BRING BACK VEGETATION WHERE NEEDED
When your lawn is looking bad or your flowerbed is bare, you seed and plant new flowers. When a natural environment is disturbed or degraded, it may need help too, to regain dense and diversified vegetation that is a representation of a healthy ecosystem. There are four main solutions: spontaneous colonization, seeding, planting and soil transfer. Which is the best? Well, that depends on the context and objectives of the desired ecological restoration. All have their advantages and disadvantages.
Spontaneous colonization
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a perfect flowerbed effortlessly? Similarly, human intervention is not always needed to bring back vegetation back on a site. For example, if a section of forest has burnt down, it could regenerate naturally. Animals, wind and water can transport new seeds. The soil in itself has a gigantic quantity of seeds waiting for the right conditions to germinate. Over time, these seeds will germinate and repopulate the site.
The advantage of this technique is its simplicity. It uses local seeds, which preserves the adaptations of local vegetation. To encourage the natural return of vegetation, we can also provide a little help. For example, in a degraded wetland, we could dig up the soil in certain places and encourage the return of vegetation that likes to be wet. On the other hand, spontaneous colonization is less effective if the site is isolated. For example, an urban forest is surrounded by human constructions and isolated from other natural environments. It can also encourage invasive exotic plant species. The latter would rather need our help to ensure healthy plant biodiversity.
Healthy’s nature, image from Audrey Thériault
Seeding and planting
If you like gardening, you’ve heard of them. These two vegetalisation’s techniques are active. They require thoughtful human intervention. Seeding a site means providing it with new seeds. These can be simply thrown on the ground or carefully buried. Planting involves adding more or less mature vegetation to the site, like tomato plants in the garden. You can also choose to do both seeding and planting, on a site to be restored. For example, you could seed the entire surface of a flower meadow and only plant a few trees and shrubs.
In comparison, planting offers immediate plant cover, unlike seeding, but requires more effort to install. Seeding is also less costly than planting. Both techniques remain expensive, if you have to order seeds and plants from a supplier. What’s more, not all species are available in stores, which reduces the possibilities. Imagine, you want to diversify your flower bed, but tulips are the only flowers available…
Healthy’s nature, image from Audrey Thériault
Soil transfer
Take soil from your neighbor and spread it at home. Don’t worry, it’s not as weird as all that! Soil transfer involves taking a small sample of soil from a healthy natural environment and spreading it in a degraded environment. It’s like a financial investment that will grow overtime. The seed bank and the plants contained in the collected soil will enable plant recovery. If well executed, this approach does not degrade the donor environment.
The advantage of this technique is using local species. Surprises may happen tho; imagine, you plant tulips, but it’s mostly daisies that grow back. There are seeds in the soil that don’t have the right conditions to germinate, so you don’t see these plants in the natural environment. With soil transfer, these seeds can find an environment more suitable to germination. When these surprise species are indigenous, all’s well, but if they’re exotic and invasive, then we’re further degrading the environment we were trying to restore.
Healthy’s nature, image from Audrey Thériault
At home and in nature, we want beautiful, healthy and diverse vegetation. Spontaneous colonization, seeding, planting and soil transfer are our allies when it comes to revegetating a degraded environment. As you work in your garden this summer, think about it, you’re also vegetating in your own way!
Oh yes, let’s not forget the rich ongoing learning process to bring back vegetation! It’s very important to take notes and document your work so you can do better next time. Also, to congratulate ourselves if our efforts result in success, and to let others benefit from our experiments. Let’s sow, let’s plant, let’s transfer our knowledge for the good of all and of nature.
