It was my mom who originally made me see how important native plants are for supporting pollinators and birds. We’ve lost 3 billion breeding birds in the US in the last 45 years. One of the causes of this decline is the loss of the insects that birds need to feed their babies.

I learned that for one pair of black-capped chickadees, they need 6,000 – 9,000 caterpillars to raise one nest of baby birds; they need 6000 – 9000 caterpillars. In fact, 96% of American land birds rely on caterpillars to feed their young.

On my walks to school, I noticed that every house was surrounded by non-native bushes and shrubs, such as yews, azaleas, burning bush, forsythia, and rhododendrons. In my town of Belmont, MA, there are 10,000 houses with about 10 shrubs per house. That’s 100,000 shrubs that are NOT providing caterpillars for baby birds, and not helping create that next generation of butterflies, moths, and other pollinators. That’s the equivalent of an ecological dead zone!

What if we could reverse the terrible decline in birds, one house, one street, one neighborhood, one town at a time? We could transform the local ecosystem, making whole communities of plants to support insect pollinators and birds.  All it would take is for each person to do a small thing in their own backyard.

So I decided to invest all the money I have (which wasn't much) into reversing this terrible decline by doing something helpful and hopeful.