Change Your Landscape for the Better!

Amy Yarger, Horticulture Director Many of us learn from a very young age about the cycles of life, such as egg, caterpillar, pupa, adult butterfly. We learn that part of being alive is constant change. Just by looking out our windows, we can see the cycle of seasonal changes (with some unpredictable hiccups – this is Colorado, after all) year after year – frost and bare branches, the first green shoots, rampant growth, then leaf fall. But landscapes also shift and change over grander time scales. Landscape metamorphosis, otherwise known as ecological succession, is the process of changing species composition in a living community over time. A landscape may start off as a grassland and gradually be replaced with a variety of woody species, until it becomes a forest. However, this mature plant community is only stable until the next disturbance.   Human-induced change can disrupt the soil structure and hydrology and import exotic species. Human-driven change has happened very rapidly in the geological sense, with species removed or moved around at an unprecedented rate over the past 200 years. This rapid transformation has contributed to the decline of many animal, plant, and fungi species around the world. Out of the nearly 32,000 populations analyzed in the World Wildlife Fund’s most recent Living Planet report, there has been an average decline of 69% since 1970.   So there’s no better time for us to guide landscape metamorphosis to be better for ourselves and other living things. Just by how we manage our landscapes, we can create habitat for invertebrates and other wildlife, sequester carbon, conserve soil, and reduce pollution. Butterfly Pavilion is a leader in educating the community to plant biodiverse landscapes.  Our outdoor gardens provide a model of how you can create habitat in your own backyard. We also work with local and global communities to restore hundreds of acres of pollinator habitat. If you find that this is the time of year when you are excited about change, consider guiding your own ecological succession in favor of the little species that have a big impact on our lives. Doing so not only saves resources, money, and maintenance time, but also adds a source of beauty and lifelong learning about our shared home. Your personal landscape is part of the big picture; in this ecological approach, the metamorphosis of our landscapes can lead to metamorphosis in our communities and even in ourselves.  Want to get started? Register for our Pollinator Gardening Bootcamp here: https://butterflies.org/event/pollinator-garden-bootcamp/