Finding Real Baton Rouge in Anywhere, USA

I grew up in the suburbs of southeast Baton Rouge. I didn't live in neighborhoods; I lived in subdivisions. They had forest-themed names: Avalon, Wedgewood, and Woodland Ridge. Originally, I suppose, they were each near some land that was rather wooded. Small pockets of original forest and clay creeks where I played and whose days were numbered before they, too, became ranch houses, parking lots, or school baseball fields bordered with the usual Asian plant stock. Over time, Baton Rouge to me meant less natural forest and more manicured lawns, more roads, more cars, more chains. More characterless, soulless sameness. By 12th grade and throughout college, Baton Rouge to me was Anywhere, USA.

Anywhere, USA

After graduating from LSU, I received a letter from the Office of then-Governor Foster that basically said "please don't leave Louisiana":

As you know, Louisiana is a great place to live and play, and my goal is to make sure we're equipped to be a great place to do business as well.... I'm asking you to put your talents to work right here and practice your chosen profession in Louisiana.

Around this time, I was phone-interviewed (by the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report) on the matter and was quoted as saying "At this point I hope to stay in the state, but it's amazing how little there is in the state." This was surely a paraphrase as I tend not repeat prepositional phrases like this, but it has the gist. I didn't see anything of value in Baton Rouge other than it's where I grew up. Nature was definitely not in my thoughts, and how could it have been given the state of the suburbs?

A few years ago and many years after my misheard words were scribbled down, I had a career break and began weighing the real possibility of moving somewhere else in the country. At the same time, I had plenty of time available to me to see what all is out there in the humid, soulless city of Baton Rouge, a luxury I didn't have when I was siloed up at my previous computer-centric job. I found CPEX and the Smart Growth Summit, the Downtown Development District, Bike Baton Rouge, Foundation for Historical Louisiana, FuturEBR, the growing Government Street movement, and the newly formed Capital Area Native Plant Society. I was beginning to feel like things could actually get better here.

I had just bought a house pre-career break — great timing — and I was starting to enjoy the freedom of having my own garden canvas. If I wanted, I could leave areas unmowed to see what came up. There were plants there that nobody ever let grow, and they were FREE. Being without an income, I definitely had an incentive to see what they were. I was getting sick of the usual azaleas and crepe myrtles. As I researched these new "wild" plants and others I was buying at nurseries, I realized how many of the species I grew up with in the suburbs aren't even from here. This didn't jive with my emerging sense of place and my wanting to realize that I'm not separate from the world outside my window.

As I was learning plant names and could identify them, I made a list of what I'd seen growing around my new neighborhood. (No longer do I live in a subdivision, thankfully.)

• lots and lots of turfgrass
• azalea
• crepe myrtle
• monkey grass
• philodendron
• camellia
• gardenia
• Bradford pear
• lantana
• sago palm
• knockout rose
• chrysanthemum
• camphor
• tallow
• Chinese rain tree
• ligustrum
• nandina
• cast iron plant
• oleander
• boxwood

Only a couple are even from the Americas (lantana and philodendron), and none are native to East Baton Rouge Parish. (St. Augustine turfgrass is oddly native-esque, but it looks like mostly to coastal areas.) They vary from sterile to invasive to outright toxic. And these are in nurseries and garden centers around the country, being bought and planted in every city. Anywhere, USA, indeed. (True, my neighborhood does have a ton of live oaks and Southern magnolias. I can even see an American sycamore on the next block. But these are definitely a minority of the species.)

As time went on, I realized a lot of those wild plants that were volunteering themselves were also exotic invasives. Chamberbitter is perhaps the worst in my yard. However, when I knew what I was looking for, I also find some natives:

• asters
• Virginia creeper
• pepper vine
• wild grape
• straggler daisy
• spiderwort
• daisy fleabane
• dogfennel
• lateflowering throroughwort
• goldenrod
• viola
• yaupon

But most natives won't just magically appear out of a bird's butt or or float in on a cool breeze, so I have to actively acquire and sow or plant them. And that's where I am now, working to restore my little parcel of suburbia to have Real Baton Rouge growing once again.