Nature’s Bookshelf
Noah’s Garden: Restoring the ecology of our own back yards By Sara Stein (Houghton Mifflin Co. 1993)

A Book Review by Sue Leaf

When I consider the landscape of east central Minnesota, I am struck by the rich diversity of birds, particularly old-field birds. Sedge wrens, savannah sparrows, yellow warblers and many others occupy land that once was intensively farmed and now is merely mowed for hay or standing fallow. We enjoy a greater variety of birds in 2005 than there were in the 1960s, but I know that as soon as the hayfields are sold as lots, the birds will vanish. It doesn’t have to happen. We can learn from Sara Stein’s mistakes. Mrs. Stein and her husband bought acreage just north of New York City twenty-some years ago. They thrilled to the abundance of wildlife they encountered: grouse, woodchuck, foxes. Enthusiastic gardeners, they set about landscaping, clearing brush and planting flowers to craft their own version of Eden. When they finished, they realized that the wildlife had disappeared. The Steins had destroyed their habitat. Noah’s Garden tells how they recovered it. It is the tale of one woman’s abandonment of the cherished ideals of gardening and how she embraced new standards based on ecological principles. The book recounts the great losses North America has endured since European settlement 400 years ago. Nearly all native vegetation has been cut, plowed under, paved or drained. Topsoil currently erodes at a rate of four tons per acre per year. It then describes records made by early naturalists of plants and animals that were once common. Using these accounts, Mrs. Stein sets out to bring it all back. She scrutinizes insects, birds, mammals, snails—you name it. She wonders what they eat in the spring? In the summer? How can she provide what they need? She also asks: what is missing in our yard? How can we entice it back? She thinks about soil, water, humus, nest sites. She restores a pond, a meadow, understory in a woodlot, nut-bearing shrubs. The one animal she fences out of her yard is white-tailed deer. Their population in Westchester County is burgeoning, destroying the woods. Mrs. Stein is not a trained ecologist. Though she is accurate on every point she makes, she sometimes draws novel connections, because she is fundamentally a gardener, not a scientist. Her prose, at times, is turgid. But stick with this book—there are gems to be had. You might even be inspired to pick up a trowel this fall and plant a few native species in your own yard.

                 Sue