With more than half a million landscaping businesses existing in the U.S, there is a huge market for clean-cut lawns that continues to grow each year. However, some landscaping and gardening companies, such as Plant Magic in Beverly, have made it their mission to improve gardens, lawns, and other natural spaces by using the native species that are already present, and in a way that is more ecologically conscious, requires less maintenance, and preserves the space’s natural beauty.
“It’s become increasingly obvious that it’s something that humans need to get involved in; we should be stewarding the land. Because of climate change, invasive species are thriving even more than they used to, and native plants are really struggling to keep up,” said Cheryl Rafuse, the owner of Plant Magic, a gardening company that provides garden maintenance and education on the benefits of indigenous flora through workshops, direct consultation, as well as volunteer removal of invasive plants.
Rafuse started Plant Magic in late 2018, originally focused on work with indoor houseplants. However, once the pandemic hit, Rafuse quickly realized that few people would want another person in their home for consultations.
“I had already left my job, so I ended up working for a Fine gardener, which is a lot more traditional. But then I started to take my own [garden design] clients at the end of 2020, because I realized that as much as these gardens I worked on were beautiful, they didn’t really pay attention to the ecosystems and how plants were interacting with each other, and that’s not how I like to garden. And I realized that I knew enough that I could do it on my own,” said Rafuse.
Since then, Rafuse and her team of seasonal gardeners have been working to educate local gardeners about how removing invasives and planting native species can save money and time on maintenance, while creating a sustainable environment that is aesthetically pleasing.
“Even in somewhere like downtown Salem, where people generally have really tiny yards- the bugs and animals don’t just go away, they still want to live in that area. So even by creating a really small pollinator garden, you can be supporting hundreds of species of bees, butterflies, or birds- just by planting these important, keystone species. It’s one of the very few things you can do that has an immediate and obvious visible impact on the environment,” said Rafuse.
While the flat, “scorched earth” type of landscaping where all plants are removed and new, uniform ones are put in, has remained popular, Plant Magic draws out whatever species are already growing and additional keystone species to make gardens resilient, beautiful, and habitable for fauna.
“I encourage people to know about their property, which is a big shift in the landscaping business- from making it feel like all this is a secret for landscapers, to having this be a collaborative process where clients actually understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. Because I don’t want to stop clients from going and doing their own gardening, I just want them to be more conscious of the plants that they’re actually buying,” explained Rafuse.
With regulation of invasive plants only recently being introduced, there are large swaths of nature in Massachusetts where these plants, which were often introduced to the environment by humans, have been allowed to thrive. This is why Plant Magic is one of the growing number of ecologically-minded organizations and businesses that are organizing pulls of invasive plants in local areas with volunteer invasive plant task forces. By removing invasives in these public areas such as the Higgenson Bicentennial Playground in Wenham, groups like Plant Magic, Salem Native Nursery, or the Ipswich Watershed Association are setting out not just to improve the aesthetics and sustainability of a natural space, but encourage others to do the same elsewhere.
“Essentially, the goal of these invasive plant task forces is to create more invasive plant task forces, because this is not something that just one group can handle. There’s not currently a statewide solution to invasive plants, and a lot of municipalities don’t have any idea that this is a really big problem. So the kind of ‘guerilla idea’ of these local, small invasive plant task forces, is to start to make a dent in some of these manmade and disturbed areas where we’ve accidentally introduced tons of invasive plants,” said Rafuse.
The process of identifying, cataloging, and eventually removing invasive species is a challenge that has been largely left to volunteers. The Massachusetts Invasive Plants Advisory Group (MIPAG) was charged by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs to provide recommendations to the state about which plants are invasive and what steps should be taken.
However, with MIPAG being such a small, volunteer effort, there are some invasive species such as the Bradford Pear Tree that have remained unbanned despite their destructive capabilities when planted. According to Rafuse, this tree being banned in Maine but legal to sell in Massachusetts has resulted in huge numbers of the invasive sprouting up as the unsold trees are offloaded to the south.
“It’s really important that we have more bans on harmful plants, because we’re just exacerbating the problem,” said Rafuse. “So doing things like invasive plant task forces, and just educating people at the very basic level, lets the average person know that just because something’s not on the invasive species list doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.”