Gardenkeeping

The day is done

It’s time to go inside because it’s getting dark and cold. You’ve seen how the fading light can change a garden: those flowers that cheered you up in the daytime begin to look watchful, that tree you like to sit beneath becomes animated and the path that invited you in is now just a warning that asks, “Should you be here?” This place feels so different as the night spreads its shadow.

The night is special

It’s easy to see why our protective instincts kick in when we find ourselves out at dusk without proper light. Colors and shapes loose their distinction and everything appears changed, strange. This lack of familiarity is not generally considered a comfortable place to be. That’s OK, maybe you don’t always need your comfort catered to…maybe nighttime isn’t for you.

Humans are active in the day, making us diurnal. Another quality of being human is how we alter our environment to better suit our needs. Take, for instance, Artificial Lighting At Night (ALAN). In the last 100 years people in the industrialized world have tried to remove our connection to the rhythms of the natural environment by extending the day with the use of ALAN. People were able to be more productive but, even so, getting home at night in the dark was a problem. The amount of energy needed to light up the houses and streets was huge and, even early on, seen as a negative.

This idea to conserve energy led to the eventual implementation of Daylight Saving Time (DST). DST is suppose to make us get up earlier in the spring and summer to take advantage of light from the sun and therefore use less electricity at night. Whether or not this has helped us to conserve energy is a much debated topic. (I know with DST ending last Sunday it’s thrown off my schedule all week and made me feel tired. I thought I was getting sick but, no, just an unnatural change in time!) One thing that is for certain though, the night is increasingly being polluted by light.

You light up my night

When I first heard about light pollution it was in reference to not being able to see the stars. While this seemed like a modern day tragedy, I couldn’t see it as “real” pollution. Then I started to hear about light from screens disrupting peoples ability to sleep. That seemed to have more real life consequences because of the health issues that were associated with it. My view on light at night was still very human centric though.

Stop for a moment and try to consider that the world doesn’t revolve around you. Now think about it rotating through space. This rotation gives us regular cycles of day and night. The Earth’s tilting axis causes seasonal changes by varying the length of time spent in the light or dark part of the cycle. It is this fundamental environmental cue that has shaped the ecology of our world. This circadian rhythm (a 24 hour cycle) of day and night is encoded in the DNA of all living things. That’s why the basic functions and needs have a time of day that they naturally settle into. An example would be how people didn’t “decide” to sleep at night. It’s been built into our programming through evolution.

Not everyone loves the sun

There is an entire nocturnal environment that depends on the darkness of night. Scientists are beginning to study how light pollution impacts the animals, birds, insects, fungi and plants that depend on the darkness for their basic survival activities. I’ve always been drawn to the creepier side of life.

Even as a kid my favorite color was black, I preferred places that looked a little decrepit and my first mentor in gardening was Morticia Addams who gardened by moonlight and cut the blooms off of roses! I remember thinking, “When I grow up I want to have a moonlight garden.”  Suddenly, my future seemed cool, something I could look forward to. Da na, na, na, “Snap! Snap!” Da na, na, na, da, na, na, na, da, na, na, na, na, “Clip, Clip!”

I know not everyone cares about bats and moths and the plants that get pollinated by these night visitors but, you don’t have to to care about light pollution. People need the dark as well the daylight. Remember, it’s a part of the circadian cycle that keeps our minds and bodies happy and healthy.

There are two organizations doing important work to curb light pollution International Dark-Sky Association  and Dark Sky Society.  Check out their websites. There’s a lot of good information about the different types of light pollution, good and bad light fixtures, how to get involved in your own community and even how to talk to a neighbor about their A-hem “bad” lighting.

Now, go forward my minnions, make the night dark again!

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