Growing Wild Without Bugging Neighbors.

• Position: Gardening - Brief Article

When spring begins, neighbors with very different landscaping tastes start spending more time outside. As a result, their relationships may suffer since the difference between a newly established, environmentally correct, native landscape and a neglected, weedy neighborhood eyesore is not universally apparent. "Ecological quality tends to look messy," explains Joan Iverson Nassauer, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor. "What is good for biodiversity and environmental health may not look good, and what looks good may not be good."

Instead of feuding with neighbors who like mown, chemically green, and weed-free lawns, or privately dismissing them unenlightened members of the great "brownlash," Nassauer urges advocates of natural landscaping to adopt a different approach. The editor of Placing Nature: Culture and Landscape Ecology, she has conducted studies with more than 300 midwestern suburbanites to identify exactly what it is about a home landscape in established cities and suburbs, as well as new subdivisions, that makes people realize it is being naturalized, rather than neglected.

Nassauer offers the following strategies for gardeners who want to stop weeding and mowing and return to nature without enraging more horticulturally conventional, chemically dependent neighbors:

* Mow a frame around natural areas as a sign that you are taking care of them and not just letting them go to weed. Whenever possible, make...