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How To! with Mike Pesca

How To Save the Planet, Starting With Your Yard

How To! with Mike Pesca

Peach Fish Projects

How To, Education

4.32K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the last 24 years, Judy has moved approximately 16 times for her husband's military career. But her family has finally settled down in a lovely house with a yard near Annapolis, Maryland. Now Judy is hoping to transform her outdoor space into something that's beautiful and environmentally friendly. On this episode of How To!, Doug Tallamy explains why, now more than ever, we need people like Judy to plant native species in order to revive our ecosystem. He has some surprisingly easy tips for replacing your grass (take that, lawn mower!), finding plants that pollinators will love, and even getting rid of those pesky mosquitoes. 

Resources: 

Homegrown National Park

Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard

Audubon Native Plants Database

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder

SEEK by iNaturalist

The Life and Death of the American Lawn

If you liked this episode, check out "How To Squash Your Fear of Bugs (and Other Phobias)"

Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Derek John and Rosemary Belson with help from Katie Shepherd. 

Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Jonathan Braylock, I'm Dra. Milligan, and I'm James III. And we're those of Black

0:09.2

Man Kenchup in Hollywood. It's a comedic podcast that reviews films with leading actors

0:13.6

of color and analyze them in the context of race and Hollywood's diversity issues.

0:17.7

Yeah. Listen to new episodes on Mondays. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I don't

0:22.7

care where you get them. I just want you to listen. Don't threaten the people we need

0:26.9

them to listen. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sorry, guys. Listen. Listen to us. Yeah. Yeah. Put on a

0:32.2

happy voice. Hey, everybody. It's Tim Heidecker. You know me. Tim and Eric Bridesmaids

0:43.2

and Fantastic Four. I'd like to personally invite you to listen to the office hours live

0:47.9

with me and my co-hosts DJ Doug Pound. Hello. And Vic Berger. Howdy. Every week we bring

0:53.6

you last fun games and lots of other surprises. It's live. We take your Zoom calls. We love

0:58.5

having fun. Excuse me. Vic said something. He said music. I like having fun. I like to

1:05.0

laugh. I like to be people who can make me laugh. Please subscribe. No. I never do New Year's

1:13.9

resolutions, but I pick a word for the year. And my word for this year is balance. And

1:21.0

what can we do to balance out and create more spaces in our yard to promote birds and

1:27.8

bees and the native plants? Welcome to How To. I'm Amanda Ridley. So back when I was growing

1:36.0

up in the 80s in suburban New Jersey, a freshly mowed yard was a sign of the good life. Never

1:43.7

mind that my brother and I spent hours inhaling fumes, sweating, arguing, cursing at the

1:49.6

mower every week in the summer to make it look that way. It was pristine. And for some

1:56.5

reason, that was all that mattered. Well, luckily, things are starting to change. Thank God.

2:03.6

A perfect lawn may not be quite so desirable anymore. Take Las Vegas, for example, which

2:09.6

recently outlawed what they call non-functional grass in mediums and office parks to help

2:15.4

combat drought. That's a third of their grass gone. Southern California restricted certain

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