Just over a decade ago, Katie Banks Hone learned that monarch butterfly populations were plummeting, putting the species at risk of extinction this century.

Around the same time, Tony Frisk saw a documentary about honey bee colony collapse disorder that left him unnerved.

Hone and Frisk each felt compelled to take some kind of action on nature’s behalf—to do something. So they each started where they could: at home, Hone north of Boston, Frisk in suburban Minneapolis.

Both replaced large portions of their suburban lawns with native plants and shrubs that better support and nourish butterflies, bees, caterpillars, and birds. Now their yards hold dozens of host plants—species that native insects eat or lay eggs upon—and hum with wildlife.

“When I first moved in, it was a barren landscape,” Frisk says of his suburban Minneapolis yard, with few birds save for the occasional American robin. “But over the course of the last 10 years, I see birds that I’ve never seen before.” Not to mention butterflies like the charismatic monarch, whose familiar beauty has made it something of an ambassador for threatened North American pollinators.

“We’re a third of an acre, we’re not a very big property,” says Hone. “But we have somewhere between 80 and 90 species of native plants that I’ve added, and every one is a nectar source or a host plant for an insect. And the amount of wildlife that comes into our yard is just astounding,” she says, including a family of screech owls.

Strangers living over a thousand miles apart, Hone and Frisk are nonetheless connected by a growing national movement—one that includes homeowners and community groups but also schools and municipal parks departments—to restore native wildlife habitat in developed areas.

By planting native pollinator gardens and Miyawaki microforests, whether in front yards, schoolyards, or vacant lots, individuals and communities across the country are inviting nature back into the cities and towns from which it was once expelled.

The ‘Homegrown’ National Park

It was a late August morning three or four years ago when Frisk realized the full impact of the habitat he’s created. Among the native flowers he had planted were the monarch butterfly’s only host plant, milkweed, and some of its favored fall nectar sources, such as meadow blazing star. “I went outside and I counted at least 25 monarch butterflies in my backyard; it was magical,” Frisk says. “That was the point I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, this is significant.’ If it’s just me doing this, could you imagine if other people would do this, and how much more of a benefit that would have overall?”

That’s the idea behind Homegrown National Park (HNP), an initiative cofounded by Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware professor of entomology and bestselling author of Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard.

American homeowners are prodigious grass farmers, using water, fertilizer, and herbicides to cultivate more than 40 million acres of lawn, according to a 2005 NASA-led study. That’s more than any other irrigated crop. That’s more than any other irrigated crop. While turfgrass is great for backyard barbecues and wiffleball games, it’s a barren landscape as far as local wildlife is concerned. Tallamy realized that if US homeowners added native trees, shrubs, or flowers to even half the space we devote to lawns, that effort would restore more acres of wildlife habitat than exists in most of our national parks combined.

“The idea is that you go on our biodiversity map and put in where you live, and the area of your property that you’re going to start to be a good steward of,” explains Tallamy, who is quick to credit HNP cofounder Michelle Alfandari for bringing the idea to life. With more than 57,000 registered sites now comprising over 106,000 acres, the Homegrown National Park is already collectively larger than Maine’s Acadia National Park and Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park put together.

Still, Tallamy would like to see millions of pocket prairies and pollinator gardens on that map, not just thousands, given the rate at which species are going extinct. “Humans are part of nature, it is essential to our survival,” Tallamy says. “[Nature] is not optional, which means everybody has a responsibility in supporting it.”

Meanwhile, federal support for wildlife and land conservation is waning: The Trump administration in March issued an executive order encouraging federal agencies to bypass environmental regulations in order to  fast-track logging  and timber production on millions of acres of national forests and other public lands, for example. That puts even greater urgency on protecting ecosystems and wildlife habitat at the local or even household level.

Curbing a Crisis, at the Curb

Climate change is the ecological emergency of our time, but the parallel crisis of biodiversity loss gets less attention. One million—or one in eight—species are now at risk of extinction around the world. North America alone has lost a staggering 2.9 billion birds since 1970.

And the insects that form the foundation of the natural food web, including the bees and butterflies that pollinate about a third of the world’s farmed food, are in serious trouble. “We’ve lost 75 percent of the insects on the planet already,” Tallamy says, citing data from a 2017 study in Germany.

Insects don’t merely pollinate plants. They also turn leaves into protein for baby birds and other wildlife. More than 90 percent of land-based North American birds raise their young on the soft protein of insects, as opposed to seeds, nuts, or berries. Chickadee parents, for example, take turns catching upwards of 370 caterpillars a day to feed a nest of newborns, Tallamy says; it takes more than 6,000 caterpillars to feed one clutch of baby chickadees for the two and a half weeks before they fledge.

So if we want birds, we need insects. A number of things threaten insect populations, including habitat loss, increased use and potency of pesticides, and human-caused climate change. But a less acknowledged factor—and one that individuals and communities can help counteract themselves, right now—is the loss of native plants on which insects feed and breed.

Our pollinators and other insects coevolved with native plants over thousands of years. As plants developed defenses—like the toxic compound found in milkweed, which keeps most critters from eating it—insects adapted through specialization, evolving to tolerate the unique defenses of just one or two plant species. Some 69 percent of our caterpillars can only develop on a single family of host plant—such as the monarch, who can only survive on milkweed.

If that host plant doesn’t exist, then neither will the caterpillars who rely upon it. And over the past century, as wild prairies and forests were converted for agriculture or urban development, and as homeowners and landscapers grew enamored with showy shrubs and ornamental trees imported from other continents, insect-nourishing native plants have vanished or been replaced by species that provide little or no ecological value to local wildlife.

Many of the shrubs and street trees imported from other continents to beautify our landscapes—from tidy English yews and boxwoods to blooming Callery pear trees—may offer humans some combination of shade, attractive foliage or flowers, carbon absorption, or water retention. But they offer precious little to native insects.

Tallamy conducted a caterpillar count several years ago on the lower branches of a “Bradford” Callery pear tree (native to East Asia, it’s invasive in some states) and on a neighboring oak tree. The Callery pear had four caterpillars, all the same species, while the native oak had more than 400 caterpillars, with 15 different species represented.

The oak tree was at no risk from all the leaf-nibbling caterpillars Tallamy found; they would soon become bird food or butterflies. That’s why planting native trees, shrubs, and flowers in our yards is a simple, tangible way for anyone to protect and restore natural ecosystems.

“We have vilified insects, even though they are ‘the little things that run the world,’ to quote E.O. Wilson,” Tallamy says. But without insects, we don’t have birds, flowers, or food to feed the world’s growing population. Without insects, we don’t have life.

Conservation Through Conversion

While most native plants support wildlife far better than introduced species, Tallamy says there are some “keystone species” in each region—including oaks, cherry trees, goldenrods, and black-eyed Susans—that go above and beyond in that regard. Even apartment dwellers with a small balcony or front stoop can  create a productive pit stop  for pollinators by planting pots of, say, Tahoka daisy in Phoenix, or Maryland golden aster in Atlanta.

For homeowners who have a yard but not the time or interest for gardening, the simplest way to convert a lawn into a thriving ecosystem is to plant an oak tree. “If you think of a plant as a bird feeder, which is exactly what it is, then in most regions, the oak makes the most food,” Tallamy writes in Nature’s Best Hope. Resist raking and let the fallen leaves be, as they provide a critical “soft landing” zone for caterpillars and other overwintering insects. (And it perhaps goes without saying, but spraying insecticide does no favors for beneficial insects. Organic or not, if a yard spray is strong enough to kill mosquitoes, Tallamy says, it will kill other insects, too.)

For homeowners ready to take things a step farther, converting portions of lawn into pollinator habitat can have powerful ecological impacts.

When Hone and her husband first bought their house along the Ipswich River, the yard was full of nonnative and invasive species, and 4,000 square feet of plastic sheeting was buried under the soil, hastening water runoff into the river. With the help of a matching “Slow the Flow” grant from a local watershed group, Hone pulled up the plastic and removed invasive plants like barberry, and then started building rain gardens and planting native shrubs and flowers.

As the years passed, Hone, a former aquarium biologist, devoted more time and lawn space to native plants, and gained a local following as the Monarch Gardener. She tries to keep her street-facing gardens somewhat tidy but really allows nature to take its course out back.

“I’ve let it kind of go wild along the river, and it’s all  white wood aster ,” she says. “My husband and I went out on a canoe ride last year, and we came up the stairs from the river, and he just said, ‘Whoa.’ The whole hillside was shimmering with bees, it was amazing.”

[Caption: For an early April bloom, when critters emerge hungry, Hone says, “I love spicebush. It’s a host for the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar, which kind of looks like a Pokémon character.”]

To convert a portion of lawn into a pollinator garden, you generally have to get rid of the grass first—which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Some tried-and-true methods include:

• Digging it up: Using a garden spade or sod cutter to remove the top few inches of sod, and then replacing it with compost, soil, or mulch, is hard work, but allows for immediate planting.
• Solarization: Staking a sheet of clear or black plastic over the lawn in summer will trap the sun’s heat and kill the grass and seeds beneath it after a few months. Once the grass is completely cooked, planting can commence in the fall or the following spring.
• The ‘lasagna’ method: Another way to kill grass is to cover it with wet cardboard or layers of builder’s paper and newspaper, and then cover it with a layer of compost or mulch, keeping it wet. The paper will block sunlight to smother the grass, and naturally degrade over time. Eager gardeners can plant right away by cutting holes through the paper or cardboard, and weeding any grass that manages to sneak through.

By now, Frisk has converted most of his lawn into gardens, and says it’s both easier and less expensive to care for his plants than it would be to maintain a manicured lawn all summer. “I’ve taken the lawn down to a third of what it was, and so now I can get away with just a battery-operated mower, so it’s a different level of maintenance,” he says.

That’s the thing about native plants: They generally require very little maintenance once they’re established. Imported plant species, including most turfgrasses, often demand extra resources, like water and fertilizer, to stay healthy and happy here in the US. In the Los Angeles area, for example, a 1,500-square-foot lawn  requires about 43,000 gallons of water a year , while drought-tolerant native plants will generally ask for no more than Mother Nature provides.

Plants native to an area love the soil just the way it is. Planted in the right spot, they won’t find a yard too acidic or too basic, too wet or too dry, too sunny or too shady; those same conditions are the ones they’ve specifically evolved to thrive in over thousands of years.

Conversion Through Conversation

By daring to plant native flowers in place of a manicured, irrigated lawn, Frisk isn’t just creating precious wildlife habitat and saving water. He’s also inviting neighbors and visitors to reimagine what a well-tended suburban landscape looks like.

In Nature’s Best Hope, Tallamy explores the power of social norms, and how caring for one’s lawn has become a kind of cultural shorthand we use to tell neighbors that we’re trustworthy, upstanding people who take pride in our community. “The people who take care of their lawns are considered good citizens, because they’re conforming to cultural norms,” Tallamy says. “What we have to do is change the cultural norms.”

Frisk worried about how his garden would be received on his street of suburban lawn scapes, but his neighbors seem to love the sight of purple coneflowers, shrubby St. Johnswort, bright orange butterfly milkweed, and other flowers and native grasses in his front yard. “There’s a group home a few houses down, and an assisted living place two blocks away, and people will walk all the way down just to look at my gardens,” he says. When strangers ring his doorbell to ask him questions or gardening advice, he obliges with an impromptu tour (incidentally, the kind of material, social interaction that is crucial to shifting people’s perceptions and behaviors). “Last year, I had a lady with her young children come by and ask if she could do their spring photos in my garden.”

Like Hone, Frisk keeps his street-facing garden tidier than the back. “My backyard, I can go a little bit more crazy because it’s fenced and it’s mine to see,” he says. “Sometimes I call my yard a mullet—it’s nice in the front, but wild in the back.”

[Caption: Frisk’s colorful front yard contrasts with the uniform lawns of his neighbors. Small “cues of care,” such as a stone path or mown strip of grass, can help signal that a native garden is intentional.]

While it’s fine to leave a few non-native flowers and trees in your landscape, Tallamy says, “there’s no room for compromise with invasives, because they don’t stay where you plant them.” Invasive species—kudzu, wisteria, glossy buckthorn, tree of heaven, Asiatic bittersweet, black swallow wort, and Japanese barberry among them—spread vigorously and easily jump from yard to yard until they reach protected areas, where they wreak havoc on ecosystems, growing and spreading so aggressively that they smother or outcompete the native plants that insects need to live. “They’re ecological tumors—they just keep spreading,” Tallamy says.

State and Local Action

Pennsylvania recently introduced a program that rewards homeowners with free native tree saplings if they remove invasive species from their yards. The Keystone State also provides funding to encourage homeowners and businesses to replace their lawns with native meadows.

Minnesota has a similar program, while California offers a cash rebate for every square foot of lawn removed to improve water conservation, Tallamy says. “It’s not that you get rich doing that, it’s that it makes it socially acceptable,” he says.

But even in the absence of statewide programs, communities can encourage residents and businesses to contribute to wildlife conservation by planting native landscapes, says Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Communities should discourage homeowner associations from mandating uniform green lawns, for example. They can also recognize and reward homeowners who keep exemplary gardens, the way historical associations hold neighborhood tours or give awards for faithful restorations. “Encourage displays of natural habitat, and recognize them with awards,” Levitt says.

It’s not just homeowners who can create wildlife habitat on their properties. Businesses and corporate office parks, schools, and other public buildings—many of them have swaths of largely unused lawn or pavement that could instead host beneficial tree and plant species. For example, a lot of suburban schools are ringed by decorative, empty lawns that are neither play areas nor ballfields, “that could be more heavily planted with trees,” Tallamy says.

“Exemplify what you’re trying to encourage by planting municipal open space, when appropriate, with native species,” Levitt suggests. “That isn’t to say that you should put trees in the middle of baseball fields. But you should show how it’s both beautiful and economical to do it.”

Tiny Forests, Big Impacts

In 2021, Cambridge, Massachusetts, did just that, planting the first Miyawaki forest in the Northeast. Based on techniques researched and developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki as he sought to reintroduce native wilderness to degraded and developed landscapes, these tiny forests are so densely planted with native species that they encourage rapid growth, typically attaining self-sufficiency after three to five years.

In Cambridge, many of the trees—which were planted as bare-root stems just over three years ago—are now more than 15 feet tall, and one volunteer who has tracked the forest’s growth says it’s so dense with foliage in summertime that the center appears “pitch black.”

Deliberately planted with multiple layers of native species, from shade-loving ground cover to overstory trees, these tiny or pocket forests not only replicate native habitat. The thick greenery helps to counter the urban heat island effect, improve air quality, and reduce stormwater runoff.

Cambridge has since planted two more miniforests, and other Massachusetts communities followed, including Brookline, Natick, Somerville, and Ayer. In 2024, the city of Worcester used a matching grant from the state’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program to plant two Miyawaki forests—one of which replaced over 6,000 square feet of pavement in a downtown parking lot.

The forests “addressed so many of the goals and action items in our [Green Worcester] plan,” says Luba Zhaurova, director of projects at the city’s department of sustainability and resilience.

After receiving the state grant in mid-September, the city had nine months to identify appropriate sites and complete the planting. The city first looked at municipally owned properties, screening potential sites against heat island maps, Zhaurova says. After narrowing down the list to six schools and municipal buildings, they went on site visits with BSC Group, the consultancy managing the project, she says. “It was this bitter cold January day, so trying to imagine this beautiful, thriving forest was a bit of a mental exercise,” she says.

The downtown public library emerged as the most suitable site: It had a large and underused parking lot, located in a heavily paved neighborhood especially vulnerable to extreme heat. Pursuing the suggestion of a community member, the city opted to locate its second miniforest at Plumley Village, a privately owned, low-income housing development. That required a bit of extra negotiation with the owners of the development, says Zhaurova, who notes that the city agreed to cover the added expense of a fence in addition to the other project costs.

A Faster Forest

A vacant lot left fallow will still grow plants or trees. So why go through all this trouble to carefully plant desired native species? The ecological goal is “expedited succession,” says Caseylee Bastien, senior landscape architect and ecologist at BSC Group.

It could take decades for an empty lot to develop into a healthy forest, but some targeted intervention can hasten that transition. “It would take thousands of years for some of these species to find these locations, if at all, on their own,” he says. “So having sped things up in the wrong direction, we can speed things up in the right direction.”

One of the key concepts of the Miyawaki method is replicating the ecological processes that take place in an old-growth forest. So in addition to planting a variety of native trees and shrubs, a new forest should also get a “duff” transplant—that is, some of the leaf litter on the floor of an existing woodland—to introduce the fungi, protozoa, and other microorganisms that break down wood, leaves, and minerals into healthy soil.

Miyawaki forests tend to elicit community support and volunteer interest, so Bastien says this step presents a unique educational opportunity to help the public better understand forests in a tangible way. At the outset of a project, he’ll sometimes lead volunteers into nearby woods to forage for healthy soil, seeds, or fungi with which to inoculate a new urban forest.

“Getting people to collect stump soil that’s been turned over when a tree fell, all that good rot, that is the perfect set of bacteria and fungi that I want to bring to a new forest to educate it about what it should grow into,” he says. “And then people see that, ‘Ahh, the forest is in the soil.’”

He also takes the opportunity to share stories about a plant’s special properties. “We’ll get to an oak, and I’ll say how, mythologically, this is the king of trees, and these young oak warriors are marcescent—so they would hold their leaves into winter and shake their dry leaves in the face of darkness and say, ‘We will not go quietly into the night,’” Bastien says.

“Now, in the landscape, that oak is central to a lot of different species, and we’ve sort of always understood this as a people. But that marcescent piece is actually a technique for them—it’s a protection against browsing deer,” Bastien explains. “Because in the springtime, the buds are packed with sugar to protect the cells from frost, and that also makes them extra delicious. So if the young ones that are down low are holding onto their leaves, a deer gets a mouthful of dry fiber instead of a sweet, tasty flower bud.” Thus, the oak will likely live to host hundreds of larval pollinators as birds and butterflies use its leaves to make protein, feeding the whole ecosystem.

This kind of outing can help sustain volunteer interest as well—which can lag after the initial excitement wears off. While over 100 volunteers turned out to help the city of Worcester plant its first Miyawaki forest, Zhourova says it’s harder to recruit volunteers for follow-up maintenance. “People are a lot more excited about planting than weeding, and weeding in the first couple of years is very important,” she says.

A Miyawaki forest is intended to reach self-sufficiency in three to five years, at which point natural processes take over: Upper-story trees cast dense shade that inhibits weed growth, and fallen leaves nourish the soil, which absorbs and retains carbon and rainfall.

In addition to vertical layers, the forest changes from edge to center as well. “We think about buffer and refuge, so making sure we’ve got some of those climax species that are exceptionally high value—they’re harder to find, they’re slower growing, they need certain conditions—and then filling in around them with rutteral species, or early succession species,” Bastien says. “Rutteral is the German word for rubble, so these are plants that come out of the rubble, plants that thrive on disturbed sites—they’re weak, they’re cheap, they’re fast, but they create a lot of biomass really quickly,” he explains.

Species like birches, cottonwood poplars, and tulip trees grow quickly, retaining humidity to help the rest of the young forest. “One of the benefits we’ve seen with the Miyawaki method is more drought resistance,” Bastien says, “because they’ve got that cumulative humidity and airspace by being compact—that’s its secret benefit.”

While some of the hype around Miyawaki forests may be overblown, Bastien says—particularly their potential for sequestering carbon more quickly—he sees them as an important way to invite nature back into cities. “The urban environment can still be good bird and pollinator habitat for a core group of species that are very important for maintaining ecological balance,” he says.

Every Square Yard Counts

If all of this sounds expensive, it can be—but it doesn’t have to be. After all, seeds are cheap, native plants are eager to grow in your soil without fertilizer or irrigation, and a squirrel will plant an oak tree for free. The choice for homeowners and cities alike often comes down to spending money or time. Bigger, more established plants cost more but provide instant gratification.

Still, Tallamy says, a tiny seedling can catch up to a 15-foot, balled-in-burlap tree pretty quickly. Since the roots of the larger sapling have been severed for transport, the tree will need to spend some time regrowing them, limiting its above-ground growth for several years. “They have to sit there and rebuild that root mass,” Tallamy says. “If I plant an acorn the same day—and I have done this—in 10 years, that tree from the acorn will be bigger and much healthier than the one that I spent a lot of money on. But it doesn’t happen on day one.”

[Caption: This northern red oak, which began as a 6-inch sapling in 2012—presumably planted by a squirrel—has grown 25 feet in 12 years.]

Frisk is now reaping the rewards of his earlier efforts, and each year must remind himself not to go overboard with it. “Once you start to see your hard work pay off, when you see different bird species and different insects arrive, that’s where it also gets a little dangerous,” he jokes. “Because you look at all the monarch butterflies showing up now, and then you want to do more, and you want to do more.”

The first year Frisk started gardening, he converted a 60-foot by 30-foot section of lawn—and injured his back. He advises budding gardeners to take it slower than he did. “Start small, don’t burn yourself out. Because if it becomes a chore, it’s not going to be an enjoyable hobby.”

There are also gradients to any natural restoration project, Bastien notes. While converting a parking lot to a healthy Miyawaki forest takes “a big municipal effort, long-term plans, and some expertise,” there are now enough guides available online that an individual or community group could probably start a small microforest “with $500 and a grudge,” Bastien jokes.

“I’m happy to see people putting in the tutoring to raise a D-grade landscape to a C,” he says, noting that “better doesn’t have to mean perfect.” After all, the goal of both the Homegrown National Park initiative and Miyawaki forests is to let nature takes its messy, magnificent course.

As Bastien puts it, “Perfect is an unnatural idea.”

[Caption: This patch of native plants bordering Hone’s suburban street includes oxeye sunflower, purple coneflower, bee balm, sweet Joe Pye weed, and bugbane in bloom.]

This article is excerpted from an International Land Conservation Network paper.

In 1807, a boy was born by the shores of Portland, Maine, then a rugged port town roamed by sailors. With a grandfather who had been both a hero of the American Revolution and a representative in the United States Congress, and a father who also served in the United States Congress, the boy was taught to revere his nation’s history. At the same time, the richness of nature in his hometown stirred a romance between the boy and the natural world in which he would indulge for the rest of his life. His love of history and of natural beauty led him to own, care for, and venerate a house and plot of riverside property that had once served as George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Best known for his contributions to American literature, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a lifelong steward of the earth, and his legacy is part of an important chapter in the nation’s conservation coming of age story.

Today, Cambridge is known as a city bursting with innovation, culture, green space, and world-class universities. The city’s rich mix of amenities is the gift of forward thinkers, including Longfellow and his family. They perceived the value of open space and local connections to nature, and they foresaw how the city’s rapid growth could fundamentally change the landscape adjacent to the Charles River. As an early conservationist, Longfellow’s love for a bucolic riverfront estate kept a few acres of the city intact and open to the public long after he penned his last words.

Falling for Craigie House and the River Charles

In 1837, Longfellow was rebuilding himself. Two years earlier, he had been traveling across Europe and studying modern language to prepare for a professorship at Harvard University when his 22-year-old wife, Mary Storer Potter Longfellow, died following a miscarriage. In his grief, Longfellow ended his studies in Europe and traveled to Cambridge to take up his professorship. His wife’s body was buried in a plot he purchased on Indian Ridge Path at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown. That now-historic landscape had been dedicated only a few years earlier, the land having been carefully surveyed by Longfellow’s first cousin, Alexander Wadsworth.

Longfellow took solace in the tranquil cemetery grounds. In an 1837 letter to a childhood friend, he wrote, “Yesterday I was at Mount Auburn, and saw my own grave dug; that I, my own tomb. I assure you, I looked quietly down into it, without one feeling of dread. It is a beautiful spot.”

The 30-year-old Longfellow was also taken by a nearby estate, then owned by Elizabeth Craigie, which he called Craigie House. On his first visit he fell in love with the grandeur of the home, the tranquility of its surroundings, and its association with George Washington, who had a makeshift headquarters there during the Siege of Boston. Longfellow wrote of that first visit to the house, which stands on the traditional territory of the Massachusett people: “The window blinds were closed but through them came a pleasant breeze and I could see the waters of the Charles River gleaming in the meadows.” Three months later, he had become a boarder occupying two rooms of the Craigie House, where he boasted to friends and relatives that he lived “like an Italian Prince in his Villa.”

Despite the pleasure he found in his new accommodations, Harvard friendships, and vacations to the White Mountains and the coastal town of Nahant, Longfellow faced persistent melancholy from the loss of his wife. He expressed his sadness, and his hopes for better days, in “The Rainy Day,” which includes the famous line “in each life some rain must fall.” That poem was published in Ballads and Other Poems in late 1841. In the same book, Longfellow offers insight into how the natural environment could bring him profound comfort. The poem “To the River Charles” gives perspective into the long-lasting attachment to the waterway that shaped much of his life, work, and philanthropy.

In the poem, Longfellow references a place

Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee
And thy waters disappear
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee
And have made thy margin dear.

It is likely that these lines refer to his wife’s grave at Mount Auburn Cemetery, which lies less than a mile upriver to the west. The solace he found in his view of the river paralleled that which he found at her graveside.

Thus began Longfellow’s lifelong love for the geography of Cambridge and its surroundings. Over the decades he spent in the city, he was motivated to conserve land for a variety of patriotic, historic, aesthetic, emotional, and health reasons. He adored the Craigie House for its ties to George Washington; its extensive gardens, where Longfellow took contemplative walks; its stately elms that cast shade over the poet on warm days; the sweetness of its fruit trees; and—especially—its views of the river, which brought Longfellow and his family tranquility, comfort, and joy.

Over his lifetime, Longfellow and his family were careful to steward the house and property to preserve its original character. This work led, eventually, to the creation and conservation of Longfellow Park and the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, as well as parts of Riverbend Park and Harvard University’s Soldiers Field athletic complex. Similar values motivated Longfellow’s contemporaries to protect other historical sites in Greater Boston, including Boston Common, the Bunker Hill Monument, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and several extensive private estates, such as the nearby Gore Place in Waltham.

Acquiring and Expanding the Estate

The event that most clearly lifted Longfellow’s spirits following his first wife’s death was the acceptance of his longstanding proposal of marriage by the woman who became his second wife, the young Boston socialite Frances (Fanny) Appleton. It was Fanny, and her father’s fortune, that formally united Longfellow with the Brattle Street property.

After their wedding on July 13, 1843, Fanny joined Longfellow in his room in the eastern half of the Craigie House, which by then he was subleasing from Joseph Worcester, who had leased the entire house from Mrs. Craigie’s heirs. Fanny immediately began to write home about the beauty of the house and grounds and the newlyweds’ love for the place. She more than hinted to her wealthy father, Nathan Appleton, that she might like to own the estate, as well as the surrounding acreage. She wrote to him, “If you decide to purchase this [Craigie House] would it not be important to secure the land in front, for the view would be ruined by a block of houses?”

Appleton could not resist his child’s wish. He purchased the house and the surrounding acreage for $10,000. The house and five acres were presented to the couple as a wedding gift. In the following decade, Longfellow purchased the balance of the surrounding land (approximately four acres on the south side of Brattle Street) from his father-in-law for $4,000. Over the years, the property’s history and its aesthetic and recreational value drove Henry and Fanny—and, later, their five children—to preserve it.

From the late 1840s to 1870, Longfellow continued to expand the property, purchasing adjacent land to preserve views and establish an inheritance for his children. He tacked on an additional 2.26 acres to the four-acre meadow south of Brattle Street and bought a 1.7-acre triangle of land wedged between Mount Auburn Street and the Charles River. He then began to divide the land among his children.

Longfellow’s friends living near Harvard likely approved of his landscape conservation efforts. Longfellow lived within walking distance of many important figures in the founding of the modern preservation and conservation movement in America, including Judge Joseph Story, a US Supreme Court associate justice and a founder of the Mount Auburn Cemetery; Edward Everett, who served in the late 1840s as the president of Harvard University and was a key supporter of the privately funded Bunker Hill Monument, the Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the preservation of Washington’s Mount Vernon estate; Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., whose 1859 poetry commemorated the effort to raise funds to erect the equestrian statue of Washington that was eventually built in the Boston Public Garden; and James Russell Lowell, who in 1857 penned a proposal to create a society for the protection of trees in The Crayon.

Scrambling to Save the Meadows

In 1869, a slaughterhouse was proposed to be built across the river from the house, which threatened to sully Longfellow’s view of the water. Longfellow scrambled to organize a corporation to purchase the lot from under the developer. Within a year, the acquisition was complete. The corporation then donated the plot to Harvard College, with the stipulation that it remain as marshes and meadows, or be used for gardens, public walks, ornamental grounds, “or as the site of College buildings not inconsistent with these uses.” The land was adorned with the name Longfellow Meadows.

The land that Longfellow had been piecing together to leave to his heirs stretched all the way from his house to the north side of the Charles River. Longfellow Meadows, which Longfellow himself did not own, extended the scenic view on the south side of the river. Today, Longfellow Meadows is part of Soldiers Field, the Harvard University athletic complex. While not protected from all development, it maintains some open space and certain facilities, such as the track, that are open to the public.

In addition to conserving the land around his home through private acquisition or with special purpose corporations, Longfellow had an interest in more public conservation efforts. The archivist of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, Kate Hanson Plass, reports that the site’s collections include two prints of the remarkable 1861 photographs of the Grizzly Giant sequoia in California taken by Carleton Watkins. The prints were sent east by Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King and lawyer Frederick Billings, both of whom were transplanted New Englanders with strong connections to literary, scientific, and political leaders of the era.

Prints sent to easterners in Boston, New Haven, New York, and Washington, DC, are believed to have played a key role in convincing Congress to protect western lands during the Civil War era. Abraham Lincoln signed the bill to create a state park at Yosemite in June 1864. Yosemite was the precursor to Yellowstone, the first true national park in the world, which Billings helped to create in 1872. Today there are national parks in nearly every country that is a member of the United Nations.

An Attempt to Save the Elms at Craigie House

The estate’s trees were another special interest of Longfellow, but his love for the property’s old elms caused him mostly heartache. In the late 1830s, the trees were afflicted with cankerworms. Longfellow described the infestation as a plague more troublesome than war, pestilence, or famine. In a lamenting letter to his father, he dreamed of sitting beneath their canopies “without being covered with creeping things, and brought daily like Martin Luther before a Diet of Worms.” Longfellow was desolate and spoke of rallying a “Society for the suppression of Canker Worms” to make “a regular crusade.”

He waged his own war on the pests, tarring the trees in hopes of ridding them of the worms. Joseph Worcester cut off the tops of the trees to try to arrest the infestation, but the effort was futile, Longfellow wrote: “Thus fell the magnificent elms which signalized the place and under whose shadow Washington had walked.”

In addition to honoring Washington’s memory, Longfellow was concerned with his own legacy. He dreamed of his descendants walking where he walked and savoring the same connection to place. In 1843, he planted a row of acorns, from which he hoped great oaks would grow. He wrote to his father, “you may imagine a whole line of little Longfellows, like the shadowy monarchs in Macbeth, walking under their branches for countless generations. . . .”

Longfellow repeatedly campaigned to prevent the City of Cambridge from cutting down trees along the sides of roads to make room for wider streets. Learning of Longfellow’s love for the trees, the children of Cambridge took up a collection to help pay for a special chair to be carved from the trunk of a chestnut tree that once stood in front of the blacksmith’s shop at 56 Brattle Street. This was the tree that had inspired Longfellow to write the line, “under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands” in the poem “The Village Blacksmith.” That chestnut wood chair, which was presented to Longfellow in 1872 on his birthday, now sits in the front study of the Longfellow House.

Stewardship as a Social Identity

With fellow 19th century artists and writers including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau voicing their reverence for nature, Longfellow tried his hand at nature writing, but this flavor of his work never earned the same acclaim as his other pieces. He also enjoyed styles of nature and landscape art that were gaining popularity among his peers. He traveled to exhibitions by the emerging group of Northeast-based landscape painters called the Hudson River School; attended artist lectures; and casually collected pieces in this style.

He was also influenced by his in-laws, the Appletons, who were avid art enthusiasts and may have encouraged Longfellow’s interest in the topic. One of Longfellow’s own pieces of work, “The Song of Hiawatha,” even shaped some of the art emerging at the time. Several prominent landscape painters, inspired by the epic poem, created notable works depicting its scenes. It is important to note that, while the poem is one of Longfellow’s most successful pieces, it is now considered to perpetuate cultural stereotypes and false narratives about Indigenous people.

There was an element of cultural conflict in the conservation movement at the time. A vein of anti-urbanism and anti-modernism ran through America’s mid-19th century elites. Both Henry and Fanny Longfellow wrote of their concern about the houses springing up around them, suggesting they felt protective of their exclusive enjoyment of the area. Similarly, Longfellow’s scramble to have the land across from his home purchased and conserved—not by him personally, but through a newly established corporation—is salted with not-in-my-backyard sentiments.

When a neighbor built a fence in the meadow across from the Longfellows, Fanny wrote that the structure grieved the family “whenever we glance at our lovely river.” Knowing that a house was slated to be built there as well, she lamented, “Is not this very vexatious? Until we came this neighbourhood was left in peaceful beauty, & now there seems a mania to build in every direction.”

Making Land the Longfellow Legacy

Longfellow’s values regarding the property lived on through his six children. To honor their father after he passed, they hoped to preserve a plot along the river as a memorial. When friends and colleagues of the poet incorporated the Longfellow Memorial Association to facilitate this plan shortly after his death, his children donated two parcels to kickstart its work, though they did not serve as members. The goal of the association was to erect a statue of Longfellow as a memorial and designate the land it stood on as a public park, to be gifted in trust to the City of Cambridge.

The children were more concerned with preserving the meadow as open space than they were with the monument itself. Ernest Longfellow wanted the area to be a “breathing space” on the river. He wrote that, as the city continued to grow more crowded, the park’s value as such would only grow and “would be a better monument to my father and more in harmony than any graven image that could be erected.”

However, the vision of the public that the surviving Longfellows hoped to serve may not have been entirely inclusive. As the park was designed and debate turned to the placement of their father’s monument, the children pushed back on recommendations for siting the statue. They worried that the suggested location would be too wet, and that the area was “not frequented by the same class of people” as others.

As a new century dawned, plans for Longfellow Park continued to develop. Upon donating the land, the Longfellow heirs stipulated that a road be built along the lot within five years. In 1900, Charles River Road—later renamed Memorial Drive and extended west along the river—was complete and was lined with plane trees. The Charles River Dam, finished in 1910, stabilized the area’s hydrology. The land was later incorporated into a linear park by the Metropolitan District Commission.

Some of the people involved in creating Longfellow Park went on to make notable contributions to conservation across the region. Charles Eliot, who helped design the park, later founded the nation’s first land trust, The Trustees of Reservations. He also led the establishment of the Metropolitan District Commission, whose first acquisition was the Beaver Brook Reservation in Belmont, Massachusetts, to protect the Waverly Oaks, a stand of 22 white oak trees. Only one of the Waverly Oaks remains, but the park is still home to impressive elder-growth trees, several of which may be much older than the park itself.

In the Care of Alice

Alice Longfellow, the poet’s eldest daughter, was one of only two heirs not to build a house on the estate after it was divided among the siblings. She lived in, and oversaw the upkeep of, Craigie House from 1888 to 1928. (Charles, the other heir who resisted building, was a world traveler with a downtown apartment on Boston’s Beacon Hill.)

Born at Craigie House, and raised in its rooms and gardens, Alice Longfellow had a connection with the home that was, perhaps, even deeper than her father’s and was fostered over a lifetime. The special affinity each of her parents held for the estate pulsed through their eldest daughter. The solemn and precocious child grew into a sharp-witted and capable woman who saw and responded to inequality in the world around her. She was a leader and advocate for opportunities in education for women and people of color and a philanthropist for schools for the blind.

Her political savvy also manifested in her conservation work. Her time as the estate’s matriarch marked an era of particularly lively community use. Alice hired the young and ambitious landscape architect Martha Brookes Brown (later Hutcheson), who refreshed and redesigned the gardens. The renovations restored some of the layout from the days when Henry Longfellow walked the grounds, but also made changes to better lend the area to social gatherings. When Alice traveled, which she often did, the house, porch, lawn, and gardens were all open to visitors. The space was often used for ceremonies, as a play area for children and dogs, as a baseball field, and as the grounds for an annual circus.

As the Longfellow children aged, they thought deeply about the future of the estate. They were concerned that future generations might not be well positioned to care for and preserve it. Alice was particularly articulate regarding these issues. After considering several options for preserving Longfellow’s home, the siblings decided on an Indenture of Trust, established in 1913. The trust transferred management of the estate to the Longfellow House Trust for the immediate benefit of the Longfellow descendants and the long-term consideration of the American people. Alice and other heirs could continue to reside in the house, but if and when they left, it would continue to be maintained.

After Alice Longfellow’s death, the trust became responsible for the estate and its maintenance. In the 1930s, the trust started to struggle financially and began a decades-long crusade to pass the house over to the National Park Service. The Longfellow National Historic Site was finally established by an act of Congress in 1972. It was later renamed Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site to preserve the memory of Washington’s time there during the Revolutionary War.

By the late 1800s, the waterfront had rapidly commercialized. The family parcel closest to the water was bounded by wharves, warehouses, a Cambridge Gas-Light Company structure, and the Cambridge Casino. The city undertook an ambitious riverbank improvement project two decades after Longfellow purchased the triangular parcel that became part of Riverbend Park. Without the family’s stewardship, it likely would have seen the same development that was being built nearby along the Charles River.

A Legacy and a Vision

Though it is only a portion of the property that once flourished under the Longfellow family line, the Longfellow House is—both historically and financially—more valuable than ever. Nestled amidst the built-up Cambridge of today, the house and gardens occupy two acres on Brattle Street, flanked by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a campus of Lesley University.

The grounds are a National Historic Site and look out over Longfellow Park, another two-acre strip stretching from Brattle Street to Mount Auburn Street. Longfellow’s cherished river view has been partially obscured by Memorial Drive, which the city widened over time. Between Memorial Drive and the northern bank of the Charles River, another wedge of land escaped Cambridge’s rapid urbanization thanks to the Longfellow family. Today, the parcel is owned by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. When Longfellow owned the property, it was marshy and prone to flooding. Today, it is grassy with a bank of woody shrubs and trees that thrive in stabilized hydrologic conditions engineered by the city.

Across the river, Harvard University students enjoy a sprawling athletic complex along Soldiers Field Road, thanks partly to Longfellow, who rallied friends and family to purchase 70 acres of the land in 1870 and subsequently donate it to the university. Back on the other side of the river and to the west, the Cambridge Cemetery and the adjacent Mount Auburn Cemetery complete, across several roadways, an arc of green that reaches from Cambridge into Boston and Watertown. With the nearby Fresh Pond reservoir as well as connective bike paths and the green median islands along Aberdeen Avenue, these protected landscapes form an expansive greenway in the midst of a busy, modern city.

The remarkable protected view of the Charles River from the Longfellows’ front parlor helped to frame what might be possible, through private and public action, across the nation, and around the globe.

Lily Robinson is a program coordinator at the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN), a program of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy that connects private and civic sector conservation organizations around the world. She worked previously as a freelance reporter for the Harvard Press and CommonWealth magazine.

James N. (“Jim”) Levitt is director and cofounder of the International Land Conservation Network. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Mount Auburn Cemetery.

The authors would like to acknowledge the remarkably helpful and dedicated staff of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, including Chris Beagan, Kate Hanson Plass, and Emily Levine.

Lead image: The Charles River rolls on. Credit: Artography via Shutterstock.

QUEBEC, CANADA—Two chiefs of Indigenous Nations in North America will accept the 2024 International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) Conservation Visionary Award for their vision and leadership in setting strategically significant global precedents for land conservation.

Mandy Gull-Masty, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) and Chairperson of the Cree Nation Government, will receive the award on behalf of the many individuals who contributed to the implementation of the Cree Regional Conservation Strategy.

Anne Richardson, Chief of the Rappahannock Tribe in Virginia, will accept the award for her leadership in returning her tribe to their ancestral lands along the Rappahannock River and preserving—in perpetuity—their natural and cultural importance.

“It is our great honor to be able to work with Chief Anne Richardson and Grand Chief Mandy Gull-Masty,” said ILCN Director Jim Levitt. “Their leadership, their perseverance, and their diplomatic skills are world class. It is tremendously important that conservationists around the world take note of the passion and skill that Indigenous leaders bring to the field of land and cultural conservation.”

The ILCN Conservation Visionary Award is presented every three years at the ILCN’s triennial Global Congress to exceptional leaders and organizations that have made enduring contributions to land conservation policy and practice. This year’s Global Congress will bring together 250 land conservation practitioners across six continents from October 16 to 18 in Quebec, Canada. The 2024 Global Congress is cohosted by Canada’s leading land conservation organization, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).

Grand Chief Gull-Masty is the first woman to be elected Grand Chief/Chairperson of the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee)/Cree Nation Government. Throughout her career, she has championed her people’s interests and advocated for centering Cree values and leadership in the expansion of conservation lands across Eeyou Istchee (the Cree homeland). Through collaborating with nongovernmental organizations and international platforms, Chief Gull-Masty has effectively conveyed the Cree Nation’s concerns and emphasized the importance of Indigenous protected areas.

Grand Chief Gull-Masty played a key role in the Cree Nation’s collective efforts to protect about 10 million acres (some 4 million hectares) in Eeyou Istchee, the Cree people’s ancestral homeland. The Cree Regional Conservation Strategy is distinctive not only for its scale, ambitious targets for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and sustainable community development, but also for the manner in which it carefully integrates the traditional knowledge of Cree land users, who have lived intimately with the land since time immemorial, and the expertise of Geographic Information System  specialists at the Cree Nation and at supporting organizations such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

“Protecting and conserving the lands and waters of Eeyou Istchee (the Cree homeland) is essential for protecting our Cree way of life. The Cree Nation has been working pro-actively with our partners on building a large-scale protected areas network across the lands and seas of Eeyou Istchee, for the benefit of present and future generations. I am honored to receive this award on behalf of all of those who have helped in making this happen.”

Chief Anne Richardson has served as Chief of the Rappahannock Tribe since 1998, the first woman Chief to lead a Tribe in Virginia since the 1700s. Through her efforts, the Tribe was acknowledged by the federal government in 2018. Her groundbreaking efforts to advance Indigenous-led conservation have been recognized by US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who recently appointed Chief Richardson to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Board of directors.

Chief Richardson’s vision of returning her Tribe to their ancestral lands in the Rappahannock River Valley led her to partner with conservation organizations and federal agencies to purchase 465 acres (about 188 hectares) of their historic town, Pissacoack, along the four-mile stretch of diatomaceous cliffs known as Fones Cliffs. She is now leading an effort to rematriate more than 1,600 acres (about 650 hectares) of Fones Cliffs, the Tribe’s ancestral homelands, and protect them for their cultural heritage and as critical habitat for bald eagles and waterfowl.

“Rappahannock means “the people who live where the water rises and falls,” said Chief Richardson. “We are river people – the Beaver Clan – industrious builders. We view the eagle as a messenger from the Creator, who tells us to heal the land and reunite it with the people.”

These two initiatives are globally outstanding examples of Indigenous-led conservation and conservation through reconciliation, a growing movement that recognizes the importance of the former and the imperative for cultural respect, equality in value, and practice of diverse conservation systems.

“The global land conservation community must help realize the potential of all sectors of society to contribute to land protection goals,” said Chandni Navalkha, associate director of Sustainably Managed Land and Water Resources at the Lincoln Institute. “Indigenous-led conservation is central to achieving equitable, enduring, and effective efforts to safeguard land for its natural and cultural values.”

“We extend a sincere congratulations to Grand Chief Mandy Gull-Masty and Chief Anne Richardson for their inspiring leadership and for receiving these prestigious awards,” said Catherine Grenier, president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy of Canada. “Working in support of the Cree Nation Government has inspired NCC as an organization to work in new ways—to create new pathways to partnership and transform our ways of thinking that reconcile relationships with the land and each other. We hope others will look to you for similar inspiration, and as a testament to the knowledge, commitment and heart-centered leadership of Indigenous peoples around the world.”

Lead image: Anne Richardson, Chief of the Rappahannock Tribe in Virginia (left) and Mandy Gull-Masty, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee and Chairperson of the Cree Nation Government (right), courtesy of the Rappahannock Tribe and Jared Gull

The Land Trust Alliance and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy are pleased to announce that attorney and conservationist Mavis Gragg has been presented with the distinguished Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award at the Alliance’s annual national land conservation conference, held this year in Providence, Rhode Island.

Gragg is co-founder of HeirShares, an organization that delivers comprehensive educational content, data and technology to empower heirs’ property landowners and attorneys dealing with heirs’ property issues. She is a founding member of the Conservationists of Color, an affinity group creating space for practitioners of color within the land conservation movement to connect. Gragg is also a member of the Land Trust Alliance’s Conservation Defense Advisory Council and served on its Common Ground Advisory Council, which laid the groundwork for the Alliance’s community-centered conservation program.

The Kingsbury Browne Award is presented annually at Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference and honors those who have enriched the conservation community through their outstanding leadership, innovation and creativity in land conservation. Named for Kingsbury Browne, the conservationist who inspired the Alliance’s founding in 1982, the award ranks among the organization’s highest honors. Gragg will serve as the Kingsbury Browne distinguished practitioner for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., for 2024-2025.

“The word that comes to mind when I think about Mavis is ‘connector,’ because that’s what she does — she connects people to each other and she connects people to the resources they need to achieve their land goals,” said Jennifer Miller Herzog, interim president and CEO of the Land Trust Alliance. “Mavis came to conservation through people, focusing on family land retention following her own family’s experience with heirs’ property. And in her work, she has continued to put people first with a tirelessness and a generosity of spirit that is unmatched.”

“We are proud and honored to be able to work with Mavis over the coming year,” said Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network. “Her pioneering insight will add momentum to the effort to broaden the reach and scope of the land conservation movement.”

Kingsbury Browne distinguished practitioners engage in research, writing and mentoring, and facilitate a project that builds upon and shares their experience with the broader community.

About the Land Trust Alliance

Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization working to save the places people need and love by empowering and mobilizing land trusts in communities across America to conserve land for the benefit of all. The Alliance represents approximately 1,000 member land trusts and affiliates supported by more than 250,000 volunteers and 6.3 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., with staff in communities across the United States.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide.

Lead image: Mavis Gragg. Credit: Courtesy photo.