Rewilding uses native plant landscaping to create beneficial ecosystems in urban areas. It increases biodiversity and protects wildlife and humans by solving erosion problems, filtering air and water, creating habitat and food, and integrating biological resiliency in our landscapes.
Ultimately, rewilding our cities and urban areas will mitigate some of the effects dense urban living has on the environment and create food stability in our communities.
The Pacific Northwest is a Temperate Rainforest. Our natural landscape is gorgeous. People move here for the stunning lush forest wonderland.
Well, here's the secret, buddy: Your yard looked like that before the grass.
And here ya go, it can look like that again.
Also, native plant landscaping requires no chemicals, fertilizers, or extra watering; unlike traditional landscaping, it looks better and needs less maintenance over time.
(Goose Lake, July 2022)
Native plants are well-suited to their environments due to coevolution, which has occurred over thousands of years. Coevolution is the reciprocal evolutionary influence between two or more interacting species, such as plants and their environment, including climate, soil, and local wildlife.
Can't it Just Grow Back on its Own?
The History Channel's "Life After People" is a television series where scientists, mechanical engineers, and other 'experts in the field' speculate about what might happen to planet Earth if humanity suddenly disappeared and the impact of that disappearance on the natural environment.
Our urban areas wouldn't ever turn back into pristine forests on their own. After many years of harmful human activity, the seeds, plants, and roots that belonged to the native plant species are gone, and the land becomes biologically sterile and crowded with invasive species.
Because once all the native plant species are removed from an area and invasive species have been introduced, the land can't regenerate the destroyed ecosystem. It needs some help.
What is Rewilding?
This, my friend, is where rewilding comes in.
Rewilding returns a place to its natural state by reintroducing native plant or animal species into its natural environment.
Reforestation Projects
There are programs worldwide that allow companies to offset their carbon footprint by planting trees. These programs are restoring vital ecosystems that have been destroyed by climate change.
Right now, an organization doing work worldwide is the Eden Reforestation Project, which specializes in reforesting mangrove forests, providing residents with food, clean water, and protection from storms. Recently, they did work in Madagascar.
Mangrove Eco Restoration in Madagascar
When the Eden Project started in Madagascar, more than 90% of the primary forests had been destroyed. Even with all of the work being done, the extreme deforestation is causing severe plant and animal habitat loss, hitting people living in extreme poverty the hardest.
The destruction of the mangrove estuaries along the coastline has also caused mudflats to wash into the ocean, destroying once-productive fisheries and making coastal communities vulnerable to hurricanes, tsunamis, and floods.
In response to the large-scale loss of mangroves in Madagascar, Eden began restoring estuaries in Mahajanga in 2007. They began working with the local community to clear the estuary of dead trees and collected a variety of native propagule species to replant during the low tide.
Less than a decade later, Eden’s work in Mahajanga has developed into a thriving mangrove forest, resulting in the return of a healthy aquatic ecosystem. What began as mangrove reforestation in 2007 also grew to include a variety of upland dry deciduous forests by 2012.
Rewilding Urban Areas
Similarly, we can use native species to plant and propagate in our yards here in the PNW, restoring biodiversity through landscaping practices.
We can work within urban and suburban areas in the greater Portland Metro Area to restore native plants to the ecosystem, as traditional landscaping practices have created ecological wastelands.
Practices centered around cultivated lawns and ornamental, nonnative plants that also require a lot of resources to maintain.
This means even if we leave it alone (take the sides of the freeways overgrown with ivy, for example), native forest plants and trees won't magically regrow themselves; intentional eco-restoration is necessary to restore native habitats and ecosystems.
One way to do this at home is by rebuilding all or part of our yards to restore ecosystems destroyed by urban sprawl. Sprawl filled with acres of ugly, overgrown, invasive grass, ivy, and blackberry bushes.
The Future of Rewilding in Urban Areas
With enough restoration, we could become a carbon-neutral city and provide our own food if we dedicate parts of our yards and areas around our businesses to rewilding.
According to the Arbor Day Foundation, "In Portland, Oregon, street trees increase the value of homes by $1.1 billion, an average increase of $7,020 for each house."
Community Benefits
Your tiny forest can provide food to the community. A small area of a tiny forest can be packed like a granola bar with nutrient-rich food like berries, greens, mushrooms, and other goodies.
As our community is experiencing a severe and potentially long-lasting threat to housing and food security, creating areas within neighborhoods that provide a stable food supply can positively impact our communities.
Your tiny forest can provide food security: There is still room to grow traditional garden food in the forest-enriched soil in small forests.
Your tiny forest can provide medicine: Many edible plants contain medicinal properties. Plants are used to treat ailments from fever reduction to the re-establishment of menstruation after childbirth to heart medications.
We Can Help You Get Started!
Urban Rewilding can help with native plant landscape designs, builds, and gardening services. So, no matter what point you are at in your rewilding process, we can jump in and give you a hand.
We don't use any chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides at any point. All our plants are native to the Pacific Northwest and do not need to be watered after the first year.
Landscape Design:
We're happy to give you advice, resources, and native plant landscape designs.
You can book a one-hour consultation with us at a time that is convenient for you. We will look at sun exposure, soil quality, and existing plantings to create a detailed, personalized plan to follow as you continue your rewilding process.
Landscape professionals can also advise on what plants work best in which part of your yard and how to make your soil healthier. And where to source plants, seeds, and soil.
Landscape Installation:
Urban Rewilding is licensed, bonded, insured, and super excited to plant native trees, bushes, shrubs, ferns, mushrooms, and moss in your urban garden!
Adding biodiversity to an urban garden creates a resilient ecosystem that supports native birds, bees, bugs, and other wildlife. It also creates the potential for healthy, sustainable, organic food production that requires no water or chemicals.
We can solve issues such as invasive species, erosion, water damage, and pollution with native plants.
Book a one-hour consult with a professional native plant landscaper to find out how we can fix your problems with native plants.
Gardening Services
Urban Rewilding aims to create beneficial native plant ecosystems in urban areas to protect vulnerable wildlife and humans from the issues that arise from dense urban areas.
Hiring us to maintain your urban yard will mean that we will add native plants from other yards wherever we never use chemicals and create lush, healthy soil, remove any overgrown or unwanted native plants, and use them in other yards! We will cultivate a healthy yard that will become part of rewilding more and more and more!!!!
Book a consultation with a gardener, or send us an email with photos, and we can get you on our regular maintenance schedule today!
We protect native plants at all costs!!!
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