Home » Gardening Information » Wildflower Gardening
Natives Revival—Is Native-plant Gardening Linked to Fascism?
Plants & Gardens News Volume 15, Number 2 | Summer 2000
by Janet Marinelli
Is it important for us to grow native plants and restore native plant communities in our gardens? What is a native plant? Questions like these are as key to the future of gardening as they are controversial. The controversy came to a head last year in an article in The New York Times Magazine. Author Michael Pollan wrote, "It's hard to believe that there is nothing more than scientific concern about invasive species behind the current fashion for natural gardening and native plants in America-not when our national politics are rife with anxieties about immigration and isolationist sentiment." He pointed to a similar "outbreak of native-plant mania" in Nazi Germany, which "saw the rise of a natural-gardening movement founded on nationalistic and racist ideas that were often cloaked in scientific jargon."
As a journalist, I was less than impressed by Pollan's article. He made superficial (and rather sensational) connections between Nazi garden designers and natural landscapers in the U.S. today. And he blithely dismissed the scientific credibility of ecological restoration and natural landscaping, its domesticated form—without talking to a single scientist. But I had to allow that, given our current anti-immigrant political climate, Pollan's charges merit some serious consideration. A few months after Pollan's article appeared, I began organizing a June 1 symposium on the role of native plants in the 21st-century garden, part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's handbook series. What better way to kick off the symposium than to continue this debate?
Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, director of studies in landscape architecture at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, who has written extensively on the rise of a natural gardening movement in Nazi Germany, agreed to participate. To make the case for native plants we recruited plant ecologist and president of Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin, Neil Diboll.
In his opening statement Wolschke-Bulmahn noted that "Many who claim authority by referring to nature or native plants do not offer an unequivocal definition of what they mean by native plants." He called defining "native" according to political boundaries such as nation or state "an interesting garden motif but [one that] has nothing to do with nature or nativeness."
Wolschke-Bulmahn focused on Nazi Germany, when the exclusive use of natives "became the landscape architect's swastika." Unlike Pollan, he was unwilling to draw analogies to today's native plant movement in this country. But he did point out that some American natural landscaping pioneers who were contemporaries of Nazi landscape designers—the only one mentioned by name was Jens Jensen—exhibited "similar tendencies toward racist argumentation." He read the following quote from an article by Jensen, published in a 1937 German journal:
"The gardens that I created myself...shall express a spirit of America, and therefore shall be free of foreign character as far as possible. The Latin and the Oriental...creep more and more over our land, coming from the South, which is settled by Latin people, and also from other centers of mixed masses of immigrants. The Germanic character of our race, of our cities and settlements, [has been] overgrown by foreign character. Latin spirit has spoiled a lot, and still spoils things every day."
It seems to me that we should be cautious before imputing racist motives to anyone. But let's just assume for a moment that Jensen's social views were less than saintly. There may be reason to re-evaluate his motives for using native plants. Does this also call into question the accomplishments of other pioneering American restorationists of his day? In the absence of any evidence that they, too, used racist arguments to make the case for native plants, I don't think so. Does Jensen's racially charged language call into question all motives for using native plants? Of course not.
Wolschke-Bulmahn wrapped up his opening argument by saying that there are many good reasons for growing natives, from esthetic reasons to the desire to prevent the extinction of plants and wildlife. "But there is no reason for the assumption that only native plants will serve these functions best." In some cases, though, there are very good reasons for using native plants to prevent extinction. Here, I think, is where Wolschke-Bulmahn's argument really begins to fall apart. Like Pollan, he dismisses the scientific case for restoration without even examining it.
In his opening statement, Neil Diboll addressed Wolschke-Bulmahn's question "what is a native plant." Being native, he said, "is a function of two factors: location and time." Using these criteria, he defined native basically as belonging to a particular ecological region approximately 150 to 200 years ago, before plants were massively displaced or introduced by European immigrants to this continent.
Diboll emphasized that he loves all plants, not just natives, and that he is not trying to make a case against change in the landscape. The real questions, he asserted, are "the rate of change, and what type of change is acceptable." Diboll argued that one clearly unacceptable type of change has been wrought by the "small percentage" of introduced plants "that are extremely aggressive and invasive" and have caused "massive ecological destruction." One reason he grows native plants, he said, is because "I know I'm not going to be introducing a problem species."
Noting that he lives on a 20-acre farm taken over by European buckthorn, Diboll said another reason he grows natives is that he wants to restore some semblance of the biological diversity that once existed: "I'm an ecologist, and diversity is the ecologist's bias because to us diversity equals health" in an ecosystem. Diversity, he noted, "was not one of the Nazi's highest priorities." He likened native plants to the Jews and Gypsies of the Nazi era, and called invasive non-natives "stormtrooper plants that are blitzkrieging across the landscape and literally displacing native plants...forcing them...I wouldn't say to extinction, but in many cases to extirpation, at least locally." Therefore, he favors a period of testing before the introduction of any new plant to reduce the chance of another invasive species.
This turned out to be the debate's most contentious issue. When asked whether he thought any plant should be allowed entry by human means into any ecological region, Wolschke-Bulmahn responded that he doesn't favor regulation of plant immigration because "the history of the garden for millennia has been based on the exchange of plants." Our societies have benefited greatly from this exchange, and in fact "are unthinkable without it."
Origin vs Behavior
Reasonable people can disagree about the need for plant regulation; I happen to agree with Neil Diboll that if it can preserve biodiversity and prevent extinction then it is worth a try. But Wolschke-Bulmahn convinced me that, especially at a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment, we need to be aware that our ideas about gardening can have unintended social consequences.
And so I think we should avoid the terms "alien plant" and "invasive alien." My Webster's defines "alien" as follows: "belonging or relating to another person or place—strange...different in nature or character." When we use these terms, we not only risk fanning the flames of xenophobia but also miss the point. The crux of the invasive plant problem, as Neil Diboll pointed out, "isn't point of origin but rather behavior"—that is, the problems that invasives cause for other plants and animals.
Wolschke-Bulmahn raised the related issue of invasive natives, arguing that native plant enthusiasts should be more forthright about these problem plants. Diboll tried to explain the reluctance of some to put native invasives in the same category as non-native ones: "I think the origin of that approach is that most people consider [native invasives] natural; they were not brought here by us"; they are problems because of the "changes wrought by our activities." Non-native invasives, on the other hand, "were brought here by us"; "we were the vector."
But this distinction between native and non-native invasives only makes sense when we use the strict, regional definition of native plant. We humans are also "vectors" when we introduce a native plant from one region to another region of the United States where it is not native and it begins outcompeting the indigenous vegetation.
This is just one reason why the debate convinced me that we need to be unequivocal about our definition of native plant. Many gardeners consider any plant that grew in the U.S. before European settlement to be native. But a wildflower that grew in the New Jersey pine barrens two hundred years ago is almost certainly not a native plant in a California garden, in an Oregon or even in a Georgia garden.
New Frontiers
I'd venture to say that someday nativeness won't be much of an issue at all. Someday we'll know enough about ecology to be able to create totally new plant communities, combining species from around the globe, that add to, rather than subtract from, the planet's wonderful variety of life forms. Even though I am convinced of the need for ecological restoration in the home garden as well as the larger landscape, I don't think people will—or should—be content to simply re-create the plant communities of the past.
When I write or talk about the future of the garden, I point to work by scientists like John Todd, who is developing ecologically engineered systems in greenhouses—essentially indoor gardens—made up of a series of functional aquatic and wetland habitats, none of which occurred in nature until he created them. Todd's so-called Living Technology is already being used in some homes to turn sewage into drinking-quality water. In these structures, no contaminated wastewater leaves the site. All sewage is purified in indoor gardens-not just treated, as in the typical treatment plant, but purified -and recycled back into the house. The frontiers of this new indoor gardening are largely unexplored.
I believe that for now our primary responsibilities, outdoors, are to be the preservers and restorers of biological diversity. But indoors we should be totally free to experiment, to let our imaginations run wild, to learn how to be the creators of biodiversity as well as its preservers and restorers. While we compensate for water pollution and our other influences on the land we live on, we should be free to create totally new habitats and ecologically rich indoor biomes—taking the next great evolutionary leap in the history of landscape design.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden Director of Publishing Janet Marinelli is editor of BBG's renowned series of quarterly gardening handbooks and the author of Your Natural Home and The Naturally Elegant Home. Janet is a champion of the gardener's role in the preservation of the planet, a philosophy that informs her P&G News column, "Down to Earth." It's a philosophy that also serves as the bedrock for her latest book, Stalking the Wild Amaranth: Gardening in the Age of Extinction. In Stalking the Wild Amaranth, Janet tells of her quest for a landscape art that protects disappearing species, both flora and fauna. It's a gardening journey marked by humor—ecologically sensitive gardening needn't be a dreary affair, Janet insists. "We can do our part," she says, "and still have flair and fun."