Alexis Kenyon

If you've ever visited New York City, you may be familiar with the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The park consists of two giant gardens located in the middle of one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. Rebecca McMackin, a self-described ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer, designed the park on top of two shipping piers. Her TED talk, "Let Your Garden Grow Wild," encourages gardeners to reframe the way they think about their yards.

McMackin emphasizes that changing behavior works better through inclusion than criticism. She describes observing someone in Cambridge, Massachusetts meticulously hand-picking each leaf off a perfect manicured lawn — and recognizing that as an expression of care, not negligence.

"Shifting that energy over into a more beneficial way slowly and gently, so that you're going with that inclination to care, rather than saying, 'No, you're doing it wrong. Change direction.' If you're looking at the long game, you're looking at really changing behavior rather than trying to score points." — Rebecca McMackin

Lawn management as a practice originated in England. After Versailles, massive estates started displaying turf as a symbol of wealth — land that didn't need to produce food or house animals. "It's literally just green for no reason at all," McMackin explains, "but there's an incredible amount of labor that goes into it. It's just a display of wealth."

In the late 1800s, settlers and early colonial people in North America started managing land this way, mimicking European trends. Then after World War II, an abundance of chemicals developed for the war — herbicides and pesticides derived from copper and zinc experiments by weapons manufacturers — made their way into the turf care industry.

"American turf is very different from European turf. It is the largest irrigated crop in the United States. It's absolutely massive. It's tied into consumerism. It's tied into masculinity. It's tied into capitalism. All of those things are very much part of our American identity." — Rebecca McMackin

It's the same principle with aphids. When Brooklyn Bridge Park's catalpa trees got covered in them, people pushed McMackin to spray. She didn't. The following year, two-spotted ladybugs — absent from New York City for 30 years — arrived to eat them.

McMackin's broader point: managed turf is the beetles' nursery. Pesticides are the birds' poison. And the $60 billion lawn care industry profits from both sides of the cycle — selling you the chemicals that create the problem, then selling you more chemicals to treat it.

When Brooklyn Bridge Park's catalpa trees got covered in aphids, people encouraged McMackin to spray pesticides. She didn't. The following year, two-spotted ladybugs — absent from New York City for 30 years — arrived to eat them.

"If we keep on wiping out the population of herbivores before any of those parasites or parasitoids or predators can get to them, we never allow that balance to be reached. We're constantly resetting it over and over and over again." — Rebecca McMackin

McMackin references ecologist Doug Tallamy's "10-step program for dealing with plant pests": Take 10 steps backwards from your plant. If you can still see the pest, then you can deal with it. "But it solves most problems by just walking a little bit farther away."

McMackin explains that when deciduous trees lose their leaves, they're not throwing them away — "they're carefully placing those leaves on their root systems where they will break down and turn into soil, and all of those nutrients then become available for the plant once again." It's a carbon cycle: down into the ground, into the tree, into the leaves, and back around.

Interrupting this cycle doesn't just harm the plants — it disrupts 95% of moth species whose caterpillars complete their life cycle in the leaf layer. Those caterpillars feed the birds. "The majority of birds feed their babies a majority of caterpillars," she says. "And most of those moth caterpillars spend part of their life cycle in that leaf layer."

McMackin addresses the "Kill Your Lawn" movement directly: "It's kind of punk rock, kind of in your face and catchy. And I like it. But I'm not of that ilk." As a public park designer, she sees lawns as functional habitat for humans — spaces that signal belonging. The problem isn't lawns themselves. The problem is using lawn as the default for every inch of landscape you don't know what to do with.

"Go outside and look at your landscape and think, 'Okay, this is how I use this landscape. I want to play catch with my kid. I want to have a barbecue.' There's a defined footprint for those activities. And then the rest of your landscape can either be wild, forested, gardened — there are so many ways to manage those landscapes that are not turf."

"When people go to Brooklyn Bridge Park, they're usually there to play basketball or have a picnic. They have no idea that they're walking through a monarch habitat or a firefly sanctuary. It just reads as a beautiful park with lots of butterflies and magical evenings. And if we can do that in the middle of New York City, amidst all that traffic and concrete, you can do it anywhere." — Rebecca McMackin, TED talk

"In these scary times, it can be so hard to know what to do and how to help, but it feels great to cultivate life with your own two hands. We all deserve to live in a healthy and thriving ecosystem. But it feels even better when we're part of those systems, supporting the plants and pollinators around us the way that they support us." — Rebecca McMackin, TED talk

This story was originally published July 22, 2024 on KGNU Community Radio. Rebecca McMackin's TED talk, "Let Your Garden Grow Wild," is available on TED.com.