A World of Discovery: Nurturing Sensory Wildscapes through Creative Land-healing Efforts with Nancy Lawson (December 13, 2025)

Much has been written about landscaping to create a sense of place—and sensory appeal—for humans. But who has a better sense of place than the plants and animals who’ve been inhabited our communities for centuries and millennia? How do they perceive the world around them, and what do we miss when we focus more on the human-cultural sense of aesthetics than on the sensory experiences of our wild neighbors? Conventional landscaping practices interfere with other organisms’ abilities to interact with their environment in hidden and unintended ways. The lexicon we use to describe habitat restoration efforts often reinforces these dynamics. Through science, heart, our powers of observation, and a more expansive language for our approaches to land-healing, we can learn to mitigate these disruptions and create sensory refuges in an increasingly noisy world.

Nancy Lawson is the author of The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife and Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and other Sensory Wonders of Nature. A nature writer, habitat consultant, public speaker, and founder of The Humane Gardener, she pioneers creative wildlife-friendly landscaping methods. Certified as a Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional and volunteer master naturalist, Nancy co-chairs Howard County Bee City in Maryland and co-launched a community science project, Monarch Rx, after discovering a little-known butterfly behavior in her own garden. Her habitat and books have been featured in Science Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Oprah magazine, Entomology Today, Ecological Entomology, American Gardener and on numerous radio shows and podcasts. Her most recent book, Wildscape, received an honorable mention in the American Horticultural Society’s national book awards and was a finalist for the 2024 AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Books.