How Ecologically Healthy Is Your Garden? There’s an Easy Way to Find Out.

When Dave Baker and Joanna Hall, the husband and wife founders of Plan It Wild, an ecologically-minded landscape design-build film in Westchester County, New York, began to consider the question of scaling their mission to “rewild America, one yard at a time,” they quickly realized they couldn’t do it with their landscape business alone. Many of the people interested in their work either could not afford the services of a professional designer or lived too far away.

As Baker and Hall pondered how they could scale their impact, their first move step was to run a challenge that anyone could participate in called the Less Lawn More Life Challenge. What started locally four years ago with 80 people in Westchester is now a national movement with 200 partners across the U.S., including organizations like The Audubon Society, Cornell Lab, The Garden Conservancy, and Waterkeeper Alliance. 

Last year, they spun off a new project called Wildr Places. They debuted an online quiz that home gardeners could take to get their “Wildr score,” an assessment of the ecological health of their landscape. After New York Times covered it, thousands of people took the quiz (including us here at Gardenista!). 

Now, Wildr Places has debuted an app, which is meant to act as the hub for the ever-growing Wildr community. “We just keep developing tools and platforms to support the growing movement,” says Hall. “Our goal is to bring this movement mainstream.” I spoke with Hall and Zoe Evans, the organization’s head of operations, to learn more about Wildr Places.

Photography courtesy of Wildr Places.

When I asked what had inspired them to develop an app, Joanna told me, “We debated this quite a bit because there’s a lot of inherent tension in building an app when we’re actually trying to get people to spend more time outside in nature and away from screens. But the reality is, so many people are spending so much time in their digital devices that we felt like we needed a way to meet people where they are.” The app is meant to give them a nudge to go outside and to spend more time in nature. An app also gives Wildr Places the flexibility to tailor the advice and information for each land steward based on their exact location—something that is harder to do with a general website (a challenge we often face here at Gardenista). 

The app grew out of Plan It Wild’s local work. “We wanted a tool that would help us measure our own progress and impact for our local clients. Just by asking people the question, ‘How healthy do you think your yard is?’ we noticed people thinking differently about how they manage it and what they want to do with it.” Plan It Wild teamed up with Vermont Center for Ecostudies and built a manual version of the scoring for their own clients. “We literally had scientists going on site and measuring the size of the trees and spending hours observing the biodiversity,” says Hall. “The response from homeowners was so positive that we realized we had to develop a much more accessible version of this. Not everyone can afford to have scientists come on their property for a half a day,” says Hall.

Now that more than 30,000 people have taken the quiz, Wildr Places has received enough feedback that has informed updates and tweaks to the quiz and app. It’s also revealed gaps in gardeners’ education. Evans says that one of the things they get a lot of questions about is fertilizer. “A lot of people are really surprised that fertilizers are ecologically harmful,” she says. “So we’ve been doing a lot of work to try to make it clearer why and how.” In the most recent update, Wildr Places brought watershed data into both the app and the quiz. “It lets you know the name of the watershed and it shows you a map of it,” says Evans. “Part of all this is educating them that what you do on your own land doesn’t just affect you, it really affects everyone. The fertilizer piece really blows people away because it’s contributing to a nitrogen crisis in our soil and toxic algae blooms in our water.”

Hall says that the quiz has also sparked joy and curiosity from even the most seasoned gardeners, noting that the question about the maturity of your trees inspired some people to measure their large trees. “It was like a game. They ran around and hugged all their trees to measure the girth of them,” she says. 

I took the quiz myself last fall, but I’ll confess I was reluctant to download another app when Wildr Places reached out to tell Gardenista about it. However, once I’d gotten over the hump, I had fun playing around with the Wildr app. Adding the native plants in my own yard required some thinking, ‘What did I have planted?’ It was gratifying to watch the number of supported species climb in the app as I added each one. The app also had the intended effect: It got me to go ID a rogue sapling in the wooded back part of our property. I found myself wondering what plants I could add to up my score. I even pulled out my Wildr “wishlist” at the nursery last weekend.

Another aspect of the Wildr app is that you can share photos of your garden with the community. (Perhaps it’s the beginnings of a garden-centric social media?) “We’re trying to provide more visual inspiration that is anchored to real gardens near you,” Evans told me. I was hesitant to upload pictures of my very nascent garden, but when I saw that no one in my area had posted yet, I decided to flip my profile to public in the hopes of encouraging other gardeners to do the same.

Evans says that they’re also actively looking for plantspeople and ecological landscape experts to join the app’s expert advisory that helps refine the plant recommendations for each eco region. “We’ve only been out for two months, so we need more people,” says Evans. “We need to get the word out.” Calling all ecological garden enthusiasts: Wildr Places wants you!

See also:

• Required Reading: The American Horticultural Society’s New Definitive Guide to Ecological Gardening
• Ground Rules: Lindsey Taylor Shares Her Tips for a More Sustainable Landscape
• 8 Favorites: Gardening Podcasts (2024 Edition)