The Physics of Native Gardening

Since my retirement, I’ve started gardening with native plants. Originally this was an interest of my wife’s, but through her I became interested too. We live in a traditional suburban neighborhood, with most of the homes having primarily turf grass lawns that are maintained with a lot of water, fertilizer, and herbicides. But whether the neighbors like it or not, we have changed. Each year, we convert more and more of our yard to native flower gardens. We have a rain garden in a low spot in the back yard, and several other gardens are back there too. In the front, under our crabapple and serviceberry trees, we have all sorts of flowers, including goldenrods and asters.

A garden in our back yard with swamp milkweed, purple cone flowers, and black-eyed Susans.

Nature’s Best Hope, by Doug Tallamy.

The point of native gardening is not just to have pretty flowers. Our main goal is to support the native birds, butterflies, bees, and other animals. Evolution creates complex and interdependent ecosystems, where the flowers rely on the bees and butterflies for pollination, the bees and butterflies need the pollen and nectar for food, and the birds eat the caterpillars (soon to be butterflies) and flower seeds. We face a biodiversity crisis in our society that we can address, in a small way, with native gardening. One book that influenced me in this endeavor is Doug Tallamy’s Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard. I highly recommend it.

I’m still a physicist, interested in the applications of physics to medicine and biology. There’s lots of physics in native gardening, which I intend to explore. So, over the next few weeks I’ll post a series of essays about the physics of native gardening. Next week will be the physics of birds, the following week the physics of bees, and the third week the physics of butterflies. Some topics will be drawn from Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, but most will come from other sources.

You might ask, why just birds, bees, and butterflies? Why not bats, beavers, and beetles? Fair question. We have many other animals visiting our yard. We’ve been trying to attract frogs and toads, but without a pond or stream it is difficult. Worms are a crucial asset for any gardener, especially if you maintain a compost heap like we do. Other insects we often see include the desirable dragonflies, moths, and lightning bugs, and some undesirable ones like wasps, flies, and mosquitoes. We have small mammals such as squirrels (who do their best to invade our bird feeders, but that’s another story), rabbits, and chipmunks. Our yard is too small to support larger predators, like foxes or coyotes, but we do occasionally have a Cooper’s hawk visit. On rare occasion, we see a raccoon, skunk, possum, or ground hog, but I don’t think they live here. One large mammal that comes a lot is white-tailed deer, which wander in from a nearby forest. They only eat plants, and act like giant rabbits as far as their ecological niche. I would enjoy having a big oak tree, but we don’t. We do have a couple maples, and a linden tree growing up in the middle of our deck. We love all these plant and animals.

It’s not my habit to do a series of postings on related topics. But biodiversity is important. Moreover, it’s cold and snowy here in Michigan right now so I can’t go out and dig, weed, water, or plant. I’ll do the next best thing and write. I hope you enjoy it.

Tune in next week as we explore the physics of birds. 

Our rain garden. A big swamp milkweed is in the center, surrounded by nodding onions and golden Alexanders. Blue flag irises are in the back (difficult to see in this photo).

Nature’s Best Hope: Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, with Doug Tallamy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBWhaTbe_x0 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmoD-pNANWo