Season 1, Episode 18: This week, Monica and Jennifer sit down with Nina-Marie Lister, Graduate Director and Professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University, located in Toronto, Canada. Building off of her captivating presentation at last month’s Biophilic Leadership Summit, Nina-Marie lays out the little-known history of the front lawn’s hold on North American households, the barriers for achieving greater biodiversity on private property, and the city bylaws that prioritize conformity over environmental health.
Nina-Marie holds the Margolese National Design for Living Prize for her work in ecology and design and she was awarded honorary membership in the American Society of Landscape Architects. Her work connects people to nature in cities, through green infrastructure design for climate resilience, biodiversity and human wellbeing.
The biophilic Leadership Summit is the only multi-day conference entirely dedicated to biophilic projects principles and research bringing together the top industry leaders in an intimate natural setting to network build Partnerships and learn from each other this year’s Summit will explore biophilic placemaking and how we could use biophilic principles to remote
Health happiness and vitality in public spaces in addition to fascinating presentations delicious Farm to Table meals at samb and Cocktails this year’s summer will feature a selection of biophilic experiences like Forest bathing bird watching and more so join us in serin B for the sixth annual biophilic Leadership Summit from March
24th to March 26 2024 learn more about the summit and register today at biophilic summit.com that’s biophilic summit.com we hope to see you there hi Jennifer hey Monica Jennifer tell us about our guests today okay well today we’re speaking with Nina Marie lisst professor and graduate director of urban and Regional planning
At Ryon University in Toronto Canada where she found and directs the ecological Design Lab she holds a marg’s national design for living prize for her work in ecology and design and she’s awarded honorary membership in the American Society of Landscape Architects liser is a co-editor of the ecosystem
Approach project of ecologies and is the author of more than 100 scholarly and Professional Publications her work in people to Nature and cities through green infrastructure design for climate resilience biodiversity and human wellbeing our conversation today was inspired by Nina Marie’s presentation at the biophilic Leadership Summit where she discussed the city’s bylaws
Throughout North America specifically Canada that actually discouraged flourishing biodiverse habitats on private property in favor of something that many of us are so used to that we don’t even think about it which is the manicured lawn yes Nita maray is such a fantastic guest and in our conversation
We’ll get into everything from why we have lawns in the first place how to break down the Norms we’re used to in our everyday lives to Foster biodiversity and why resilience is a new sustainability Nina Marie we are so happy you’re here with us today thank
You so much for saying yes to our podcast well thanks for asking me I’m excited to be here too we were blown away by your biophilic Leadership Summit talk and felt like we needed to share that with more people like right away and we needed to share you with more
People yeah we know that you are very well respected in the space and what you shared the biophilic Leadership Summit was so incredible Monica and I know about you but can you tell us a little bit more and our listeners more about your background sure this is one of
Those crazy backgrounds that while you’re making it you can’t believe it’s ever useful we love that I was trained first as a scientist I’m an ecologist in my undergraduate and early graduate at work and I wondered why a lot of science didn’t get put into practice by practitioners policy makers designers
And so I decided to pursue work in planning I became a professional planner and I ended up working in this strange and magical space in between the disciplines which some people would call falling between the cracks but that’s actually where the light gets in that’s where interesting things happen so I’ve
Been really fortunate to work with Landscape Architects Engineers artists architects and to bring ecology and a kind of literacy you might say an understanding of how we connect to Nature and you guys are very familiar with that as well so that’s I think what we’re here to talk about and I’m now
Working as an ecological designer as a landbased practitioner we can come back to that maybe in our conversations most of all more than anything else I collaborate with a lot of different people to make interesting things happen oh we love that well since this is the biophilic solutions podcast we tend to
Ask ask everybody where that term came into your life so has it always been a part because you studied ecology was it something that was just sort of embedded or did you stumble it upon it at some point in your career and what does it
Mean to you it is a really good question some people still think the term biophilia is technical I look into the history of words and it definitely means to be connected and that really defines both my practice and who I am as a person and I would also say my own ethic
Of being strongly connected to the land that sustains us and even as an ecologist early on I was familiar with EO Wilson’s work and of course that term was made very popular in one of his popular books meaning to say it wasn’t just a scientific term it was actually a
Book in 1984 that many of you will recognize for me the term also defined a way of practicing ecology that it wasn’t just something we stand back and observe but actually it’s a complex system in which we are embedded so you might say that we are embedded practitioners as
Well as Observers and we’re not just along for the ride so it’s big part of practice for me I love that you also speak I’ve read about lot of your work and I’ve been seeing some of your videos and you talk a lot about resilience in nature and that resilience isn’t about
Like bouncing back to normal and especially during covid times what is that normal and was it normal to begin with for us and nature really kind of teaches us about bouncing back but bouncing into a new or transformative kind of space I see that you’re really doing that the conversation but also how
Do we look at these living ecosystems around us to bounce into or bounce forward into to have a better relationship with the natural world around us so I really love that you’re having these conversations and you’re doing the work especially in your own yard so maybe you can even touch on
What’s happening in your own yard that’s Spar the very big conversation well I get asked that question a lot which for me is a great irony I always imagined that my home and my family’s property was just something we did in the off hours of our daily work and it has become my
Life first of all thank you for talking about resilience my friend chrina Hill once defined resilience as the new sustainability it was this new term that suddenly appeared and sort of supplanted sustainability for a lot of us and you’re absolutely right that it is a way to think about ourselves as adaptive
That the living systems in which we are embedded are actually the best model for both sustainability if we’re thinking about future generations and about resilience or how we adapt change how are we flexible and how can we move into states with a positive sense of adaptation in other words my yard for me
Is very much a kind of experiment in progress about how does adaptation work and how can we think about changing conditions and providing the most robust set of opportunities for when conditions change when we get that storm event or when we get more than we expected or
When there’s a hot dry summer that we didn’t expect so building the resilience in our own yard starts with A diversity of plant life A diversity of habitats and that’s my yart is about I think what you’re asking about though is maybe how others see that yard and I live in a
Neighborhood that has an awful lot of Lawns it doesn’t have very much diversity actually in fact doesn’t have very much diversity people either so I think that I broke the rules when I allowed my lawn to be a little promiscuous I love that I’ve never heard
That about a lawn before but I love it we’ve often refer to biological diversity in systems when I say we I mean anybody who studies them understands that diversity is the key to their resilience their ability to adapt to surprising events or sudden and sometimes catastrophic events we need
Diversity and we need it in our human societies as well a cultural diversity is a I think a helpful mirror so I live in a neighborhood that has one size of front yard and that’s mostly modowe Lawns and our family lives on a slope and beautiful corner lot we’re very
Fortunate to enjoy a corner lot and that means there’s more yard and it also means that didn’t make a lot of sense to us that in the limited time we have to garden and to be in nature in our city why would we mow it down and more
Importantly push a gasp powered Bower up a hill great point so we grow a very diverse native yard that looks a little bit like a meadow underneath a fruit Orchard if you can imagine what that looks like your listeners might know that that would be native fruit trees which in our area are
Mostly apples but also pears and some cultivated apricots they were there when we got there and there was a lawn kind of clipped in one part of the yard that suffers from an awful lot of erosion it’s a steep slope upwards of 20% in some cases so we looked to Nature to
Provide an easier way to manage the space but also a more creative way to create something that would be appealing we thought we noticed that school kids like to pass by and sit on the logs we had placed under the trees we noticed that a lot of people stopped to let
Their pets relieve themselves at the end of the slope so that made growing conditions a little tougher and we also noticed that people stopped a lot to appreciate the fruit sometimes they pick the fruit which was fine with us because there’s a lot of it and most of all it
Provided a cool Shady spot in the hottest Days of Summer and it provided interest in the winter time I live in Toronto I’m coming to you from a winter city of sorts and so the different diversity of plant life provided visual interest there’s an awful lot of song
Birds an awful lot of mammals we have rabbits raccoons foxes we had a coyote this summer come and hangout which probably made us less popular than ever but that’s a long story to really tell you that our yard looks different it’s biodiverse it’s Rich it’s also sounds beautiful our neighbor didn’t
Think so someone called the B law enforcement officer who came to tell us that we had to mow our grass and as a planner you can imagine my surprise to say I thought we had a bylaw that supported biodiversity because I’ve worked a lot in the public sector and
Our city has very Progressive policies around pollinators around shade keeping Urban heat island down around biodiversity and even the creation of habitat for wildlife public land not on private property ah so that’s interesting was the distinction the private yard owners are effectively being not only discouraged but prevented
From doing the very thing that our city asks our citizens to do on public land and this is as it turns out is common throughout North America We’re Not Unusual in that regard yeah no definitely where I grew up I’m in Atlanta but I grew up in Southern
California outside of Los Angeles and it was just like beautiful Suburban neighborhood but like LA City and if you didn’t have that clipped and if you didn’t have a manicured you were in big trouble like even your Parkway and your trees and so I want to hear the story of
How that Arc of getting that it’s not really a ticket but getting in trouble and then what you did but before I’m wondering if you could tell us why do we have Lawns well that is a podcast all by itself there’s a lot to say about that
But let’s try and be really succinct to say that it’s the norm in a settler Colonial culture like North America Canada and the United States share that history we have a kind of tendency to want to have a landscape of leisure that suggests that we have arrived when one
Achieves the Suburban dream or the independence of a home the idea that a lawn represents a state of leisure wealth achievement think of all the hilarious Lawn Care commercials you’ve seen over the years the guys competing for the greenest shortest clipped lawn the weed-free lawn some of them are
Amusing but underneath that humor is actually something very serious that that lawn as it was introduced to North America is actually pasture grasses from Europe that didn’t blend well with Native North American wildlife for example and in fact it was a tradition of bringing plant life from away to help
The colonists feel comfortable and also to Aspire to wealth if you think about the earliest production of The Lawns in the United States that’s Thomas Jefferson’s gift if you will beautiful Lawns were Landscapes of leisure but on Whose back did they rest these Landscapes were created by labor and
Often times by slave labor they were also in my country in Canada they also displaced indigenous plants native plants that had medicinal spiritual and healing properties so the lawn is an Insidious Invader of its own and it requires enormous inputs to m maintain and I wouldn’t want to suggest that the
Lawn is unwelcome as a concept there are plenty of places in our public spaces where we can all appreciate the common lawn for places of collective celebration of mourning of grieving of protest so the lawn is a very important symbol for Gathering people together on the one hand that’s public space and on
Private space we might want to think about other ways to reintroduce and reconnect with the natural diversity of the places that sustain us so the lawn has a mixed history I’d also say if I may add there’s a kind of very pejorative judgment around the lawn as well that it represents what is
Controlled what is maintained what is appealing and it suggests culturally and socially a kind of collective Norm then if you disobey or you digress you do something differently from the lawn you are somehow signaling that you’re outside the norm think about it culturally the front yard was a place where we show
Conformity we show control order and cleanliness and that usually getting rid of the diversity I think of it as a curly-haired person I all three of us I don’t the straight ordered and we also know there’s Sometimes some judgment historically with that when there are loose curls
There might be loose morals just like the lawn that’s not NE right we don’t know what kind of promiscuity is happening there kind there’s a kind of social judgment that over the years is associated with that is fascinating fascinating and so fun now is it true like I feel like one
Of my kids told me that the lawn was originally I don’t know if it came out of France or England but the queen or royalty had it and they had all of these servants that literally clipped it by hand before there was the lawnmower so it was the status symbol because the
People in charge had it and so if you own one that meant that you had money to your point and then obviously the lawn mower comes along and like quote anybody can have a lawn if you will and here we are in North America with them
Everywhere but I love the idea that it’s a sense of control and Order and cleanliness and I totally agree with you I started in California as people were starting to pull up their lawns to do drought tolerant Landscapes right that became a little more wild whether that
Was olive trees or UL or various rocks but it was like whoa whoa whoa what’s going on at that house yeah so exactly you broke the rules you broke the mold and it’s very helpful to think of all the adjectives we use to describe yards that are not Lawns we call them wild
Unkempt disorganized overgrown excessive all of these words are also used to describe non-conforming social behavior and so there’s a very powerful analogy to think about there I’m not suggesting that most people who have a front yard that’s a lawn really think about that but I am saying that it’s a powerful
Convention of having a lawn that has become a convention and I would say we now talk a lot about ways to break that convention because we know it’s better for the ecology and better it’s more helpful for us to have habitats that sustain other species as well it helps
Our connection to Nature is something that this podcast knows all about right and at the same time the desire for this clipped little square even in the smallest of private yards has the unintended impact or consequence of eradicating the various species that we need to be helpful for pollination for
Storm water infiltration for even our mental health and wellness this has become so clear during the pandemic the time in our Gardens time to sustain and cultivate diversity is directly connected to our health oh I God I love that and at SAR and B we weren’t able to
Be in person for the summit this year but in S and B we sort of say there are no lawn but we really discourage them so there’s so a few people we don’t say you can’t have one but we very much educate and so you very rarely will see one and
We were inspired or really Steve nigran by a gentleman called Ryan gainy who in North America was really well known for a book called The well-placed Weed which I love and then I think also thinking about weeds it’s like what is a weed is it really a weed I mean I think
That’s a whole another whole another conversation of like well why well it goes hand in hand with what I’ve been talking about and you’re asking about the Conformity and the moral righteousness of the law and a weed is of course just a plant that is unwanted
In the wrong place or it’s a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered depending on there we go I like that my good friend in colleague Peter Del trich has written a lot about books that used to be called weeds guides to weeds he’s written a guide to the wild Urban plants
Of the nor so he recognizes that these are opportunistic plants that given the right conditions will proliferate and they certainly have their place at times but of course it’s like a Trash to Treasure one person’s junk is another person’s treasure one person’s unwanted plant is someone’s weed or someone’s
Beautiful plant depending on who you ask yeah it is really important to understand where those labels come from and in which Landscapes we encourage which plants certainly we want to support native biodiversity but in some places we might want a little bit more Cosmopolitan ecology or promiscuous
Plants because we need them to help cultivate lands that are denuded or perhaps derel so want to be careful that we’re not excluding people’s right to their Gardens with a variety of of plant life yeah we always talk about just if you can learn and you have knowledge now
You have the opportunity to be more thoughtful in your choices and not wanting to say you can’t do this thing but reconsider it possibly or if you do let’s do something that doesn’t take all these inputs if you are going to do a lawn then figure out how to do it in a
More sustainable way but I do love the idea of the public sphere because so many gathering places are great Lawns and they really are wonderful Gathering spaces so well we should maybe we should adopt the principle that our medical colleagues do which is to do no harm yes
This a bylaw principle Do no harm we try to support bylaws that I think show that whatever we’re doing in our Gardens and our yards does not harm the local ecology and it doesn’t harm people and that’s not a terribly difficult principle to adhere to it’s really not
About weeds or about the lawn or about which plants but rather that whatever we plant there should not be harmful I love that idea and I have to tell you this you because you’ll probably enjoy this the most I live in New York City and then during the beginning of the
Pandemic my backyard is Central Park and I spend every day in Central Park and for the first time in my life I witnessed the fact that there was no more mowing of the lawn no one was Keeping Up with the growth of wildlife really in Central Park and it was
Delightful to see real native Meadows kind of sprouting up all over Central Park and I was just like jumping for joy saying look at this it’s not mode it looks wonderful there’s always like new species of plants and weeds growing everywhere and it was just I was
Ecstatic about everyone else I was with I was like what are you talking about what you that’s just a weed I’m like no this is great it looks wonderful and it was funny because I remember the very first time seeing it mowe for the first
Time I said oh I really liked it and I enjoyed the beauty of the wildness of it in the middle of New York City so it was an interesting time to see well it’s also interesting because it’s a femural that we are reminded that Landscapes change and that we can encourage growth
And then we can change our minds and try something different so there’s also that quality to them that they don’t need to be considered this static picture of what is possible but rather that they’re many possible stages of these conditions we could have a meadow for a certain
Amount of time and then allow it to succeed into a small shrub land for example these are all possibilities you taught me something by something I heard you said which I didn’t think about even though I love nature I’m studied as much as I can I’m trying to learn as much as
I can all the time which I so enjoy but I love that you talk about Landscapes are not separate than in a city they are part of the city so how do we move through these patches not just people but animals plants Birds species are all
A part of this this like Ecology of the space in place and they’re not separate that so I just love the idea that I’m in this concrete jungle but this little park right there is not separate from me it’s a part of these corridors as you
Said from place to place which I thought was really beautiful yeah I think that’s part of us talking about biophilia it’s part of a tangible recognition that we are connected to the Natural World it sustains us and we are part of it we’re not separate even in the idea that there
Are these Myriad creatures sometimes hidden in plain sight moving around us under us sometimes this is to me a very important concept to think about because it’s analogous to how we treat each other as human beings that we recognize that A diversity of human beings are important to make a community and that
We’re more resilient when we are inclusive of that diversity and that same principle holds true for our ecology our Gardens are a good place to test those ideas that we ask important questions like who belongs rather than deciding what’s not welcome and what we
Weed out to get rid of so it’s a useful way to think about yeah I think learning from nature and taking notes from them and how do we incorporate that into sort of our cultural life from their cultural life I do want to take us back though to
Once you were told no no no doesn’t look right this isn’t gonna happen so this is just you this is your yard it’s your personal property and you think this is beautiful and it is beautiful and it’s totally biodiverse they say you can’t do it you have to conform to this thing
What happens next well I did I think what any person who has a platform would do and I tweeted I use social media I do what my kids do and what my students do and first I thought how is it possible that as the Director of a graduate program
That teaches professional planning who by the way planners right bylaws and Municipal codes how would I not know this and the truth is that I did know it I thought we solved this problem because I was very aware of people who challenged this very same bylaw in the
Late 1990s and what I didn’t realize that the city in like happens in many cities when you revise a bylaw they didn’t really throw the old one they just add something to it and what they added was a special Clause that recognized based on a court decision
Everyone has the right this is I’m speaking about Toronto everyone has the right to express their environmental values on their private property property and in their yard this was a decision by the Ontario Superior Court which recognized I guess in general language we’d say the constitutionality of one’s right to express their values
In their private yard well that’s what I was doing the City offers something called a natural garden exemption which meant that individuals like me could apply to the city register their home address and explain that they had something called a natural garden which was poorly defined and what I argued is
Because I’m a professor and the director of a planning program I thought this is my obligation I actually have to do this and I really need to help everyday people understand how a bylaw that sounds this complicated could possibly work and I said no I don’t want that exemption I think that’s ridiculous
Because there are so many people who are trying to follow the city’s own lead by in their own landscape trying to plant for Native diversity trying to plant a rich selection of habitats and they’re trying to do the right thing to support a more climate resilient and biodiverse
Yard why should they have to apply for an exemption right and when I refused it this became a matter of public debate and when I tweeted this very same sentiment we essentially got picked up by various news outlets and the rest as they say is print
History the short answer is we had the mayor come to tea in the garden with an environmental lawyer David Donnelly supported by lots of different colleagues who’ve been doing this work for a very long time and we effectively got the bylaw changed that’s amazing now the neighbors were they Pro were they
Con did they talk to you about it my goodness what has happened have other you know yards in your neighborhood looking similar to yours now have you started a trend what’s going on well great question what I got was love notes I’m sure I got hate mail too but I
Didn’t pay attention to that I got away I got lovely letters not for me but for the garden we got people dropping handwritten notes into our mailbox we got people writing emails just saying what a beautiful yard we’re so inspired we didn’t know you could do this and
More importantly we didn’t know you couldn’t do it and then I would say of course there are always people who are unhappy with something that looks different and as I said I happen to be in a neighborhood of mostly single detached family homes that are it’s not
A suburb actually it’s in the central part of the city to the Midtown West and it was surprising to me actually that there were more yards but here’s the point when you look around there are actually many many yards I photographed literally hundreds of them that have a
Rich diversity of plant life the difference between their yard and mine was that neighbors didn’t complain mom looks a little more wild it looks a little shaggier it has bright colors it has a lot of leaves because I leave my leaves I don’t believe in leaf blowers or destroying the soil biodiversity or
You know just and maybe some of my critics were right maybe I was just a little bit Garden lazy but that’s not truthfully that’s not the reason we we did it we wanted to be efficient and that with how we manage the yard I think
Garden lazy could be a I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard that Garden lazy and I think people need to send you their Garden lazy beautiful yard relax and lie around we should aspire to Garden lazy yeah I like to work hard when it comes
To projects like this but my private yard just like yours is is there for your relaxation and your mental health and well-being and I work pretty hard in the garden but mostly to support all those other speed not mowing anything right yeah so what are you doing in your
Work life right now so you’re teaching how has this translated into work with your students or work you’re doing on policy really great question to ask thank you because so much of my work is really about training the next generation of planners and designers but most of all it’s actually an active
Research practice we are a studio-based program which means that we’re experiential learning we learn learn with and in our communities and so I teach principally graduate students right now and they work with me in my research lab which is the ecological Design Lab and their projects are very
Much inclusive of this way of thinking they’re all related to biophilia broadly but more specifically they are about making landscape connections tangible in cities for humans and for wildlife and a lot of them are doing research on bylaws in fact we have a studio project right now together with the biophilic cities
Network is looking at the 14 partner cities and their Municipal codes to find out where are the barriers and opportunities to support biodiversity in the biophilic cities and what can we learn from each other which of course as you know is a big part of the point yeah
That’s incredible yeah we’re to share those results at the end term and really looking forward to learning from other cities we’ve discovered an a a lot of cities have plets that are required to be lower than 8 inches can you believe it that’s a lot of is lower than eight
Inches how is it even like a law I don’t even understand it is a strange and weird part of the municipal code that we’re hoping to bust open and put some light in there put some more wild growth into the code speaking to that in your studies and doing this with the
Biophilic cities are you learning more or seeing more gateways into how we then build cities for climate change across the board what is your thought about that that’s the long-term goal for sure this particular project is starting in a quite narrow scope we’re looking literally at the municipal codes in
These 14 cities together with our partners at biophilic cities Network and what we’re doing from that is looking at how can cities support not only in public spaces but in private yards and gardens including rights of ways privately owned public spaces those transitional spaces between the private
Realm and the public what can cities do in a very tangible and grounded way literally to support biodiversity with an eye not only to supporting a wide range of native species but because within climate change we know that we need a resilient Matrix of species as conditions change so we have to have
Species that can adapt to Drought drought and Deluge sometimes in the same season sure across North America particularly for food resilience in some cases we’re looking for reasons of environmental and social justice to allow people to grow food in their Gardens fruit on their roof tarps these
Ideas extend from the front door you might say into the backyards and the public Realm broadly and we’re hoping that this will provide a real toolkit for municipalities particularly Municipal leaders in planning and design to Showcase how these tools can support a more climate resilient Urban fa and of
Course the benefits of that include looking at our mental health and wellness and the relationship that we have through plant life and Wildlife to our own health and wellness one of the things that I noticed for the ecological Design Lab is we’ve talked a little bit
About the land and resilience but I just want to to throw out for our listeners the lab also works with green and blue infrastructure and we might think we know what that is and I can make a guess and I you know I know enough but will
You tell us a little bit about what the difference is between the two and one or two examples of how those can be resilient opportunities because we know so much of our infrastructure is aging across the country whether that’s Bridges or sewers or storm water exactly we usually think of infrastructure as
Human designed civil engine ered concrete and steel we think of infrastructure as roads Bridges pipelines and sewers as you suggested and we think municipally and I think most people who vote will also think well we have to spend money on that infrastructure we have to invest in it
Because as you say it’s crumbling across North America most of our infrastructure is post second world war it is reaching its natural lifespan and what we’re realizing is that investment may be better placed in living infrastructure infrastructure which is alive and carries with it the benefits of nature ecosystem services in maybe more
Technical terms or what I think of as nature-based Solutions solutions to climate change that are rooted in the natural and living world and all of its benefits not in the systems that actually created the problems in the first place so that’s not to say that we don’t invest in Gray infrastructure but
That in tandem with that investment we also see a valuable economic investment in what is alive so green roofs Living Water s for example we might consider purpose-built human designed green infrastructure that has a component that is alive so a green roof or a living wall a bios Swale for example those are
All good examples of green infrastructure that’s the way we Define it others might talk about forests as green infrastructure that’s a different category but for our purposes we’re talking about human designed in urban infrastructure when we say blue infrastructure it’s a way of defining it from the green that means it’s principal
Performance if you will is to convey slow hold and soak water so some people might say a bios whale is both green and blue we also think about daylighting creeks or the r naturalization of shorelines meaning that where we have areas that are a hard resistant dock
Wall we might puncture that and allow a wetland to flourish as a soaking holding slowing and absorbing kind of infrastructure that just performs a different set of functions love and it moves us from a resistant infrastructure to a more resilient infrastructure right imagine resistance is putting up a wall
Or a concrete verm or a revetment in a channel this is softening that and allowing life to get in so allowing the plant material the root masses and the functions of those vegetation qualities to help with absorption elasticity in some cases and more adaptability in the
Face of climate change we have a couple gaban I think I’m saying that correctly Bridges at s b which I guess would be more green infrastructure possibly would that be because the bridges themselves are these sort of Living Bridges steel cages are stacked on top of each other for the listener
That most people don’t know they’re there you really have to walk down on the trails and look back on the bridge because if you’re on it you just think what a bridge but being able to have the wildlife pulled up close to it because it’s gaban and it’s not this I guess
Steel structure is magical to me because it sits within nature rather than encroaching upon it with something raising something really important Monica that really goes to how we see and understand our relationship with nature if we can make these functions visible to people if we make them
Legible more than just visible but we actually help people to understand and read what these infrastructures are and what they do we create a kind of common understanding of them my friend Jane Wolf writes a lot about the idea of making legible an understanding what Landscapes do and I think she’s right on
Because if we can understand if we can see and understand we can value them we value anything unless we understand it and so it’s a really important part of the biophilic city’s work I think to make these infrastructures legible and frankly beautiful we invest in things and we care for them when they’re
Beautiful and when we share that understanding with people about why these structures are necessary and also all the benefits they perform for us that is a beautiful thing it really is it’s just it’s beautiful for our brains like you just said that well-being of the spaces once we recognize it and
Understand it that’s when the stewardship comes in to saying I really believe in this this is beautiful why would I want it any other way and how do I protect it and make it better for myself for my community loved ones so you’re absolutely right I love that
Where can people look because we’ve talked about bylaws and policies if I want to see if my neighborhood I can do this in my neighborhood where would I go to find a code and then how could I start that dialogue with I guess maybe
My city council is that who I go to how do I make that change wow that’s a series of technical steps that I think a lot of people would find daunting and that’s actually part of the reason I wanted to take on this byog challenge was to really allow people to buypass
The need for permission to do something that is in keeping with all of the princip goals of biodiversity and climate change so my advice to most citizens is leave your leaves have a beautiful yard that has many different species in it and Champion that it’s rare that people would be called out in
This moment for doing what I did it’s a bit unusual actually and what we’re really trying to do with this story is to show people that what we need is to make this movement together if you have a lot of people taking a different alternative to the just the lawn have a
Bit of lawn if you like it that’s fine but there’s a lot of other opportunities there there are neighborhood organizations all the time organizations that do Urban agriculture organizations that trade seeds once a year your native plant exchange for example we know that even if people don’t have a yard and
Many people don’t they live in condos or apartment buildings there are opportunities usually to Steward the land at the base of the apartment building or the tower get involved with your condo board talk to the apartment owner about what you might do to diversify if it’s a lawn or provide even
Food for people often times at our community schools our community centers these are places we can put our hands into the ground together to grow something that’s productive and the best way we can do it is to lead by doing rather than some people feel it’s perhaps easier to share information at a
Local citizens group or to get involved with a community- based organization that even if it’s a business improvement district for example a lot of Bas or business Improvement associations will take over planting a street for beautification that’s a way to talk about well what do we want to have in
Those Planters maybe we need something more than just the standard annual plants but perhaps we want plants that are food based or that are pollinator specific so lots of things that I think are easy to do on a small scale but collectively use many hands and they add
Up I love it yeah where can we find you on Twitter what’s your handle so we can follow you pretty easy it’s my name okay great perfect NM liser NM liser most of all please come to the ecological design la.ca and see the work of my students they are just an incredibly inspiring
Group of young people who despite climate anxiety and all of the fears and concerns that we share with uncertainty they are doing things and they’re really supportive they’re engaged in their communities and there’s lots of great examples about how you can get involved in your community as well that’s
Wonderful well thank you so much Nina Marie we can’t wait to like actually meet you in person I missed going to SAR this year I’ve never been maybe Marie you would love it so much when I first went to sarin B three years ago I was
Just in awe and that’s why I love everything about San B because it really is a transformative place so I think you will absolutely love it there and thanks for helping me pronounce it correctly oh yeah no of course everybody gets I’m looking forward to seeing you in person
At some point and I thank you very much for inviting me to speak to your engaged listeners today oh what a joy thank you so much Nina Marie wow okay I love that so much I know who knew a conversation about city codes could be so fascinating yes it’s so interesting to me that the lawn really comes out of this very eurocentric conception of leisure and looking out on these manicured pastoral Landscapes right and that’s so different
From so much of the biodiversity in North America yes but it’s so pervasive that I don’t think think it’s something that most people even think about even if they are the person who’s interested in the environment and biodiversity but she was really quick to point out that
The lawn does have a place in society in public spaces a large public lawn is actually really useful in providing a gathering place for people but do each of us really need a massive lawn of our own when we could actually do something that has a greater overall impact well
And to that end the response to her own garden yard in Toronto is overwhelmingly positive right which shouldn’t surprise us because we all know that a flourishing wild natural environment has massive positive impacts on human health it’s all a huge circle that’s right Jennifer and we’ll talk to you later
With another fabulous guest in a few weeks can’t wait Bye