Ben Chaffee's front yard is dotted with fruiting trees and sprawling squash vines. His backyard is a lush, tropical haven where honeybees zip through the air under the shade of pawpaw trees and live oaks.
Like Chaffee, more and more Savannah area gardeners are ditching the regular old grass lawn. Sometimes they call it "re-wilding," while others just say it's gardening with more native plants.
Nationwide, it's a trend to revitalize local ecosystems by reintroducing native plants that have gone to the wayside in traditional landscaping. In gardening circles, they'll point to entomologist Doug Tallamy, who popularized the native lawn's return to form to support the environment.
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Garden transformation
Chaffee isn't the traditional gardener.
In five years, on his less than 1 acre property just a stone's toss from Daffin Park, he's grown about 100 different fruit trees and another 200 or more other types of plants in his front and back yards. But he's also not a native plant purist. Chaffee has a mixture of native plants, like native squashes and the pawpaw, a custard apple native to Georgia up through Canada, as well as exotic plants he's bought from websites like E-Bay and Etsy.
"Native plants have really adapted to have deep root systems," Chaffee said. Despite having a verdant garden, he said he doesn't water it much, especially the native plants. He also doesn't need to mow.
Chaffee uses a method called permaculture, where he recreates successful natural ecosystems in his own yard.
Up top, live oaks tower and provide a unique "microclimate," Chaffee said. He can tell the difference in the growth and resiliency of plants under the oaks versus in other parts of his yard, and he's measured the temperature over the years and found that under the oaks the temperatures remain milder. Underneath, he has smaller trees, and at the bottom, there is a dense layer of vining plants like squash and pumpkin covering the ground to keep it cool and maintain moisture.
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
"There's a lot of good biodiversity, trying to mimic mostly Indigenous ways of agriculture and also really healthy ecosystems," Chaffee said. The plants aren't individual facets of a yard; they're a cohesive and interconnected system.
Problem-solving in a system is an unexpected skill Chaffee said he's picked up through his gardening. For example, when his bees started exhibiting varroa, the mite disease that has notoriously killed off honeybee populations, he was able to introduce a tobacco plant which he said the bees use to fortify themselves against varroa.
Honeybees in general aren't native to the U.S., and they can compete with native bees, so he plants extra native flowers better adapted to native bees to balance out the impact of his apiary.
While wet weather and humidity can cause fungus and mold in gardens, Chaffee said native plants are already resistant to these issues and don't require any treatment.
Chaffee said he has made friends in the gardening community in Savannah — many of which just appear at his doorstep, drawn in by the garden — to learn about managing his yard and combatting problems when they arise.
Before he introduces anything, especially seeds he bought online, Chaffee said he does extensive research to understand how it could impact the other plants and to make sure the plant is not invasive and won't take over his yard and spread to others. He also took the University of Georgia Extension's six-month beekeeping course and met other beekeepers there and at a huge annual conference hosted by the UGA extension.
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Where to find native plant experts
For local gardeners, the UGA agricultural extension offices are a home-base for native plant and gardening knowledge. Keren Giovengo is the sustainable land use manager for the EcoScapes Program at UGA's marine extension and a go-to for the Georgia Native Plant Society down on the coast.
"Native plants, birds, insects, and other wildlife have all evolved together to meet each other’s needs," Giovengo said. "On the other hand, non-native plants reduce the number of interacting species and cause loss of ecosystem function."
The trend of re-wilding lawns with native plants can serve an important ecological function, and Giovengo said that the more native species an ecosystem has, the more stable, productive, and resilient it is in the face of challenges or hazards, like droughts or hurricanes that are part of life on the coast. Native plants provide "ecological services" like flood mitigation, water quality and coastal protection can reduce the size of disturbances and the destruction to human coastal communities.
For those looking to add native plants to their home's ecosystem, Giovengo said the EcoScapes Program and your local UGA Agricultural Extension can provide useful information to get started planting at bit.ly/3b8L5lS.
Marisa Mecke is an environmental journalist. She can be reached at mmecke@gannett.com or by phone at (912) 328-4411.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Ditching the grass: Savannah gardener 're-wilds' yard with native plants
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