Rebecca McMackin
speaker
328 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 2d ago
Rebecca McMackin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
In the US alone, we dump over 100 million pounds of insecticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers on our lawns and gardens every year.
There just isn't a garden pretty enough to be worth all of that.
And the reality is that it's completely unnecessary.
Gardens and landscapes that are absolutely gorgeous can also help the world around us.
They can provide food, water and shelter to wildlife.
Gardens can and have brought back plants and animals from the brink of extinction.
There is a movement happening all over the globe.
Gardeners, garden designers, landscape architects, even entire cities are finding ways to beautify our environment while making space for the animals we share this land with.
I've seen biodiversity return to one of the toughest places to live on the entire planet, the middle of New York City.
where I cared for, designed and helped build public parks and gardens.
At Brooklyn Bridge Park, where I was director of horticulture, we took these massive, derelict shipping piers out over the water between Brooklyn and Manhattan and turned them into an 85-acre post-industrial public park.
It was designed by MVVA and built out over a decade.
And it's hard to imagine now, but this lush landscape was built on parched concrete.
This is about as appealing to wildlife as a parking lot.
And yet, just a few years after construction, we welcomed migratory birds, rare insects and clouds of butterflies, all among millions and millions of park visitors.
When people go to Brooklyn Bridge Park, they're usually there to play basketball or have a picnic.
They have no idea that they're walking through a monarch habitat or a firefly sanctuary.
It just reads as a beautiful park with lots of butterflies and magical evenings.
And if we can do that in the middle of New York City, amidst all that traffic and concrete, you can do it anywhere.
Indeed, we must incorporate habitat everywhere, immediately, especially in our cities.
Showing 221–240 of 328 · page 12 of 17
← Previous
Next →