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The Associated Press
Doug Tallamy, the wildlife ecologist and entomologist who urges home gardeners to join forces and create a pollinator-friendly "Homegrown National Park," is now bringing kids into the effort.
Tallamy has become a leading evangelist for the return of native plants and trees that can support birds, bees and other essential wildlife. Anyone with a yard, patio or windowsill can chip in.
And they can encourage parks, playgrounds, schools and colleges, hospitals and office buildings, golf courses and even airports to join in, he urges.
Tallamy's new book, "Nature's Best Hope: How You Can Save the World in Your Own Yard" (Timber Press), is aimed at middle schoolers (and, he hopes, their parents) in time for Earth Day. It follows his influential 1999 book for a general audience, "Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard."
He hopes the book will carry the message into classrooms around the country.
"The idea is that kids are the future stewards of our planet," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "My average audience is retired folks, but we can't wait another generation. I get contacted by kids all the time, and this is stuff you can do and actually see results."
Little things can
make a big difference.
"You don't have to worry about the entire planet. Just do something about the little piece of the planet that you can do something about. That's really motivating for parents as well as kids," he said.
The new young reader's edition lists easy changes that kids can make at home to create better habitat for insects and birds. For instance, switch out a white lightbulb on your porch for a yellow one that's less attractive to insects. Reduce the amount of lawn. Or plant some native plants.
The book includes a few easy projects like building a "bee hotel" out of an empty metal can and strips of paper, or covering window wells so little creatures don't get trapped in them.
"Or just plant an acorn. It's free and easy and you can watch it grow, and it makes a big difference," Tallamy says.
He envisions all the little pollinator-friendly patches -- a proliferation of gardens and public spaces -- sewn loosely together to form Homegrown National Park.
Spreading the word that what we do at home can improve the environment is important, said Tai Montanarella, who teaches kindergarten through high school kids about native plants as the New York Botanical Garden's associate director of school and out-of-school programming.