To the Editor:
Many people found meaning and pleasure in their own backyard when the pandemic limited their ability to go places, if they were lucky enough to have a backyard. They installed Nature I.D. apps on their phones and read books to learn about the natural world around them. 

When they took the time to look, they discovered the beauty of the plants growing all around them and started valuing those plants that had been there for thousands of years. These individuals saw the folly of importing ornamental native plants from other countries and digging up the native plants that belonged there, to plant exotics.

I have been to the vast estates of rich people of the past who made a hobby of traveling the world and returning with shiploads of treasures from other countries. Among those treasures were trees and plants carrying insects and diseases that had no natural controls here in their new home: They would live to replace the natives here. 

Many grew aggressively and crowded out the native growth. Thus, the native plant movement was born whose purpose it is to put the native plants back where they belong.

As people learned about native plants, they realized they could eat many of them. They relearned what their ancestors knew: The plants that grow in their yard are grown without chemicals and are more packed with nutrition than many sold at the grocery store.

People started learning which grasses, flowers, leaves, berries, and tubers to eat and this activity was named foraging. They started collecting and growing these nourishing edibles and in so doing, created food forests.

It is now apparent to all that modern methods of agriculture serve only the agriculture conglomerates and not their customers. It makes sense that plants soaked in pesticides and artificial fertilizers are killing people, fouling waterways, and killing local wildlife.

People have started preferring food grown the natural organic way. Foods grown organically are grown in naturally enriched soil, so they are healthier and less vulnerable to insects and diseases. Toxic poison is never used.

Instead of miles and miles of the same few crops (monocropping), organic gardening and permaculture strive for biodiversity: The right plants in the right place can help each other to thrive. In this form of gardening, herbs, vegetables, flowers, shrubs, and fruit trees are grown together vertically with more abundant results per acre. These forms of gardening create a haven for pollinators and beneficial insects instead of destroying them.

When people ate from the earth, medicinal herbs were probably enough to keep them in a state of good health. Once people became crowded together and started using hazardous products to wash their clothes, using poison to kill insects on their lawn, eating ultra-processed junk food out of plastic bags, eating poisoned produce and factory-farmed animals kept alive with antibiotics, and drinking water containing all of the above toxins, medicinal herbs couldn’t help them much.

People who are returning to more natural ways of living are rediscovering that nature has designed native plants to make their bodies stronger and treat health issues.

There are signs that people are trying to turn around the destructive and ignorant practices that have been accepted as normal but there is not enough action. Consumers should expect and demand more. 

Business wants to make money and will destroy all of nature to do it. Government goes along with business. We need more constraints on their destruction, not less. When profit-driven corporations kill us it’s bad but, when we buy into it, we are killing each other.

Joan Mckeon

Guilderland

Editor’s note: During the spring and summer planting season this year, Joan Mckeon wrote and illustrated a series of “Plant this Plant” columns for The Altamont Enterprise, highlighting local native plants.