As a young child, Douglas Tallamy was captivated by the natural world. In his engaging new book, Bringing Nature Home, Tallamy writes of spending his summer days exploring the “wild” places near his home in New Jersey. There, he also discovered the devastating effects of development when a bulldozer buried tiny toads he had watched develop from tadpoles in a polliwog pond. Our hearts go out to the nine-year-old child as he works valiantly, but futilely, to save the little creatures from being buried alive.
When he grew up, the boy who had tried to rescue toads studied the natural world, ultimately becoming Professor and Chair of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. In the process, he discovered the extent of loss resulting from wide scale development and agricultural activities. And that is the subject of his book. But Bringing Nature Home is not another gloom and doom tome on what we humans have wrought. Instead, this engaging and highly readable book tells us how we can all be involved in turning back environmental loss in a way that will bring that wild world right into our own back yards by simply trading non-native ornamental plantings for native ones.
Bringing Nature Home is well documented and filled with beautiful and fascinating photos…all taken by Tallamy. It includes many of his personal landscaping experiences, as well as numerous suggestions on plant choices for the rest of us.
Like Ted Williams in Wild Moments, Tallamy remains optimistic about the future of America’s wildlife. But unlike Williams, who wrote eloquently about why we should connect with, and want to save our natural world, the good professor’s book is a prescription on how we can all work to make that happen.
First published in the fall of 2007, this compelling work is now out in paperback. It is available at bookstores and nature centers for $17.95. If you haven’t yet read it, pick up a copy at your earliest possible convenience. Read it, and then follow the good professor’s advice by incorporating native plantings in your own landscape.