Native Plant Trust, the nation’s first plant conservation organization and the only one solely focused on New England’s native plants, has partnered with the renowned Woodwell Climate Research Center to share ground-breaking research about how American homeowners in six major metropolitan areas currently shape their yards and what can be done to create spaces that work better for both people and the environment. This research and best practices that come out of the Yard Futures Project are now available to the public in brief articles on the Native Plant Trust website, www.NativePlantTrust.org, which will be regularly updated.

The Yard Futures Project is a collaboration of scientists affiliated with institutions from across the U.S., including Woodwell Climate Research Center, Duke University, City University of New York, University of Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins University, University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, U.S. Forest Service, University of Utah, University of Delaware, Portland State University, Davidson College, Clark University, Masaryk University, University of Vermont and Virginia Tech. The research focuses on homeowners and their yards in the metropolitan areas of Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Phoenix and includes on-site field studies, extensive surveys, and interviews.

The project studies the impact of homeowners’ choices and examines not only how homeowners shape their yards, but also importantly why they make particular choices about lawns, gardens, and maintenance regimes. The project measures how yards influence attributes of residential ecosystems such as plant and insect biodiversity, microclimates, soil carbon and the potential for nitrogen runoff.

The team is publishing most of the project findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals and other professional outlets; the brief articles at www.NativePlantTrust.org present the results in an accessible, engaging way that can immediately be put to use by the public. Christopher Neill, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, is editorial director and lead author for the series.

“Urban and suburban yards now cover huge areas across the US. And more and more people care deeply about making their yards better habitat for wildlife and better providers of some of the services more natural areas provide, like carbon storage and shade that lowers air temperatures,” said Chris Neill. “This project aims to take what we’ve learned from studying yards across the country and put it in a form that homeowners can both understand and translate into things that they can do in their own yards.”

The project receives funding from the National Science Foundation’s Macro Systems Biology Program, which is investigating the causes and consequences of large-scale ecological patterns.