I recently finished reading Nature’s Best Hope by Dr. Doug Tallamy. Dr. Tallamy’s work is all about incorporating native plants into developed landscapes, particularly suburban yards, to bring specialist insects and the wildlife that eat them back into these spaces. The book serves not only as an informative read, but a sort of how-to guide to make your yard into a haven filled with hundreds of beneficial insects and birds that most people would never think of as willing denizens of suburbia. Tallamy singles out suburban lawns as his primary foe, and advocates for large portions of these spaces to be planted with much more ecologically beneficial native plants. 

I like the idea of a yard that harbors wildlife. I was a proponent of the anti-lawn agenda before I read this book. The solutions and their benefits as presented by Tallamy are enough to make a person ask why they weren’t implemented years ago. I often have to remind myself that my lived experience, as someone with an appreciation for the natural world and its interplay with our suburban and urban landscapes, is not universal, and that there are endless conflicting mindsets and priorities to be found among society that make unraveling any conservation issue seem like a quixotic feat. 

I received a reminder of this when I happened to look up Doug Tallamy’s work with a quick Google search. While widely regarded for his work on native plants and insects, it seems that Tallamy has attracted a not insignificant number of naysayers who criticize his all-or-nothing approach to the natives versus invasives argument. I spent some time browsing multiple passionate anti-Tallamy articles, and I am left conflicted—the two sides of this argument represent two distant extremes, exemplifying the current culture in which there is no such thing as nuance, and you must be either entirely for something or against something. People have some very valid critiques of Tallamy’s work, even going so far as to cite scientific literature that contradicts statements made in his books and academic work. I can see it. The narrative Tallamy tells is very black and white: native plants are good, and non-native plants are bad. His book leaves very little wiggle room here, and people on the internet are quick to cite sources about why things are not so clear cut. This, at least to angry people on the internet, becomes a free pass to condemn Tallamy in this entirety: everything he has ever said is a lie; climate change is a more pressing ecological matter, so his life’s work is a sham; go plant your favorite non-native plants with reckless abandon. 

There must be some middle ground here! I would have expected the sorts of folks who are shrewd enough to cite scientific literature in an online comment war to be able to incorporate a shred of nuance into their opinions, but in the examples that I saw, this was largely not the case. Tallamy is an accomplished scientist, and scientists are not infallible, but to discount everything the man has ever said feels a little extreme. Surely, the people with these objections would agree that a rich native planting is more valuable to conservation than a bare parcel of lawn, right? Having a beloved Japanese maple in your garden does not mean you can’t acknowledge the merit in opting for native plantings in the future. We can hold two things! 

I’ve taken away a valuable lesson from this as well—to read with a critical eye, even when the material comes from an accomplished scientist. Nature’s Best Hope, while it thoroughly cites its sources, is not a scientific work but a popular science book you will find on the shelf in Barnes and Noble. In it, Doug Tallamy has a story to tell, and a gripping, timely, and for the most part well-told one in my opinion. However, in pushing its core narrative he has seemingly committed a bit of willful ignorance and told a few lies of omission. In class, we discussed the push and pull between the two sides of the argument to reclassify Crocodylus suchus, and the Tallamy situation shows a similar science vs. economy/politics/sociology battle happening elsewhere. It’s a tough fight to be in these days, and in a culture that increasingly seems to lack the ability to compromise, it often seems like a fight that nobody can win.