ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ

Suburban areas have large amounts of greenspace and concrete that contribute to urban heat island effects. Find out the benefits of transforming these spaces into ecosystems for native pollinators!

For more information check out these resources:

• Transforming suburban areas: A marketplace for urban ecosystem services

Transcript

Host: You're listening to the Land Use Podcast, brought to you by the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute.

Oscar: Native pollinator gardens are superior to conventional lawns in terms of the economic cost of maintaining the gardens, the environmental benefits, but also in terms of the social and cultural benefits.

Ana: If we think into how many new houses and new developments are around, we know that there is a lot of space, and most of this space are covered with grass. What if we can bring ecosystem services to the city so suburbia can give this as a way to contribute to the rest of the population?

Host: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Land Use Podcast. My name is Aysha Wu with the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute. Today will actually be our second episode discussing research on ecosystem services. So if you missed last month's episode, I highly recommend you go give that a listen. 

But before we start, I would like to acknowledge that the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ, its buildings, labs and research stations are primarily located on the territory of the Néhiyaw (Cree), Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, Nakoda (Stoney), Dene, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway/Saulteaux), lands that are now known as part of Treaties 6, 7 and 8 and homeland of the Métis. The ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ respects the sovereignty, lands, histories, languages, knowledge systems and cultures of all First Nations, Métis and Inuit nations.

Last time we discussed some of the ways that ecosystem services provide benefits to the environment and society. Today we'll be talking about native pollinator gardens and how they can bring ecosystem services to suburban areas. Researchers Oscar Zapata and Ana Hidalgo are joining me today to discuss their research on the topic, funded in part by the ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Land Institute. Thank you so much for joining me today, Oscar and Ana. Do you want to introduce yourselves?

Ana: So my name is Ana Karina Hidalgo. I have a PhD in Environmental Design from the University of Calgary. I'm also a professional planner and currently I'm working at the University of Saskatchewan as a lecturer in the Department of Geography and Planning.

Oscar: I'm Oscar Zapata. I'm an assistant professor in the School of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan. I'm also Centennial Chair in Community Energy Development. I'm an economist by training. My doctoral degree in economics is from the University of Calgary as well.

Host: Fantastic. Thank you so much. So our last episode on the podcast was actually about ecosystem services as well, which is great. But as a refresher for anyone who didn't hear that episode, or if you want to talk about more specifically how it relates to your research, could you tell me what ecosystem services are?

Oscar: Absolutely. Ecosystem services are all the benefits that we obtain from nature and ecosystems. These benefits can be material and non-material. Examples of that are provision services such as food, water. We also have cultural benefits linked to the enjoyment of nature, for example. Supporting services have to do with life itself and the support of ecosystem services. And also there is another category of services which basically maintain the ecological cycles in nature, such as the hydrological cycle, soil nutrients, air cleaning, for example, as well, CO2 capture. So we have these different types of ecosystem services and, in our particular case, we are focusing on those ecosystem services coming from native pollinator gardens.

Host: How do ecosystem services relate to climate change?

Ana: Well, there are many ways. As Oscar mentioned before, there are many of these benefits. So for example, we are talking about the maintaining of more ecosystem services themselves, so that is vegetation. So the moment that we have more vegetation, for example, we know there are many research that is supporting this, that this will decrease the amount of heat island, for example. So if we are looking into, in our case, for example, having more native vegetation in gardens, or in general in the urban spaces, we are looking into reducing the amount of water consumption, for example. We are looking around reducing heat islands. We are looking into improving the quality of air that is going to be around the cities, reducing pollution, for example. So there are many of these services, cleaning the water, et cetera, that will be related to climate change that definitely we need to adapt to this situation.

Oscar: And probably one additional aspect about ecosystem services, we can compare them with the services we consume on a daily basis. If I go to the barber shop, I can get a haircut, and I pay for that haircut. Ecosystem services are similar in the way that they provide benefits to us, but usually we take them for granted and for free, but society ends up paying the price of depleting these ecosystem services. So in our case, we are interested in looking at the opportunities and challenges to promote these ecosystem services through native pollinator gardens.

Host: Awesome. Thank you so much. For looking at native pollinator plants in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ, could you give me some examples of which ones you would be looking at?

Ana: In terms of many pollinator gardens, there is a huge diversity actually of them, both in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ and Saskatchewan. I couldn't know all the names. There are so many and we have been learning all the way, even trying to grow in our own pollinator garden, but definitely one of the things is that we need a mix. It is important to have this mix because we are looking for pollinators. We need them to have food, to have a place that they can stay, that they can rest, that they can go the whole winter, but they need a variety of them, so a variety that will be feeding them, like having, for example, different blooming around the year. So there are some flowers that are going to start in spring, there are going to be others during the fall, during the summer. So we need to cover all of that. 

We also need to make sure that during wintertime, they are going to have some spaces where they can actually hibernate, depends on the species. So it is important to, for example, leave all the leaves in the place. So actually they can have all of these shelters. So what is important is, depends on the place that we are, is that understanding what is the landscape, what are the native species in that specific place, and try to get them and try to make sure that there is a good diversity for different pollinators, not only one species, different pollinators, but also year-round that they are going to have all the benefits from them.

Oscar: And one of the components of our project was to create a catalog of native plants to the prairies. So we have a list of native plants, their characteristics, and locations as well.

Host: That's fantastic. What a great resource. Moving into your research then, how did you go about researching this topic? 

Ana: When we are looking into urban planning, there are always, like, some very important topics that are always going to be discussed. So in North America, one of the huge topics is suburbia. And especially when we are talking about sprawl, not all suburbia is sprawl, but if we think into sprawl and how many new houses and new developments are around, we know that there is a lot of space. And most of these spaces, especially the front yards, are covered, if it is a fortune, with grass, with the lawn, but in most of the cases now they are only doing by like cement with some kind of these driveways. So of course, heat effects and everything are much more in those places.

So when we start thinking about that, we start looking into all these green areas and we thought, what if we can bring ecosystem service to the city so suburbia can give this as a way to contribute to the rest of the population? And what if we transform all of these lawns, the front lawns especially, into native pollinator gardens? And that was kind of the start of the project, like a couple of years ago. And then we start just looking into how to identify what we need, who will do this, who is around? And little by little, we start kind of finding resources, people that were already working on this, we are not the first to do this. There were already groups, institutions that were already working on this. And, yeah, that is how it started.

Host: And what were your research methods?

Ana: Well, we have a very interdisciplinary research. So we have from systematic literature review. We have some experiments also done. So we have some surveys. We also have some mapping. We work with GIS as well, especially in the first phase. We also have pilot charrette. So we actually have different surveys to try to gather more of the information that we can have, but also from different perspectives.

Host: And who were some of the key stakeholders that you interviewed?

Oscar: So we wanted to involve as diverse stakeholders as possible. So we were interested in knowing the perceptions of homeowners without native pollinator gardens. And as Ana was saying, when we started doing this project, we found out that a few organizations were doing an amazing job at promoting this idea of native pollinator gardens. So partnering with them, we also surveyed homeowners who are more like early adopters of these gardening practices. So with homeowners without gardens, we wanted to know the challenges that they saw to make the switch from the lawn to a native pollinator garden. From those who are already adopters of this gardening, we wanted to know what their perceptions are, the difficulties that they face, the opportunities that they see as well, and also the opinions that they may have about how to promote this in a bigger scale. 

We also wanted to know how people value ecosystem services and the specific aspects of ecosystem services that can be more appealing to people. One of our studies is with university students in Calgary and Saskatoon, just to identify what they appreciate from ecosystem services. So giving them different levels of information, we wanted to know what piece of information motivated them the most to support the idea of having more native pollinator gardens. And with the charrette, we wanted to involve other researchers and practitioners, trying to identify how they see the feasibility of different policy instruments and also their effectiveness.

Host: Interesting. What were some of the key findings?

Ana: Well, we have like 4 different areas, kind of to make a summary. So one is related to what is native species and soil. We wanted to know something about carbon sequestration and what are the benefits in that aspect. So we wanted to do a literature review for that. We wanted at the beginning to have more technical information, but we needed much more years to complete that. So we started doing a literature review and seeing who did what. So mostly there is a lot of comparisons between native plants and comparing to lawn or to any of those mono crops. And sometimes in urban areas, sometimes rural areas and different around the world, we found like many studies. 

But what they found is definitely when native species are around, there are more benefits and especially in terms of carbon sequestration, because especially of the roots, because of all the benefits, because of how much the plants are connecting and communicating. So there are many other things related to plant science, which is not necessarily my area, but there are many benefits in that area. And there is enough evidence showing that there is a benefit in terms of carbon sequestration in native plants. 

Going with this research, we also found that there are also challenges. So one of the challenges we found is concerning people. So one of those are related to the knowledge of native species. So when you go around and say native species, we don't necessarily know what are native species. We are having our own native pollinator garden, but it is still in the process of learning this is a native species, this is not. There are many organizations around also telling you or helping saying, no, this is a weed, this is invasive, so take it out. Or yeah, that is one of the ones that we want to keep. So there is a knowledge process that is not necessarily there. That is one of the problems.

And the other is that once you have the garden, still in the sense of concerning people, It could be this effect of the luxury effect that you may think or perceive that it may be expensive, when actually, because it is native, it's not necessarily more than other gardens in that way, but it is that trying to go and probably go around and show that it is not about the cost, specifically because of the plants, because actually, there is no plants, which is the second problem that we found. It is concerning the native species. There is not enough research to have more native species, to have more seeds, so people can just go and find the seeds. We need to kind of cultivate more native species because it's not easy to find them. So it is all of these organizations found a way to give more plants, which is amazing, but it's not enough. We still need more of those to make sure that we know what are the native species in each of the places that we have. 

Another aspect is pollinators. It's really interesting to see that in terms of how much pollinators we need, we don't need only a few species. We need a lot of pollinators. So we need to have a lot of plants for these different species. So actually we have all the corridors and all of them going year round as I was saying before. And finally the other is about understanding soil health. So all the literature also focusing on the importance of having more diversity, because when you have diversity, the health of the soil is going to be much better if it is only one. And if you have this, of course, we are going to reduce fertilizer, we are going to reduce pesticides, because all the plants are going to do the work in community. So those are some of the things that we found in relation to carbon sequestration and native species. That is a lot about knowing more. We really need more information so people can have opportunities to start with the native gardens.

Oscar: An important result is that native pollinator gardens are superior to conventional lawns and turf grass in any respect, in terms of the economic cost of maintaining the gardens, in terms of the environmental benefits, of course, but also in terms of the social and cultural benefits. And what we have learned is something that I would like to define, like the good, the bad, and the beauty of native pollinator gardens. So across all our surveys and studies with different stakeholders, the good about native pollinator gardens is all the benefits, the cost saving associated to maintaining the gardens, the environmental benefits of ecosystem services, but also reducing pollution from the use of pesticides, herbicides, and products like that. And in terms of health and culture, people enjoy these gardens. They have these emotional benefits, cultural benefits. It helps socializing with neighbors as well. So those are the elements that determine the benefits of these gardens.

In terms of the bad or the challenges for these gardening practices, something that is very clear is the cost of switching from current gardening practices to native pollinator gardens. And that's something that we have heard from both actually homeowners who have adopted these gardens already, but also from homeowners who keep the conventional gardening practices. And part of that explains why we are seeing some cities becoming very active. And probably we can talk about some of the policies and the policy framework that we have developed in a moment. But there are different opportunities for cities to promote this and to help with the cost of switching from the lawn to native pollinator gardens.

And the beauty is given by the benefits that people are getting from the gardens, from seeing nature, being back in the city, insects, pollinators, birds. That is something that we have heard from homeowners with native pollinator gardens, but also from visitors of these spaces, especially in public spaces. That is another group of people we have worked with. So there are all these elements that clearly determine that native pollinator gardens are superior to any other type of gardening practices, especially for suburban areas in prairie cities.

Host: Did you find that perspectives varied at all based on location?

Oscar: So there are some differences in perceptions, not necessarily based on location, but probably based on previous knowledge of native plants. Something that probably characterizes early adopters of native pollinator gardens is their knowledge of native plants, knowledge of the ecology of the prairies as well. But also, you can find people who are only motivated by the environmental benefits that they expect to see from these gardening practices. Or people who are very curious, and they want to learn more, and they engage in novel gardening practices just to have this additional knowledge and apply this knowledge to their own gardens. So there might be some differences depending on previous knowledge for sure. And that's why, what Ana was saying before, the need to inform people more about this, the benefits of these gardens, what a native plant is in a specific location, the gardening knowledge they need in order to start a native pollinator garden, that is also an important element that can be considered as a challenge. Even for homeowners who have already adopted native pollinator gardens, this is a learning process. And they also report that. They are still learning, there are people with these gardens for two, even five, or even seven years but they still report learning about dairy plants, specific plants, and also the functioning of these newly created ecosystems in their properties.

Host: I did want to go back to your policy recommendations that you mentioned. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Oscar: Sure. I can summarize one of the policy implications from our studies in the following way: city residents appreciate the benefits of urban native pollinator gardens. Homeowners with conventional gardening practices are willing to make the switch. And homeowners who have adopted these gardens already, they recommend it, they recommend to make the switch. So then the question is how policy can help promote these practices and amplify the impact of these ecosystem services. So one of the elements of our work was to develop a policy framework. Ana can expand the discussion on this policy framework.

Ana: So for this, we did two things. So one is, again, another literature review, systematic literature review to find out what other policies are around and what things are working in other similar cities, or at least that they are adopting pollinator gardens or something like that. And the other was to make the charrette to know what people make, what decisions that they make, if they have all the information in relation to policy. 

So in relation to analyzing policies or to try to know what are around, we kind of summarize that there are so many policies, so there are some at private level, that is monetary incentives. So probably give you some money or ask you to pay if you don't. So one is this monetary incentive, definitely that could be promoting in terms of the residential level to have these pollinators. The other is regulatory changes that may not imply monetary, but it's something that is going to be a social norm or something. For example, you know that if the grass is some centimeters up, so you have to cut. So there are some of these regulatory changes, depends on what is out there. 

The other is the educational outreach, which is interesting because everyone knows that education can help, but how we deliver it is the key element. And the other is private green infrastructure and weather management. There are some municipalities that are already adopting that at some different level, but that are related to pollinator gardens in this case. And at the public level, we have the public land management. So how the city determine, okay, this is going to be a park and this whole thing is going to be a native boulevard, for example. But make sure that from the land management is working that and another could be related to urban planning policy, but also public green infrastructure again and urban agriculture.

So we have a kind of a summary of all of the literature that we found. We divide into these seven options and then show that to our participants and try to see what they evaluate as the best. So for example, in terms of effectiveness, they said the public land management could be one option. In most of the cases, education outreach is one of the ones that everyone thinks is going to work, but definitely it's a matter of how to do that. There are some practices, for example, in schools where students have their native plants. So they start learning from that moment and they have some classes related to that, like environmental science or something. So that could be something to start working, but it is not only to the kids, because sometimes we leave everything for the kids to do in our future, but actually the future is kind of now. So that is something that we have to think how to do that at a different level to professionals, to probably students at the university. So that is another one. Definitely monetary incentive is one of the things if you give that to homeowners, that is something that a lot are going to say, sure, like if I have to put, I don't know, $10,000, probably if I have some incentives, from the municipality, I can make the switch and yeah, it's going to be easier. So there are these kind of things that definitely can work. Education is always one of those definitely that is always there.

And one of the things that we think for the framework is, okay, we have to know certain things that can work. So definitely one is the scientific evidence. We have to work with the evidence. We know what is working. So a scientific evidence that covers the environment, socioeconomic aspects, but also health in the three aspects that is the physical, the mental, and the social. And that link to planning, when we think about urban planning or land use in definition, but also looking to what is citizen science, the public opinion. What are the perceptions? Because even if we have the others, it is not easy to go directly to public if they don't know the benefits, if they don't know, you don't just give the plant and say goodbye. You have to keep working with them. So, and that could be policies that are also looking to strategies and incentives because, yeah, that is something that we consider could be part of this framework.

Oscar: And that's something we heard from our survey participants, homeowners, city residents, they believe that monetary incentives can be very effective. The budget restrictions to do that is a different question for sure. But something that we have also learned is that in different states in the U.S., cities are paying homeowners to remove the land. And they are basically motivated by the scarcity of water. So it's not a surprise that cities in California or Arizona are being very active, trying to change gardening practices in their cities. And that is just one of the dimensions of the benefits of native plants and pollinator gardens, which is water savings. But we have here in Canada, we also have some interesting examples. Okotoks and Cochrane, they have also policies to promote monetary incentives, to promote water saving gardening practices or landscaping for homeowners. And in some cases, there are cities that they even charge for not doing the right environmental thing. And we have one town in Quebec, Sain-Amable, they charge homeowners with no trees in the front, they charge an annual tax of $200. So those are interesting experiences and I think that can inform a more active policy in prairie cities.

Host: Do developers have a role to play in the adoption of native pollinator gardens?

Ana: Yeah, definitely. One of the groups that we have to work the most is developers in general, because on one side, we know that we want to have a good economic benefit from the land, but we cannot have most of the benefit if we don't think in the future what is going to happen with those living, even living in there. So if I have a house that probably is not that costly because I have less space for the garden or because I don't have to make maintenance of it or something like that. So probably I'm going to take the house and sometimes they do have some of the ideas of yeah, it's not that costly right now, so take it, that is what I can pay, but we don't think like in the long term. And that house in the future is going to have a lot of problems because of the heat effect, because probably you have to need a lot of water for the lawn, because there are going to be other problems that are going to be related to that, and no protection from many other things. So definitely we have to work on that.

So one way is probably those that are going to buy houses, or that are going to rent, is kind of have that pressure that we need to have more gardens because of the benefits. We need to have more trees. But in the other side, developers, it shouldn't be like the 10 per cent or the 15 per cent or something like that is like, this is the regulation, then you add every single thing into that, like even the sidewalk without any green. We should start looking into gardens that have native species and even others considering food security as well. So definitely it should be something to work directly there. So if we are going to develop a new condominium, for example, we should know that there are roofs that can be used for this same purpose, that there are going to be balconies that can use for same purpose, not to mention the back and the front yards. So definitely that should be one of the big groups to start giving all the information and showing the benefits.

Oscar: And something that needs to be emphasized is that from the homeowner's perspective, native pollinator gardens are cheaper than conventional gardens. And from the city perspective, the cost of promoting these gardens is much less than all the benefits that we can expect in terms of cost savings, environmental benefits, but also health benefits and also climate change adaptation.

Host: What would you say are some areas that need further research?

Ana: You see, it's very interdisciplinary. So we really hope that people in plant science, for example, I know that there are already some that are doing the work, but more people take this and start looking into the specific spaces. So we can have like this work for the specific places like for the Prairies, for Atlantic Canada, for the West, et cetera. So really start looking into this specific plants and start growing this so we can have more seeds and more places that we can find the native species and more information of course what to combine with whom, at least at the beginning, because they are going to know later. So plant science is something important that we really would like to find more for Canada, for the prairies.

The other, of course, is definitely people in education probably that can start looking into how to start teaching or giving this information to the different population because it is not only for kids or teenagers, this is for the whole population that we need to learn and to know and to understand that there are much more benefits than the challenges that may imply start working and doing gardening again. But probably if we go back to those times, we are going to have more benefits that we all need. So there are many things that we can do. And definitely in terms of planning, definitely in terms of how we develop the new places, how we design the new streets, how much of space we need from the sidewalk and space for the native plants and space for bio soils and everything that we know is already good enough to reduce the problems that are coming with climate change.

Oscar: And two additional topics there. So we briefly mentioned the culture of the land and the Victorian gardens. If we want to promote the change in gardening practices, we need to understand the motivations and this cultural aspect a little better. And also from a policy perspective, having a more comprehensive monetary valuation of the benefits of ecosystem services at the city level, the cost of promoting these practices, can be appealing and convincing evidence for policymakers.

Host: So unfortunately, we are almost out of time here, but is there anything you wanted to say before we wrap up? Any concluding thoughts?

Oscar: I would emphasize this idea of the good, the bad, and the beauty of native pollinator gardens. There are challenges, but we can address the challenges. There are many benefits associated with these gardening practices, far more superior than conventional gardening practices. And the beauty of having nature back into the city is unique. It promotes health, it promotes socialization, and also this notion of awe that human beings need for their own well-being and progress.

Ana: What I would just think of, this is the time to start working on this. We all know the problems that we are having. Yesterday we were having possibilities of tornado, both in ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ, Saskatchewan, the amount of rain and hail that are increasing. So we really need to change the way we are doing things. And having this is not only a benefit in terms of adaptation to climate change, but also in terms of aesthetics and urban design can do a lot of work in this because that is also well-being. That is also being proud of your city. So that is something that we can start doing.

Host: Great. Thank you both so much for joining me today.

Ana: Thank you for having us.

Host: If you're interested in learning more about Oscar and Ana's research, it is linked in the description below. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can let us know by liking, commenting, and subscribing. You can also follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and sign up for our newsletter from our website, uab.ca/ALI, to stay up to date with all of our latest podcasts, research, webinars, and more. Thank you so much for listening to the Land Use Podcast.