Working Towards the Homegrown National Park

Post World War II homes began to be mass produced using an assembly line like system. There were separate work crews that moved from house to house doing one specific aspect of the construction process. These houses were later known as tract houses, and they made houses affordable to people who had never been able to own a home before.

The image to the right shows a tract housing development in Levittown, New York

Photo: WikiCommons

Tract housing developments generally had no regard for nature. Builders build in environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands, steep hillsides, and floodplains.

"Builders also began to use new earth-moving equipment to level hills, fill creeks, and clear vegetation from vast tracts. The result was more frequent flooding, costly soil erosion, and drastic changes in wildlife populations" (Rome, 18). Photo: WikiCommons

Photo: N. Jump

There is a very large parking lot in this neighborhood and very large open grass space that increase impermeable surface. This green space is central and could have been utilized as a park by the developers but wasn't. The neighborhood’s adjacent park is very contained and mostly surrounded by roadway. Noise from cars and lawn mowers may disrupt people’s experience with nature in that space, blocking biophilic experiences

The houses are very spread out and have large lawns with a lack of vegetation.

Image shown of a similar house is located in Phoenixville, PA

Photo: J. Nowacki

Photo: N. Jump

The homes in the Country Walk development have large yards that do not have much vegatations except for trees along the back. The houses are large single homes with wide roads and driveways in the front of the house leading up to the garage.

House picture is located in West Chester, PA

Photo: N. Jump

The houses on the inside of the cul-de-sac still have big backyards because of the way the properties are spaced, while using that inside space to fit more homes making them more compact. Next to the development there is a public park with a trail.

Photo: N. Jump

“​​In laying out neighborhoods, builders rarely provided green space. In some cases, they argued that families with yards would not need parks.” (Rome, 167)

Photo: WikiCommons

Traditional neighborhood development includes houses, both multi and single family, that are built on smaller lots in close proximity to each other and located very close to the road. Often, a large common open green space exists, with smaller pocket parks built throughout the neighborhood. The garages are also typically in the back of the homes which are accessed by small alleys. The compactness of traditional neighborhood development is meant to promote walkability and community.

Housed pictured located in Ludwigs Corner, PA

Photo: N. Jump and J. Nowacki

“The developers would gain with such a layout because they would spend less per home on streets, land clearing, and utility hookups. The residents would also benefit – by giving up a bit of their yards, they would be able to enjoy a meadow, a hilly woodland, or a creek. Indeed, the cluster layout would turn potential annoyances into amenities.” (Rome, 174)

Photo: WikiCommons

Houses pictured are located in Ludwigs Corner, PA

Photo: N. Jump and J. Nowacki

The homes in New Daleville are built in close proximity to one another with very small yards. Almost no front yard exists as the front of the house opens right next to the sidewalk which is directly next to the road. The garages and driveways are in the back of the houses and are accessed by alleys. There is a large open green space with mature trees and vegetation for community use. Additionally, there are small open green spaces located throughout the neighborhood. The communal green spaces work to promote community and at the same time help prevent habitat fragmentation.

Housed pictured located in Ludwigs Corner, PA

Photo: J. Nowacki

The idea of biophilia is to create an understanding that there is a two way relationship between plants and the people tending to them. Today, many people feel as though they are disconnected from nature because they do not come in contact with it often. Biophilic spaces in cities, suburbs, neighborhoods and yards work to bridge this gap by bringing rich native nature to places where it has been wiped clean.

Photo: WikiCommons

Get rid of the traditional lawn and turf grass and try adding native plants! Not only will the native plants help restore the ecosystem around one's home but they can be beautiful too. The plants will help support native insects, birds, and animals which will likely become regularly visits to one's yard. If home owners in Pennsylvania were to plant milkweed they would likely get common sittings of Monarch Butterflies. Biophilia can be achieved in a yard of any shape or size.

Photo: WikiCommons

Many suburban residences already include areas for gardening, but they are being underutilized when it comes to their ability to foster plants outside of trimmed shrubs and manicured lawns. Our biophilic garden design, seen later in this presentation, is one example as to how spaces like the mulch patches seen in this image can be used to foster native wildlife while remaining aesthetically pleasing. Instead of non-native hedges and shrubs, homeowners can utilize spaces like these by planting native perennials like Milkweed, which provides a breeding space for the at-risk Monarch Butterfly.

Photo: J. Nowacki

Additionally, the planting of street trees and urban forests can foster biophilia in cities. Trees not only provide essential services to the community such as shade and erosion control, but they can be used as a food source for local residents. The Fair Amount Food Forest in Woodford Mansion, has been developed to grow a nutrient-dense and biodiverse set of fruits and nuts that can be used to fed the nearby community.

Photo: J. Nowacki

A large portion of the barriers that Tallamy and Beatley discuss includes aspects of society having “Limited time, busy schedules, heavily programmed lives, and the growing infringement of technology are some of the obstacles” (Beatley 140). Limited time refers to not only adults, but impacting children in their early exposure to the outdoors and biophilic settings from an early age, which is a critical time to build emotional connection to caring for nature.

Photo: WikiCommons

With new technological advancements every year, children are much less likely to be connected with their surrounding environment. “Free Ranging kids are not possible in part because their lives are so much more programmed and scheduled than just a generation ago.” (Beatley 140-141).

Photo: WikiCommons

Another large obstacle is heavily influenced social and societal norms of what lawns and vegetation should look like. Homeowners’ associations see native vegetation and structures for child engagement such as tree houses as looking unkempt or a potential liability issue. “Native landscaping—in either the public or the private realms—strikes many Americans as unkempt or untidy” (Beatley 141).

Photo: WikiCommons

This problem also spreads to residents’ rights to grow their own sources of foods on their property, “Many traditional zoning codes in cities prohibit biophilic activities such as growing food (in one’s yard) and raising chickens, and there is now a movement in many cities to revise these codes to permit such activities” (Beatley 141).

Photo: WikiCommons

This garden not only fosters small-scale habitat growth and ecosystem services like erosion control, but also aesthetic and provisioning purposes. It achieves biophilia by creating a two way relationship between the plants in the garden and the food forest stewards and volunteers tending to them as well as anyone who visits the site. This garden combats challenges to bringing biophilia to suburbs. It provides a fixed place designated for growth of many native species that is contained and controlled enough that it doesn’t look ‘unkempt’, it offers educational experience to eradicate the barrier of fear, and its fenced in area allows a safe space for kids to experience biophilia.

The image to the right shows an ariel view of the Ursinus College Food Forest located in Collegeville, PA.

Photo: N. Jump

This is a biophilic compact garden with biodiversity in species and plant types for pollinators and the growth of non-native edible species like gooseberry. It contains gooseberry shrubs, native flowering plants such as goldenrod, golden alexander, pinnate prairie coneflower, common blue violet, beardtongue, joe pyeweed, cardinal flower, common sneezeweed, beebalm, and bloodroot as well as switchgrass, a native grass.

Photo: the map was developed as a group and produced by T. Holzapfel

“Fear is another significant cultural and social factor that significantly impedes our contact with the outdoors and nature. Some of this fear—what Richard Louv refers to as the “bogeyman syndrome”—seems driven by concerns by parents about abduction,and as Louv argues, we are doing our children no favors by cocooning them away” (Beatley, 142)

Photo: WikiCommons

The garden was designed to appeal to human senses with aesthetic and other sensory experiences. For example, the taste of gooseberries can be a new experience for people who are unfamiliar with the fruit. People who experience the garden will also be visually stimulated by and attracted to the red cardinal flower. We structured the garden to foster an appreciation of the beauty and complexity of native biodiversity and how they provide various ecosystem services including pollinator support, nesting materials, edible components for local species.

The photo to the right shows our own newly planted biophilic garden after our first planting.

Photo: J. Ronzoni

These multi-town homes pictured on the right are located along Park Avenue in Collegeville about a half mile away from Ursinus's campus. They have very small yards according to typical American suburban standards. However, they have plenty of space for a biophilic garden! The garden that we created was 4 feet by 10 feet which is approximately the size of the cars you see parked in front of the town homes. There is plenty of space for these to fit in each and every one of the town homes' backyards.

The image to the right shows a development of townhomes located in Collegeville, PA.

Photo: N. Jump