Restoration

Landowners may become interested at some point in restoring their property to a state more in line with what existed before the property was developed for housing or for the agriculture that preceded the development for housing.

Restoration work starts with several “givens.”  The first is the plants, fungi, and insects native to your property—the real eco-powerhouses.  While “native” is a contested idea, it’s okay to assume that any remnant of an older ecosystem that’s reasonably intact on your property can guide restoration work. (If there is none, look around your area of the Island for such remnants.) Remnants likely contain the biodiversity that originally inhabited your entire property and the larger landscape around it.  So an obvious first step to restoration is extending any remaining native areas outward or creating new areas like them elsewhere on your property.

The hard part of this “easy” first step may be digging up the existing lawn and ornamental plants to turn a domesticated area back into native space.  Best advice:  Unless you are seriously motivated, take things slowly, or your restoration project may stall.  Dig up and re-plant only part of a lawn area each year, not the whole thing at once.  Intersperse native plants with ornamental ones in existing beds rather than pull out all the ornamentals. You can remove the ornamentals later, or maybe not at all if the new natives are doing well among them.  Purity isn’t the goal; it’s better to go after providing ecological services (aquifer recharge, pollinator habitat, as examples) than after perfection.

The second “given” is that natives aren’t guaranteed to thrive on your property just because they’re natives.  You should expect to abide by the obvious plant needs you’d honor if you were installing an ornamental or kitchen garden:  Some native plants need full sun, some tolerate shade; some are drought-tolerant, and others need watering through at least the first few summers after planting. 

And don’t expect that all plants appearing on the many native plant lists for the Maritime Northwest will necessarily be native to the Island.  Even if they are native in some areas, variations in micro-climate, soil type, and hydrology (basically, water movement) occur all over the Island, with corresponding differences in native species.  These same variations may occur even within the boundaries of your own property and thus call for different restoration strategies for different areas.

Notwithstanding all the labor and any (understandable!) confusion you experience doing this kind of work, you can nonetheless feel good knowing you’re part of the fastest-growing practice in American environmentalism. Restoration has emerged as something Americans largely agree upon, too--no small feat for any idea.  It’s even been likened recently to redemption; we humans are atoning for our past ecological mistakes.  What is more American than the idea of a comeback?

P.S. The Land Trust’s Stewardship Team is happy to schedule a site visit of your property to help determine the best course of restoration for your unique home habitat. (Their schedules permitting!) Email abel@vashonlandtrust.org if you would like to schedule a site visit.