Babylon program touts importance of growing native plants

Long Islanders who have lived their whole lives here may call themselves natives — but there are nonhuman natives that have been here for thousands of years, and Babylon Town wants to help residents learn about them.

The town’s Green Homes program has teamed with local ecological restoration landscaping company Spadefoot Ecosystem Solutions to host workshops on Long Island’s native plants. The final workshop offered will take place Monday night at the Phelps Lane Park pool building in North Babylon.

Jassi Anand, sustainability director for the Green Homes program, said she saw residents had an interest in gardening after they participated in a program where the town provided discounted composting equipment and rain barrels.

“We’re trying to have residents look at their homes as a whole to encourage them to be more self-sustainable,” she said.

Green Homes provides free energy audits for homeowners, and any work up to $19,000 that needs to be done is assessed onto the property at a 3% interest rate over 10 years. The program has served 2,200 homes since starting in 2008.

Anand said the town is hoping the workshops help people “rethink their lawns” and consider planting native species, which Brittany Champey, vice president of Spadefoot, based in Woodbury, said have benefits beyond their aesthetics and attractiveness to pollinators.

“Living in the suburbs of Long Island, our environments are so overly developed, and because of that you lose some of the functions that nature provides,” she said, such as regulating stormwater, preventing erosion, cooling the air and recharging the aquifer.

'There is another way'

Stormwater management is one of the biggest challenges Long Island has faced due to so much forest area being replaced with pavement, Champey said. Instead of being filtered of pesticides by plants and absorbed back into the ground, stormwater hits the pavement, runs into a drain and then out to the bay, she said. As a result, the aquifer doesn't get recharged, the bay becomes contaminated, and soil erosion occurs.

In addition, suburban life has curated a culture of manicured lawns that, Champey said, are “functionally the same as pavement” and don’t absorb stormwater well.

“I think people use those practices because it’s what’s been done traditionally,” she said. “One of the main reasons we do workshops like this is to teach people there is another way.”

The workshop instructs attendees about native vegetation and also about invasive species, Champey said. She then explains how people can go about creating their own native garden using species such as dogwood trees and cardinal flowers.

In addition, there is a plant sale by the Long Island Native Plant Initiative, a nonprofit that collects seeds from heritage sites, where plants and trees have been on the Island for hundreds of years.

Colleen Doyle, co-president of the Initiative, said the workshops show people how native species are not only functional but also visually attractive.

“I want [the gardens] to be stunningly beautiful, I want them to be the talk of the town so that there’s a wave of people feeling like, ‘Oh, having this postage-stamp, bright green lawn is no longer the coolest way to be,’” Doyle said.

“The coolest way to be is to have this vibrancy of life, these stunning flowers from spring to end of fall providing nectar and pollen and … creating little postage stamps of nature all over our lawns.”

Support to make the break

And with like-minded people coming together, reluctant native plant gardeners can find support for daring to break from the “tribe mentality” of cookie-cutter lawns, she said.

That’s part of the appeal for Frank Greco, 70, of Lindenhurst, who attended the first two workshops.

“Events like that are a good way to network and connect,” he said.

Greco said a seminar on native plants by the nonprofit ReWild Long Island prompted him to tear up his front yard and begin his own native garden three years ago.

He said aside from a plethora of bees and butterflies visiting his yard, with native plants being less dependent on watering, he’s also seen his water bill plummet.

“Now I try to get other people to do something with native plants,” he said.

Greco persuaded Lindenhurst Village officials to let him plant a native garden at the village’s restored 1901 railroad depot and filled it with plants from that era, including some that were used for food and medicinal purposes.

“We can talk about the benefits of native plants and how they don’t require fertilizer and they help clean our waters, but the real reason to use native plants is because they create so much joy,” Doyle said. “You’re inviting nature in.”

The workshop will take place at 6:30 p.m. Monday. Those interested can sign up and learn more about native landscaping at townofbabylonny.gov. Once on the website, search for "sustainable landscaping."

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story included a photo caption that misidentified the Great South Bay.