Scott Smith is an alert “06880” reader, a longtime Westporter and an ardent environmentalist. He writes:
As the owner of a modest Westport home that will surely be torn down once I’m gone, I’ve long read with interest stories about the fate of similar properties around town.
It’s sad to see photos showing strips of yellow police tape and a demolition notice in front of the excavator doing its business – erasing a house that surely held generations of good memories.
Sadder still is to read of all the mature trees cut down and old growth obliterated, often with clear-cut efficiency, to make way for the new McMansion to come.
New construction, on Ferry Lane East.
That’s progress, I guess. Trees are a renewable resource, and I’m sure a new family will be making happy memories in their shiny new home, with its upsized square footage and tax roll valuation. Good for them – and for helping keep our Grand List mill rate enviably low.
But here’s what strikes me about these spanking new trophy homes: After spending 2 or 3 million dollars on the house itself, why are these new homeowners content with a cheapo landscape design that typically consists of a puny row of boxwood shrubs along a Belgian-brick pathway to the door, and a yard of wall-to-wall sod?
These cookie-cutter plots are not just aesthetic wastelands. They are also effectively sterile environments that do nothing to help preserve and perpetuate native plants and wildlife.
So, while I don’t wish to add to the town-wide rules about how to renovate a private property for future use, I suggest the town be more proactive in encouraging developers and new homeowners to have a landscaping plan that emphasizes planting more native shrubs, trees and perennial flowers, rather than a lawn of monoculture grass and a few foreign ornamentals.
A more thoughtful, sustainable approach to landscaping would protect threatened populations of local birds and pollinators, and more of the native plants and animals we like to see. It could also reduce the ruinous amount of toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers needed to keep these mow-and-blow yards manicured, but which poison the ground and pollute our waterways.
Fortunately, there are many resources to help enhance both property values and our shared natural habitat.
Westport’s Pollinator Pathways, a collaborative effort by Wakeman Town Farm, Earthplace, the Westport Garden Club and others, encourages public and private properties to restore or create pesticide-free plant habitats for pollinating insects and wildlife to rest, eat and breed.
Grown close enough together (native bees have a range of about 800 yards) and near larger parks and preserves, pollinator pathways aim to “defragment” the urban/suburban environment so it can support sustainable populations of wildlife.
Aspetuck Land Trust has its own Green Corridor initiative, which invites area gardeners to plant native, switch to organic or zero-emissions lawn care services, and stop using pesticides.
That seems to me a worthwhile goal that all homeowners, new and old, should rally behind.
The passions generated by the besieged community gardeners at Long Lots testify to a strong desire to preserve and protect our existing greenscape.
So too do the efforts of those who spread daffodils throughout the town. Those fetching blossoms each spring — even if native pollinators or even deer want nothing to do with them — are a further sign that Westporters value a collective effort to both beautify and enhance our natural landscape.
Let’s urge the area’s developers and landscapers to join in creating a more sustainable, biodiverse community, starting with the clean slate that comes with each new Westport home.
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