Peaceful Yard
Contested Harrisonburg City Council Primary
For a decade we petitioned the City of Harrisonburg for No Mow May. They ignored us. Now, two have arrisen from our midst to take their seats. While we don't endorse candidates, you can send funds to the challengers to even the playing field with the incumbents and ensure a robust discussion of the city's issues.
QR code and link for Nikki Gross.
QR code and link for Kat Hendley.
QR code and link to volunteer.
Activities for kids
Action alert:
The yard which served as the flagship among those inspiring this site was attacked by the City of Harrisonburg in an anti-nature, anti-people rampage inspired by coverage of the incoming Trump administration. This year, the entire neighborhood – once the most desiriable neighborhood in the city for its park-like setting and welcoming diversity of households – has been decimated by chainsaws as residents retreat in fear for their own yards and for the safety of their children. With the neighborhood's brush piles now cut up and "neatly stacked," as Harsit Patel commanded, the songbirds will now be picked off by the Cooper's hawks that are starting their nest nearby and before had to supplement their diet by balancing the rodent population. The change to the local habitats now favors the rodents against the songbirds.
In these times of powerlessness against global and national disasters, we can make a practical difference in the lives of our vulnerable neighbors, human and non-human, by fighting at the city government level to salvage and rebuild so they can have some shelter and security in their own homes, like the little songbirds had in our brush piles. These little nests of hope will be the foundation of turning back the larger threats.
Among the landscape features already on this page that are under threat or have been destroyed:
Delineating with habitat
This yard was part of the inspiration for Harrisonburg's 2018 Tall Grass and Weed rewrite. In the process of defining how to establish that a landscape was "planned, intentional, and maintained" residents were told to delineate with a barricade of logs and branches.
- You must delineate with logs
Frank Hopkins, zoning technician on video from 2019:
and so in that case we had that person delineate that further with logs.
In areas that make sense like that? We're ok with it not being delineated or intentionally maintained or planned with some sort of barricade, or rocks, or sticks of what have you.
The guardians of the yard complied by forming their delineation in a way that also followed the best practices for type of landscape feature that has been called an "ecological treasure."
The interior lines that delimit the slope of 15% or more that is exempt from the tall grass and weed ordinance was delimited with single ceder poles and the side margin, which is under trees, with fast-decaying maple to cover buried utilities, the front is fashioned as a thin version of a brush pile and vine and berry trellis. The turtles, salamanders – including possibly a critically endangered Shenandoah Salamander –, foxes, rabbits, and host of birds and others love it- as do all adjacent and nearby neighbors and presumably the many people who paid a premium compared to the rest of the city – including the nearby exclusive neighborhood with restrictive covenants– to move to the neighborhood since the project really took off.
- Native Plant Ecosystems Blog
brush piles are not just clutter left from pruning or yard cleanups; they serve as essential habitats for wildlife and contribute to the ecosystem’s health. However, these humble heaps of twigs, branches, and plant debris are much more than they appear. They serve as ecological treasures, providing essential shelter, food, and breeding grounds for countless species, especially insects.
- Penn State University Department of Ecosystem Science and Management
The best brush piles for wildlife start with the largest materials (pole-sized logs) at the bottom and end with the smallest materials (small limbs or shrubs) at the top of the pile. The materials are arranged so that the brush pile is raised slightly above the ground. This makes it easier for animals to get under the brush pile and into cover. Placing the largest materials on the bottom of the pile also slows the brush pile’s rate of decay.
- Wildlife Center of Virginia
Placement:
- Choose an area with good drainage, near a forest edge, along a stream or at the back edge of a property, close to existing food sources.
- Isolated piles are not likely to be used, so create three to four different piles per acre.
- Ideal piles are 4-8 feet tall and 10-20 feet in diameter. Brush piles are flammable, so don’t build them near buildings or under trees.
- After a few years of decay, check to see if a new brush pile should be started. Leave the old piles to further compost which attracts more insects, and thus, more birds.
- Harrisonburg Stormwater & Environmental Updates
Date: 07.11.2025 13:30
Leaves, brush piles, fallen logs, plant stems, and flower heads might not be growing anymore, but they aren’t trash — they are natural
Pruning not just to show submission.
Pruning is the measured removal of parts (such as branches, stems, and flowers) from plants. It isn’t done just for shape and style;
When pruning, the basic rule of thumb is that less is more.
Save the stems
- Xerces Society
Save The Stems: How to Create Habitat for Stem-Nesting Bees
Many hollow or pitch plant stems and branches provide excellent places for cavity-nesting insects to call home. Small crpenter bees (ceratina spp.) frequently carve out their nests in last year's dead raspberry (Rubus spp.) canes or wildflower stems, often only a few inches away from the blossoms that provide pollen to feed their young.
Nesting and Overwintering Habitat for Pollinators and Other Beneficial Insects
Retaining and incorporating as many of these features as possible into your landscape (rather than "cleaning" them away) will help attract and support a diversity of bees and other beneficial insects.
Compared to artificial nesting options such as bee blocks and bee hotels, natural nesting habitat features often better mimic the natural nest site density of insects, and also break down naturally with time, limiting disease and parasite issues.
- Harrisonburg Public Works Urban Tree Program
Smaller branches and less valuable parts of the tree are typically turned into mulch, which is then used in city parks and landscaping projects.
Some of the lumber diverted from local landfills has been used to create bee hotels. (Photo provided by Harrisonburg, Va.) A worker cuts a log down to size during the milling process. (Photo provided by Harrisonburg, Va.)
Some of the lumber diverted from local landfills has been used to create bee hotels. (Photo provided by Harrisonburg, Va.) A worker
Jeremy Harold, green space manager, in Harrisonburg, Va., poses at a wooden planter on West Water Street. The city’s Urban Wood Program diverts waste wood from landfills and gives it new purposes. (Photo provided by Harrisonburg, Va.)
Advocacy to Defend Natural Landscapes.
Did you enjoy the lovingly (and defiantly) cared-for natural areas past which Harrisonburg's half marathon or rece to beat breast cancer ran? Help protect them by signing up to: tell Harrisonburg City Council to protect natural yards and urban forests.
Did you see a sign at a People's Day event? Celebrate our win with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. We got a ban of toxic parking lot sealants –the trash you can't pick up. Or our win toward indoor air quality for public schools?
The path to making a culturally sensitive transition in environmental justice neighborhoods includes using the American Climate Corps and Ayana Pressley's Job Guarantee to help those aging in place with "beautification" as the standard of "beauty" adjusts.
If you have a different perspective, e-mail it to bees at peaceful yard.
No Mow May – Every Day: We are the vast majority.
We are grateful to Bee City USA for their colorful signs and valuable resources, but they hold back unnecessarily over concerns about what neighbors will say. Surveys by Plantlife, the originators of the No Mow May movement, the London parks, the Minesotta parks, and Harrisonburg's Building Better Communities newsletter have documented that the vast majority of people (over 90 percent) favor initiatives like No Mow May. While some push back has appeared from the hundred billion dollar landscaping industry, the objections don't stand up to scrutiny.
Leave the Leaves.
The Xerces Society provides another colorful sign for this time of year.
The Xerces Society, which runs Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA, gives permission for this No Mow May sign to be printed. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license.
Non-native is better than turf.
Another question that makes people hesitate to abandon sterile turf lawns is the question of native or non-native plants. With changes to habitats driven by the natural and human factors driving the global climate crisis, habitats that made sense in a place, no longer make sense in that place and non-native pioneers may help make the best of the inevitable transition. The best we can do in most places is resilient naturalized ecosystems with sustainable high biodiversity. Unmowed grass is better than turf lawns, and may be better than some cultivated landscapes. A much better approach than hiring a landscaping company to put in a "native" meadow– something few people can or will do– is that successfully demonstrated by Marlene Condon of simply letting the yard go, intimately getting to know what is in it, selectively adding and encouraging desired plants that make sense in the local ecosystem and discouraging those that are undesirable.
Dealing with Pests.
Pests are animals that are where humans don't want them to be. They don't know the difference between a park, a woods, professionally landscaped shrubs in the yard of an exclusive neighborhood, a naturalized yard, or an abandoned lot. They are animals. They have taste only in their mouths.
Your front line of defense against pests, scaling from your garden, to your yard, neighborhood, city, bioregion, and planet is: ecological complexity.
Make your yard more attractive than your home.
The best way to deal with pests, is to give them a place to live that is more attractive than the place where you don't want them. Don't mow your paper alley. Don't let City Council approve the clearing of woods.
Invite everyone.
If a species becomes overabundant in a habitat, their population will attract predators, and the population that can spill over to the places where you don't want them will be naturally held in check.
Be a considerate host.
Get to know the habits of your guests so you can fine-tune your living spaces to avoid unwanted encounters.
Tips for specific "pests."
Skunks eat wasps and hornets.
Skunks are your best friend when it comes to wasps and hornets. If they come by your property and find a nest they can access, they will eat it entirely. Skunks, as well as opossums, are your friends.
Paper wasps are attracted by sugary fruit. Yellow jackets are attracted by food waste. Both need access to water. Neither is attracted by tall grass and weeds.
If you have to get rid of wasps, use a peppermint and soap solution to kill them, a soap, sugar, and apple cider vinegar solution to trap them and then put up decoy nests and keep a skunk-friendly neighborhood to keep them away.
Garter snakes eat mice where owls and foxes can't.
Garter snakes are harmless and beneficial. They and water snakes are the only snakes you are likely to find in Harrisonburg (the latter in the water). No venomous snakes have been reported in Harrisonburg in living memory.
You can't have Lyme disease ticks without mice.
Mice stay close to home.
Mice travel not more than 50 feet from their nest looking for food and nesting material. They leave trails of urine that are easily spotted by predatory birds so are easy prey if they have to cross open spaces.
What about opossums and ticks?
Field and Stream reported on a single paper by a mathematician claiming to have disproven the conventional wisdom that opossums kill ticks. In an area with a tick infestation, you could expect opossums, which efficiently remove ticks through grooming, to function like tick tubes for reducing population, though not for breaking the link to the white-footed mouse vector. In any event, an animals contribution to the ecosystem is much bigger than preventing Lyme disease. Opossums were benign creatures beneficial to humans long before that disease emerged. And being beneficial to humans in not a criterion for being allowed to exist.
An ignorant resident of a wooded part of Harrisonburg has been using the Field and Stream article as an excuse to illegally trap and kill or poison beneficial wildlife, beneficial in that they prevent other wildlife from getting out of balance and becoming pests to humans, including opossums and skunks.
Rats move farther but are city dwellers. They don't have what it takes to live off the land.
Complexity with appropriate buffers can protect you from the most serious pests.
How do ticks move when seeking a meal?
“In addition, humans effectively reduce the complexity of terrain (by walking on, manicuring, trimming, landscaping, etc.), thereby promoting the horizontal movement of ticks and the likelihood of tick exposure in a short period of time.”
Natural Landscapes: Myths and Facts , from Penn State.
Cutting
Cutting in a peaceful yard involves the right tools for the job. Over time, a peaceful yard will evolve from a scythe, to a reel mower, to a sickle and a pry bar.
A scythe will keep you in compliance until you can overturn your lawn ordinance. You can use it to keep short turf, cut off seed heads to stay below a height maximum, and to seasonally re-set areas to tip the balance from on group of plants to another.
A reel mower can be used to mow paths as a yard starts to transition from turf. Once your establish your paths, deer and other animals will help you maintain them. You can put away the reel mower.
A sickle lets you fine-tune you yard, keeping a path clear and selectively bringing forward individual plants.
A flat pry bar with a rounded end that fits into the ball of you hand is the last stage, for rooting out plants like wire grass that are in a place that would be better for other plants or uses.
Peaceful Yards in Harrisonburg: picture to-do list.
Visit and support the Harrisonburg Parks for Pollinators project at iNaturalist, but stop by here for updated pictures and links as well.