life on Earth. The concept can be somewhat abstract, and often brings to mind the state of wildlife globally; a removed issue affecting remote places. We tend to do this with a lot of topics pertaining to nature. Nature is elsewhere, a place to visit. A place that should be protected, but not the place where we live. The divide created when we separate our conception of nature from our everyday living space results in parallel wounds in the loss of vibrancy, health and homeostasis at the environmental and individual levels.  Embracing the home garden as nature, as habitat and as a life-sustaining place can bridge the gap that has been created between wilderness and contemporary living. 

I’m currently reading Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book Living on Earth. In it, he describes how the evolution of life on Earth can be attributed to…life on Earth. The first cyanoplasts’ ability to photosynthesize produced oxygen which eventually created the atmosphere that is necessary for multi-cell organisms to exist. Life on Earth is what has made it possible for us to be here now, and continuing to foster life on Earth is how we have a chance at a healthy future for humanity. To make biodiversity a central goal of the garden is to plan and practice in a way that makes room for life. 

Making room for life is in and of itself a worthwhile goal in my view. The way it stands now, we as the caretakers of land have the choice to steward life or to create and maintain sterility.  The inherent value of all living things and nature’s tendency toward homeostasis guide me to know biodiversity is a worthwhile pursuit. Practically speaking, solutions to problems are often found in the natural world and the more species that are eliminated, the fewer resources we have to pull from. Biodiversity allows for ecosystems to stabilize and self-sustain. Humans need stable environments for the basics of survival: healthy food, clean water and clean air. On the small scale of the garden, the more species present in the garden, the greater the chance for those species to keep each other in check. Biodiversity allows for more beauty, more life, more solutions, more secure environments, and in the long-term, more days to relax and enjoy the garden rather than having to rescue it. 

Within the home garden, biodiversity can be thought of as the spread of species your garden supports. The number of plants, shrubs, trees, microbes, fungi, animals, insects, birds, amphibians, etc. able to sustain life within your garden is the measure of your garden’s functional biodiversity. The greater a garden’s functional biodiversity, the more the garden can contribute to ensuring a stable, healthful environment. As homeowners, gardeners and caretakers, we have the opportunity to reclaim our individual spaces as the slivers of nature that they are. We do have control over what is happening to wildlife, to plant species, to the soil, because we have control over our own yards. Biodiversity is not an amorphous concept floating around out there- it can be a touchstone throughout the design and maintenance phases of our gardens, reminding us to make room for life, for beauty, for harmony, for reciprocity. 

Throughout the series, we will explore how to assess your garden’s current capacity for life, the nitty gritty of the practices that increase biodiversity, how to prioritize those practices for your landscape and how to do all of this while still maintaining an exquisite aesthetic. Join me next week to talk about the first step in diversifying- the observation phase!