AGAIN AND AGAIN, as I was reading the recent book “Bad Naturalist” by Paula Whyman, I kept thinking: Good thing I only have a couple of acres of land. Whyman tackled 200 acres on a Virginia mountaintop, dreaming of reshaping it, she writes, into “a native plant paradise, a model of conservation, a meadow that would inspire Julie Andrews to break into song.”
But the natural world often has other things in mind than the ones on our to-do list, doesn’t it? On any scale, learning all the lessons nature delivers—lessons like ones about invasive plants, or about the unstoppable forward march of succession, about the impossibilities of enforcing concepts like control or perfection—are lessons hard-earned, and I talked with Paula, who shared some of her takeaways from years of ecological experiments on the land.
Paula Whyman is an author, including of the award-winning book of short stories titled “You May See a Stranger.” These days she lives in the Blue Ridge foothills in Virginia on the piece of land that is the subject of her latest book, “Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop” (affiliate link).
Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page to enter to win a copy of “Bad Naturalist.”
Read along as you listen to the May 26, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
‘bad naturalist’ with paula whyman
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Margaret: How’s that wild Virginia mountaintop, Paula?
Paula: It’s pretty wild.
Margaret: As I sort of hinted out in the introduction, I sort of identify/commiserate, even though I have this tiny place, with a lot of the same lessons. So it was kind of fun for me—not fun, but I guess misery loves company [laughter]. Some of the lessons are startling ones, I guess, that we learned from nature.
So let’s just have a mini-backstory to set the scene for people. You and your husband were approaching becoming empty-nesters, I think, and you sort of were looking for your next home, and you ended up buying a place that didn’t even have a house, but had 200 acres on a Virginia mountaintop [laughter]. So tell us when did that begin and the little mini-version of the scene setting?
Paula: Sure. Well, several years ago we had been looking for a place, like you said, and we were looking for a house and a small piece of land where-
Margaret: [Laughter.] I’m sorry I can’t help myself.
Paula: I know. Well, my husband is an Eagle Scout and he wanted to spend more time outdoors, and I wanted to be able to plant a big vegetable garden and maybe raise a few sheep. And when I say a few, I mean three, not 300. And I also wanted to plant a small native meadow. When I say small, I mean maybe an acre, because I had been reading about the importance of native plants.
As a kid, I was really into insects and wildlife, and that’s sort of how I came to my interest in conservation and ecology. And of course, I learned from reading Doug Tallamy’s “Nature’s Best Hope,” how important plants are the right plants, native plants are for the wildlife that I cared about. So I thought, O.K., I’m going to plant a small native meadow wherever we end up, and I’ll put my writing shed next to it, and I’ll watch the birds fly around and I’ll watch the flowers sway in the breeze. And it was all very idealistic and delusional. [Laughter.]
So we ended up in this focusing on an area in the Northern Blue Ridge in Virginia, and we were out one day looking at homes and someone said, “Oh, while you’re here, you just have to see the view on top of this mountain. It’s incredible. You won’t see anything around here like it.” So O.K. So we went to this place where first of all, it was August. It was very hot and bright, and there was no road going all the way up to the top of this mountain. There was sort of a gravel road at the bottom. So we parked and hiked about a mile up. And when we got out of the woods, we were sort of in this open area, except it was hard to see because the plants were all over our heads. It was sort of a farm that had been allowed to go to seed for quite a while.
And there were these 6-foot-plus yellow flowers [above, Paula in their midst before bloom; below, detail of yellow crownbeard blooms] that I couldn’t identify because I didn’t really know flowers. And there was just a path that was mowed narrow, just wide enough for us to walk through all of this dense vegetation, while all the bees buzzed around us and all these unfamiliar bird sounds. And we get up to the top and I look out and there is this vast, rolling landscape, some steep slopes—very little flat, some rolling—with all of these yellow flowers as far as I could see, and forested slopes falling away. And I looked out at that, what I later learned was about 75 acres of open meadow old fields, and I thought, O.K, my plan to plant a small meadow seems now very unambitious [laughter].
And my husband had a similar excited response, not for the same reasons. He was looking at it from the Eagle Scout perspective: “I can camp here, I can make trails,” and all that stuff. And in that moment, I basically decided to go for it; that this mountaintop was going to be my project and I was going to bring native plants back here, not thinking in the moment that I knew very little about plants and that historically I’m a terrible gardener. I plant things and they don’t come back [laughter]. So it was not a natural thing for me to decide, but I thought, O.K., no, this place needs my help and I’m going to figure out how to do it.
Margaret: Right. And of course, the first step really that we don’t even realize is going to be the first step—and I experienced it here when I came here 35 or more years ago, to only couple of acres. But a lot of the same things have presented themselves to me over the years that have revealed themselves to you in the book. We don’t know anything about, like you said, yellow flowers. Well, who are they? What are they? And are they annuals, perennials or biennials? Are they native or non-native? We don’t know anything at first.
And we start to learn, and we don’t know about succession. Are those going to stay, or is something else going to come next? And so many lessons. And of course we have the picture in our mind, like you were saying, about, “I’m going to make a meadow,” but even a meadow is not a finished thing. Like, “Oh, it’s done.” [Laughter.] Right? It evolves and changes. So you had to kind of take stock and get familiar, with the state of the place, what was there, the baseline, I think as you call it.
Paula: Exactly. I had to really learn the mountaintop. I needed to learn the topography, I needed to learn the plants. And that was a big leap for me, because I don’t have a background in plants. So the first thing I did was start contacting experts, because luckily there were many resources, nonprofit conservation organizations, scientific research institutes, government agencies that would send people out. They would walk with me on the land and they would point things out to me. And that way I received a crash course in ecology. Really, unfortunately, I learned to identify invasive plants first, probably [laughter].
Margaret: Right, exactly. Exactly. And that’s what I especially wanted to really talk about. And I laughed at one point in the book, you say you sort of renamed the place “Unintended Consequences Farm,” because both from the history of who’s been there before and what they did, and then all the human interventions and so forth, and the efforts that you’re planning to make. And you’re trying to figure out—even once you can identify the invasives and so forth—”Oh, we’ve got to get rid of those.” Well, but, can we really, and which ones are most important to deal with? Do you know what I mean? There’s so many questions, it’s like a triage ward. The questions are just… It’s like, O.K., what’s the biggest emergency? We have to figure that out. We can’t do everything, can we?
Paula: No, absolutely. And it was really playing a game of whack-a-mole constantly. Yes, I would be concerned with something over on one side of the meadow and then a half-mile away, something terrible would be happening [laughter] that I would find out about when it was too late for me to stop it. So for instance, a couple of weeks ago, I have this giant weed wrench, and I spend an afternoon pulling about three-dozen autumn olives that were between 3 and 5 feet tall.
Margaret: One of your invasive woody plants, the autumn olive, Eleagnus. And it’s a terrible invasive because it has makes so many seeds and the birds move them around, and it’s a bad one.
Paula: And they were like so many other invasives, planted intentionally in a lot of places. And they even intentionally planted a variety that would make the most seeds, because they thought that would be a good thing. So that’s what we’re dealing with. But then I pulled those up, and then I walked up the hill and I saw in another spot a bunch of jimsonweed plants coming up where I didn’t know that we had them. So that was going to be a project for another day.
And things like that happen all the time. I can’t do everything. So I do have to prioritize. And I sort of try to deal with things that can be treated directly, like invasive trees, like the tree-of-heaven, Ailanthus, the Paulownia, and then the autumn olive. I try to deal with those because it’s easy to find them. They can be treated once or twice, and then they’re done, although we always have more, right? [Laughter.]
But things like vines I find very difficult, like Japanese honeysuckle, we have that throughout some of the fields. And this is one of the things that I learned in the process of this project, that conservation, at least ecological restoration, was going to be about trade-offs. I was constantly going to be making difficult decisions about what to help when it meant possibly harming something else. So if I try to go through the fields now and treat the Japanese honeysuckle, I’m also going to kill a lot of milkweed [below] and goldenrod and little bluestem. And so I have to make decisions about where and when is it O.K. to do that? And I have a really hard time with that because I don’t like to kill anything good.
Margaret: And I really identify with that, in terms of using herbicide or whatever. And I haven’t really, and now I have in my so-called meadow—which is a small meadow above my house—it wants to be a shrubland now. It’s at the stage of succession after so long of a once-yearly mowing kind of a thing. It was a bluestem-dominated small meadow, a little bluestem meadow. And it wants to be Rubus, and I don’t know whether they’re technically blackberries or what they are exactly. I’ve never keyed them out, but it just wants to be a thicket of Rubus.
And figuring those things out and deciding, well, O.K, what do I do? Do I mow it for X number of years to really discourage the woodies, or do I go to the herbicide? And in that case, it wouldn’t be broadcast spraying, but what do I do? And as you say, there can be unintended consequences. And as you write in the book, we’re constantly having to come to terms with imperfection, aren’t we?
Paula: Yes. That was also very difficult for me [laughter], a difficult lesson to learn. I really thought someone was going to come to me and say, “O.K, first you do this, then you do that…”
Margaret: Right? Like a recipe book; like we’re making a recipe, or we’re building something, and there’s a formula. No, and you also say, having to do with the invasives, that you stopped saying “getting rid of invasives” and started saying “managing invasives.” And I think that’s a very important point, is that once we really dig in and start trying to do some of these things, we recognize that there are limitations, there are literally forces bigger than us at work. And we have to think about the trade-offs, as you’re saying, and what the best possible outcome is, which is not 100 percent, right?
Paula: Yeah, exactly. And I really needed to learn that lesson about the invasive plants because I was kind of letting it take over my life, and my mind. I was having dreams about the tree-of-heaven marching… [laughter].
Margaret: Oh dear. Oh dear.
Paula: Yeah, no, it wasn’t good. And still, I can’t help it when I’m on the highway; they grow along the median, and that’s what I see, Ailanthus everywhere. And of course now we have spotted lanternflies, so it’s even worse that we have Ailanthus trees, but we’re not going to necessarily stop them from coming. We can only manage them.
Margaret: And another interesting thing that you confronted, and it’s something that I’ve confronted here, too, with a different species, speaking of woody sort of “invasives” or things that appear to be invasive: Sometimes they’re not non-natives. Sometimes they’re just pioneer species. You learned about pioneer species thanks to the tulip poplar, the Liriodendron, which is a native tree.
Paula: Yes, exactly. And we have some fields where tulip poplars have tried to take over, and we really are trying to keep those out of the meadow for a lot of reasons. And people might say, well, why don’t you just let it go to closed-canopy forest? But this mountaintop, a large part of it, has probably not been closed-canopy forest for hundreds of years. And its natural inclination is more likely savannah. So we’re trying to maintain as much of it that way as we can. So we spend a lot of time, my husband actually spends a lot of time, cutting poplar trees and also black locust trees. Those are the two pioneers. Sassafras somewhat, but I love the sassafras trees and I won’t cut them.
Margaret: But boy oh boy, when they want to make sort of a thicket, an outcrop, I don’t even know what you would call it, they’re pretty lusty. They’re beautiful. So beautiful. Especially in the fall, of course. Here, the pioneer species—my property is surrounded by state forest—is black birch, a particular type of birch. And at first when I wanted to mow less and less and less, and I stopped mowing to sort of the outer fringes all the way out to the fence, and I sort of let things sow in. I’ve got a lot of native witch-hazel self-sowns and other things, other woody plants, and again, reducing the mowing. And what came in were these young trees. And I was like, “Oh, look, there are native black birch.” And well, the thing is they grow really fast and there’s a lot of them [laughter]. And like you said, with the tulip poplar, you’re going to pretty quickly have a tulip poplar forest, or I’m going to have a black birch forest.
Paula: Exactly.
Margaret: And so that wasn’t exactly the idea, but it’s really hard to edit sometimes. It’s hard to understand that. And again, coming to understand pioneer species, and the idea that in nature—in the succession process—there are these leaders that are at the vanguard, these ones that go out first and mark the territory. Right?
Paula: Yes. I just don’t want, even with native plants, I don’t want a monoculture.
Margaret: Well, exactly. And that’s what I mean, but in the beginning, I didn’t even know what pioneer species were, I mean, I didn’t know anything like that. And when I started to know about native plants, I thought, “Oh, they’re all good. That’s all perfect. They’re on the good side, and then there’s the bad guys.” But again, there’s this fuzzy gray area in the middle where, as you say, right? So we learn these subtle, more subtle, lessons along the way in these experiments that we’re crazy enough to be doing [laughter].
Paula: And I’ve had a similar problem with blackberry that it will very quickly take over a field, and then you have a shrubland, like you were saying. And I tried different ways of dealing with that. We basically have settled on mowing or bush hogging, which is sort of mowing on steroids, but it’s not perfect. It’s going to grow back. And mowing can actually encourage that woody bramble, but I didn’t want to spray it. And that’s what I was advised to do. And I said, “No, I’m not going to spray it because so many bees and animals use this plant. That’s not why I’m here.” I did want to burn it because you can burn woody stuff if you burn in the fall. But the Department of Forestry has been so short staffed and-
Margaret: Here, too. And we’ve had… Last year, we had a drought year, for instance, and so there was no burn season in the fall last year where I am, because of a drought and things like that. I mean, it’s not like you just go do it whenever you feel like it. No, it’s very specifically supervised, especially on your larger scale.
Paula: Yeah. I mean, there is a course that I could take to become a certified burn manager, but I think even if I were to do that, I would not feel comfortable supervising a burn on the mountain. It’s just too dry and highly erodible.
Margaret: That’s big. You call yourself the “Bad Naturalist,” [laughter] and so I want to ask you about that. But I also wanted to say what would be important for gardeners who are transitioning whatever amount of space, because again, I find the same lessons on one-100th of the space that you have; I’ve come across the same lessons you have. And I think it doesn’t matter how big or small the space. What would be some of the standout bits of advice or whatever lessons learned that you would want people to be thinking about as they think about a more ecological approach to part or all of their property?
Paula: Well, I think the first step, at least for me, was to pay attention. Pay attention to what’s growing around you, where you live, and be curious about what these plants do. How do they support the local natural community? And think about is there something in there that maybe isn’t pulling its weight that you don’t really care about?
Don’t get rid of your favorite ornamental, but start small and pick one corner of your yard or one pot if you’re planting in pots or your window box, and plant one native plant that does something that will engage your interests. So if you’re into birds, or if you’re into butterflies, plant a native plant that will appeal to those creatures.
Because it’s so motivating, when you do something like that and you see bees or butterflies or whichever interests you coming to that plant, and you know that if you hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have happened. It happened because of you. So this small thing made a difference. So my whole thing is: Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to make big change all at once. Start small. Take steps and choose something that you really care about.
Margaret: So sort of almost in a way specialize in a way at first, so that you get that sense of connection and success and so forth that you get to observe the change you want to see happen. You hopefully get to observe it happen.
Paula: Yeah. So for instance, if you wanted to plant milkweed, because it would attract monarchs, once you see a monarch there, well also think about planting aster or goldenrods, so that the adult monarchs have something. And then you’ll really have this nice little mini-ecosystem that supports those butterflies through their whole lifespan.
Margaret: So go from that first little nugget of a lesson and expand outward from there.
Paula: Exactly.
Margaret: O.K, so that’s one for sure: to start small and something that you really care about; a focus.
Paula: And I think that that’s sort of when you see that you did something like that, that you made something happen, it’s empowering, and it leads to next steps, it leads to wanting to do more.
Margaret: And you got a lot of advice and help, and you didn’t follow the first person who said, “Do this or do that; broadcast spray the whole place,” or whatever. You didn’t do those things, but you did solicit advice. And isn’t that important, don’t you think it was absolutely valuable?
Paula: Absolutely. I would say definitely investigate the resources where you live, because many counties and towns and states have programs that support planting of natives, even capturing rainwater, all kinds of programs like that. They may start with free advice or they might even partly subsidize the planting of native plants.
Margaret: And there’s organizations like membership organizations, like Wild Ones with chapters all around the country, where you can find neighbors who have first-hand experience in your area, that kind of thing. So sort of networking and getting expert advice I think is super-important, too.
Paula: Yes, exactly. And in our case, the Soil and Water Conservation District also was willing to come out and take a look and give advice, and there’s an organization called Blue Ridge Prism, which even though Blue Ridge is in the name, they get people from all over the world tuning into their webinars about invasive plants.
Margaret: Well, I’m glad to talk to you. I was glad to read the book, and congratulations on that, “bad” naturalist or otherwise. And may the adventure continue; that’s what it’s all about. So thank you for making time today to talk, and I hope I’ll talk to you again.
(All photos from Paula Whyman; used with permission.)
enter to win a copy of ‘bad naturalist’
I’LL SEND A SIGNED COPY of Paula Whyman’s “Bad Naturalist” to one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the May 26, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
