Habitat Hero – December 2020

Allison Crews-Turner

The 4^th Quarter winner is Allison Crews-Turner. When Allison was looking to buy a house seven years ago she first fell in love with the yard of the house, before ever seeing the inside.  It was landscaped with a perfectly manicured garden and typical non-native plants that are all too often seen including hostas, liriope, nandina and rose bushes. 

About a year or two ago she was gifted Doug Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home and she began to re-imagine what a garden should be and who it should be for.  She began adding native plants to her existing garden, even expanding her beds and adding new ones to plant more natives.  She began to see a transformation taking place before her eyes.  The native plants were alive with native insects.  She added milkweed and was rewarded with monarchs laying eggs on them and forming chrysalis right in her own side yard.  Her son Anson and her spent summer days watching the transformation.  Along the side of her house in the sunniest spot she has her monarch nursery—plenty of Asclepias and lots of places for the chrysalis to form.

In addition to adding milkweed she has planted Rudbeckia black eyed Susans, Monarda bee balm,  Aquilegia columbine, Echinacea coneflowers, Solidago goldenrod, Asters and Sweetbay Magnolia and dogwood trees.  She is planning on adding ever more native plants next spring including increasing the shade loving plants in her front beds. Even more encouraging is her willingness to start removing some of the non-native, particularly invasive species from the property.

Allison is also in the process in trying to establish a meadow area near the back of the property by sowing in some wonderful native seeds and plants.  She has a place for leaving many of the leaves that fall onto the property for birds to find food, moth, butterflies and other insects to overwinter and of course they will break down enriching her soil with all their wonderful nutrients.

On the side of the house she has left an area to go a bit “wild” with many native plants, including Asclepias syriaca common milkweed that this past summer were covered in monarch caterpillars as well as tussock moth caterpillars and there was plenty of plant materials such as native grasses for the caterpillars to form their chrysalis. Her family enjoyed looking for more chrysalis each day!

At first Allison was a bit hesitant to accept this honor as she feels she has more work to do but I explained to her that she is exactly the right person to showcase because of the changes she has made and the plans to add even more native plants to sustain more local fauna.  Her commitment to “re-think” pretty is exactly what makes her a Habitat Hero!