CONDON’S CORNER
“The Living
Landscape—Even Parking Lots Can Buzz with Life”
© Marlene A. Condon 2025 All Rights Reserved
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| This non-native Glossy Abelia (Abelia grandiflora) in the author’s yard has provided food for bees and other insects for decades. In its mature form, it also keeps birds safe from predators within its branches. (© Marlene A. Condon) |
“The Living Landscape—Even Parking Lots Can Buzz with
Life”
The
past few times I’ve gone to Barracks Road Shopping Center in Charlottesville,
I’ve been extremely dismayed to see workmen digging out perfectly healthy
plants from the islands located across from the storefronts, and even at the
corner of Millmont and Barracks Road.
If
they’d been removing the sickly trees so prevalent within the various parking
lots (where the trees shouldn’t have been planted in the first place), it would
have made sense. But no, the ailing trees still stood in their spots, and the
healthy shrubs below them or in islands populated solely by shrubs were being completely
replaced.
This
situation troubled me for many reasons. First, it seemed such a waste to be
throwing away perfectly healthy, mature plants. The shopping center store
fronts were being renovated, but “refurbishing” areas of plants that were doing
very well was a waste of time, effort, money, and—saddest of all—numerous
useful plants!
The
ultimate landscape scenario is the one that has withstood the test of time by
producing healthy, mature plants. Yet someone made the decision to get rid of
the fully grown shrubs that had survived the rigors of growing in a sea of
asphalt and vehicle exhaust fumes so customers can instead see small, immature
plants without much interest for either people or wildlife. And herein lies the
much more serious problem with this ill-informed choice: Wildlife can most
often only make use of mature plants that have begun to flower and possibly
produce fruits or seeds later.
On
my most recent trips to the shopping center, I’d observed small bumblebees and
honey bees busily visiting the abundant blooms on the several shrubs of dwarf Abelia
directly across from the Harris Teeter store. The Abelia was fulfilling
its role in nature by supporting these bees with food at a time of year when
sustenance has become much more difficult for these critters to find. Most
plants are shutting down by the month of November, with precious few making
flowers at a time of year when most overwintering insects would have already been
hibernating in decades past.
Thanks
to global climate change, however, our seasons no longer function as they once
did, with alterations in temperature and rainfall that interfere with the lives
of both plants and animals that evolved under a different set of conditions. It’s
one of the reasons our wildlife (and native plants) is disappearing from our
midst.
However,
we do have plants here that originated in other countries and can do quite well
under such conditions. In fact, they do so well with a dearth of rain and
extreme high and low temperatures throughout the year that uninformed people
now consider them “invasive”. They blame them for the disappearance of our
native plants and spend a lot of time getting folks outside to destroy these
plants, but it’s a huge mistake born of a lack of true knowledge.
If
people had properly learned in school to observe their surroundings carefully
before taking action, they would realize that the so-called invasive plants mainly
come up in barren areas devoid of plants. In other words, by filling in
empty areas with wildlife-useful plants where native plants obviously are not
capable of growing, non-native plants assist our critters to survive.
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| These fall-colored, beautifully red-leaved Euonymus alatus along a roadside should not be interpreted as “invasive”, but rather as “helpful”. They will feed birds and mammals in an area where most native plants struggled to survive in 2025 because of drought that is becoming much more common. (© Marlene A. Condon) |
Of
course, another reason wildlife is becoming scarce is because most people want
their home and work landscapes to reflect what they themselves want to look at
instead of taking into account the needs of their wildlife dependents. Yes, in
the 21st Century, wildlife depends upon humans for their welfare
because humans are in control of the entire world. And as evidenced by the
remodeling efforts at Barracks Road Shopping Center this fall, wildlife is
getting the short end of the stick.
As
numerous people walked by me across from Harris Teeter, either intent on
getting their shopping done inside the store or returning to their vehicles to
move along to new places and tasks, they either didn’t notice or didn’t care
that the Abelia shrubs were supporting the life forms that keep our
natural world functioning properly for their benefit. Not one person took a few
moments to stop to ask what I might be studying so intently. And even more sad
is that no one will have been made aware of how crucial those Abelia
blooms were to the insects that so assist mankind to survive.
In
January 2025, the Doomsday Clock—the symbol of global catastrophe—was set to
the closest time ever: 89 seconds to midnight,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
When
the clock runs out, our time is up. And it may well run out, thanks to
landscapes based upon people’s preferences rather than those of wildlife. Trust
me, we need living landscapes that work for our benefit, not artificially
contrived ones based upon aesthetics only.
