Although this essay is of a persuasive nature, it is by no means an instigation. I appreciate the conversation.
“Monoculture” is too broadly an applied term in r/nolawns and subs adjacent to it.
Most gardeners, and to throw in a made-up percentage, 85% of them, would provide to their ecospheres measurably better by implementing a ‘monoculture’ given certain criteria are met. Specifically:
- The planted monoculture is as native as possible to the area planted.
- The planted area is the size of a typical garden/landscape replacement.
- A ‘greater good’ is the common goal.
An example, again, just made up, is a person living in Iowa, who replaces their 1/10 acre worth of lawn and replaces it entirely with buffalo clover. This would be an oasis to native pollinators and would actively benefit many spheres of its influence.
Another example is a person in southeastern Alaska that has 10 acres of recently timbered land. They plant all 10 acres in fireweed. This is still a net benefit to the area even at such large plot sizes.
If you keep yourself educated to the needs of your area and commit, to just please not EVERYONE switching to the same plant, nature would adjust better to dedicated spaces they are found to thrive. Larger sections committed to native flora provide more benefit as they provide for communities, not individuals.
I argue, to a ‘typical gardener’ (Ha!), go for it and plant a lawnfull of only strawberries! Do one type of clover! Choose a native grass.
But hey, even better would be educating yourself to the benefit of your local ecosystems and actively seeking out plans and plant materials to best support the life around you. Not everyone is privileged to have the time, opportunity, and space to commit to that. So if you can’t find the time to simply plant one thing because of cost, time, or availability, I argue you should do so.
Evidence I believe to be supportive of my claim:
Edit: Formatting
2.Pollinator conservation at a local level
3.research on recent landscaping practices
Additional information:
by PMMEWHAT_UR_PROUD_OF
4 Comments
A diverse planting is far superior. Better disease resilience, more forage for herbivores including a wider blend of larval host plants, season long blooms for pollinators, and a more robust base of orey support predators.
You didn’t post the evidence link
I feel like in a perfect world where meadows can go on forever and there are no fences, yea, native monocultures make sense. However we don’t live in that perfect world so we plant diversely to ensure bloom during all times of the year and a good amount of native food
I’m not going to disagree, but on my .13 acres here in the city, that I get to look at everyday, I like the variety of multiculturalism.
I do agree that the term monoculture gets overused. But I think the biggest reason is the scale we usually see is usually way too small to be considered an actual monoculture. I don’t know if there are any exact size requirements, but when you read about how monocultures are usually talked about in agriculture it’s talking about large areas multiple acres in size. If someone puts in 1,000 feet of wild strawberries or something, that’s just too small to be an actual monoculture imo.
Diverse plantings are a lot better generally, but a lot of areas I see called monocultures are too small to have the actual negative impacts we see from larger agricultural monocultures.