The Power of Words
What if you had to choose between a) a yard that’s “manicured” and “tidy” and b) one that’s “overgrown,” “messy” and “unruly”? I’m guessing most of us, myself included, would select option a).
Sadly, this isn’t just a hypothetical exercise. These are the terms typically used to distinguish traditional landscaping from sustainable gardening. A resource-guzzling, ecologically-barren yard consisting of turfgrass plus a handful of invasive shrubs will be described with positive-sounding adjectives that evoke cleanliness and respectability. Meanwhile, the labels assigned to a native plant garden that provides a parade of seasonal interest, supports wildlife, and generates thriving ecosystems will bring to mind irresponsibility and disorder.
These verbal biases are purely subjective, but the lawn care and pest control industries, much of the media and many of us <ahem, sheepishly raising my hand> perpetuate them.
Words matter. As we know from politics, marketing, education and psychology, the way information is presented impacts our decisions. Social scientists call this the framing effect.
The framing effect can have considerable influence on public opinion. Public affairs and other events that draw attention from the public can be interpreted very differently based on how they are framed. Sometimes, issues or positions that benefit the majority of people can be seen unfavorably because of negative framing. Likewise, policy stances and behaviour that do not further the public good may become popular because their positive attributes are effectively emphasized. – The Decision Lab
I can attest from my own conversations with friends and neighbors that many people who genuinely care about the environment and might otherwise embrace gardening with native plants shy away from it due to the negative associations and falsehoods they’ve internalized.
Naturalist and author Nancy Lawson makes a compelling case that there’s a classist, racist and sexist context to the use of words such as “unruly,” which is often deployed to denigrate women, children, people of color and other marginalized groups, and “manicured,” which connotes the clean fingernails of someone who isn’t compelled to do manual labor.
We need a new framework for dissolving extremist labels that burden not only plants and animals but also our ability to truly see and understand them. –Nancy Lawson
She tackles this topic in a recent post on her blog, The Humane Gardener, and argues for taking back the language. A few of her choice word reversals:
If you have a turfgrass lawn on most of your property, your yard is not pristine. It is undergrown.
If you or your lawn service company apply herbicides, insecticides, or synthetic fertilizers, your yard is not immaculate. It is contaminated.
If you regularly mow down whatever strip of land you may have under your purview, you might think you’re keeping up with your human neighbors. But you’re killing your wild neighbors.
And these are some of the words Lawson would like to see excised from the gardening vocabulary:
Pest: Most of the animals around us are just doing their best to survive in an environment that we humans have made increasingly hostile to them. When we label one a “pest,” we can justify poisoning, drowning or inhumanely trapping it rather than figuring out how to safely co-exist with it.
Beneficial: When we call some insects “beneficial,” we imply all the others are harmful pests. (See above.)
Weed: Mainstream sources of gardening expertise deem as weeds many of the native plants that contribute to healthy (and beautiful) ecosystems. Indeed, some of these plants have weed in their common names. Think milkweed, jewelweed, sneezeweed, Joe-Pye weed, and ironweed.
Messy: In Lawson’s words, “Given the mess we’ve made of the planet, how can we possibly tell the American bumblebee mother, who prefers to nest in toppled grasses left from one season to the next, that her perfect spot for reproduction doesn’t fit our arbitrary aesthetic standards? The guise of neatness is an astounding form of hubris, taking away the fallen leaves where silvery checkerspot caterpillars overwinter and toads emerge in spring and northern flickers forage all year long.”
Ornamental: This term implies that a plant exists for our own aesthetic pleasure, rather than understanding it as an integral part of a natural community.
Lawson reminds us that, even before putting trowel to soil, we can be agents of positive change. We can be mindful of the ways we describe our yards and their inhabitants. Instead of prioritizing our own narrow, acquired aesthetic tastes over all other living things, we can recognize our rightful place as one element in thriving, interconnected systems full of plants and animals deserving respect and gratitude. We can open our imaginations to new landscapes. We can rewrite the script.
If you live in the DC vicinity and could use assistance with sustainable landscaping, visit Bees’ Knees Design. I’d be happy to help you.
Resources
Nancy Lawson, “Is Your Yard Undergrown?” The Humane Gardener, January 17, 2024.
Ayesha Perera, “Framing Effect in Psychology,” Simply Psychology, September 7, 2023.
“Why Do Our Decisions Depend on How Options Are Presented to Us?” The Decision Lab.
I’m one of those people who prefers messy and overgrown to manicured so I love how you present an alternative vocabulary as a way to talk to people about what’s possible with gardening and habitat restoration.
Great post!
Yes, these old un-environmental standards for how a yard should look are so ingrained! It’s disturbing to me that the well-educated residents of my neighborhood, who you would think would be more knowledgeable about nature’s needs, still buy into the conventional “lawn care” services of companies like Virginia Green to obtain that artificial look in their yards, year after year.