One of my fondest field memories is sharing the experience of tasting Fuchsiaflower Gooseberry and Hollyleaf Cherry with field biology classmate Barbara Chung.
The fruit was lovely, but I was even more delighted by Barbara’s knowledge and palpable passion for the plants around us. Squealing with excitement, she whispers their names and looks on with gentle admiration.
I’d soon learn that Barbara was a Renaissance woman of sorts: her professional background, like mine, is in business. She’s also a poet and avid native habitat restoration volunteer.
In this interview, Barbara talks about balancing many passions, her journey into native plants, and how she was able to transform her small urban patio into a wildlife wonderland. Her published literature, including the sweetest California native plant guide fairy tale, can be found on her website.
Jen Ho: Tell us about your professional background and how you became involved with writing and habitat restoration.
Barbara Chung: I do business strategy and finance for early stage, high-growth businesses in the food, beverage and wine and viticulture spaces. I worked in-house in a corporate setting for about 14 years and loved it.
But one of the things that’s always been on my heart was the desire to write creatively. In a good but demanding job, it was just really hard to find the space and the energy at the end of the day to sit down and write. And so back in June 2019, I left that job and started doing the same kind of work on a consulting basis.
JH: That’s wonderful.
BC: Yeah. So I have time to write creatively, and one of the last things I did when I was still at my in-house corporate job was a volunteer day with the local nonprofit, TreePeople. It was a day of doing invasive species removal at Topanga Canyon.
It was actually the night before that my journey into native plants and habitat restoration really began. The LA Times had published an article by Thomas Curwen and a team of journalists about efforts to restore and revive the Tongva language.
Honestly, I didn’t get educated about Indigenous history in school. Seeing this for the first time and understanding how ancient the history of this land is and the tragedy of colonization…it just moved me so deeply. It was heartbreaking.
One of the things the article said was that there are place names around here that come from the Tongva language including Topanga, which comes from the name Topaa’nga, which is the Tongva village that used to sit on the site. I remember reading that article and thinking: Oh, that’s where I’m going in the morning. And I’m so grateful that I learned this the night before because even though I still know so little, when I go tomorrow and volunteer there, I can remember the people who lived there and try to honor them in some way.
JH: What was the experience like on the day of the volunteer event?
BC: The next morning, we go to the Topanga site to remove Black Mustard and Wild Radish — which I always thought were really pretty yellow, white and purple flowers — until some people who actually do habitat restoration work educated me about how much harm those flowers do to native plants and told me I could go remove them.
It was shifting my perspective and realizing that I could do something about it. I’ve always loved being out and hiking, but I would say it was the first time I felt like I wasn’t a visitor in nature, and that I was working with the natural world and helping it. I just fell in love with it.
JH: How has habitat restoration work possibly changed you and your lens?
BC: The idea of how things that seem very different from each other actually relate to each other has been a lifelong concern of mine…and something vital to how I think and how I live and how I make decisions. It informs the art that I make. At the end of it, I think all of my poems end up being about relationship in some way or another.
Understanding more about plants and the natural world and how they form these interconnected relationships with so many different creatures and tie us all together…It spoke to so much of what I cared about for a long time, but in just this massive new way that I hadn’t imagined.
JH: Could you tell us about your container garden and how it started?
BC: So, I live in a townhouse in Santa Monica. I don’t have land of my own, but I have a 7x20 foot patio in the back of my unit and a 2x5 foot small front porch as well. In this space, I’ve got over 200 plants. About two-thirds of them are native.
One of the things I take great pride in is that of those 200 plants, most were free. I grew them from seed or cuttings or they were gifts from friends. The reason I mentioned that is because when I started volunteering in this space, I would hear people say, “You should plant oak trees.” And you know, everyone loves the Coast Live Oak and it supports so many different elements of the habitat. That’s nice, but that also enforced privilege because you have to have a lot of land. Buying plants also adds up quickly.
It sat funny with me. I felt that this is something that is our responsibility, but it’s also our birthright in a way. We connect with the natural world. Can I figure out a way to do this with no land and with as little money as possible?
JH: How did your garden become a certified wildlife habitat?
BC: I heard about some other local gardens and native gardens that were certified as wildlife habitats. I remember thinking that my mom’s garden in Northern California would be a Certified Wildlife Habitat. She’s an amazing gardener. The five criteria are: food, water, cover/shelter, places to mate/raise young, and sustainable practices. As I started looking into it, I realized my garden qualifies as well, but then I thought: What’s the point?
One of my fellow volunteers, Silvia, encouraged me to get it certified and to show other people that they can do it too. And I thought: I love that. I’m not normally a person who likes to talk about what I did, but that makes sense. Because it gives other people a pathway. It could be a gift in that way. And so that’s why I got it certified.
JH: Tell us about some of the wildlife that has come to visit your garden.
BC: One of the things that I learned by having this garden is the animals have their little routines, too. And it’s so dear. I have a hummingbird who shows up every day at 8:30 AM and 5:30 PM. There’s a Dark-Eyed Junco who likes to hop through and pick out seeds. A Mourning Dove pair nested above the garden. I planted milkweed for the first time last summer and saw Monarch Butterflies for the first time in the 15 years I’ve been here!
And it just makes me wonder, in all those cases: How do you guys figure it out? I’m a block north from Wilshire, and it is as urban as it gets. How did you find this? And I’m so happy that you did.
JH: That’s so beautiful. What are the biggest opportunities you see for moving forward?
BC: I would love for people to not feel like they have to leave home and get in the car or ride two hours on the bus to “get into nature.” My great passion is for people to feel that connection with the natural world where they live, and to understand how many beings they share that life with.
It’s those urban and suburban gardens that hold such an opportunity for biodiversity. I read a quote by [American writer and ecologist] Douglas Tallamy who essentially says that these gardens are the “make or break difference” for supporting biodiversity. I absolutely believe that. I also think there’s something spiritual and emotional beyond those benefits — that I think every person does need — that can help people be more of a whole person and be more in harmony with the places that they live.
JH: If you could share something for people who are itching for change but don’t know where to start, what would you say to them?
BC: My great passion is to show that this work is accessible. If even I can do it, you can do it! I’m not going to say “everyone” because having some space is still a privilege — but I think being able to connect with the natural world at home is something that’s much more within our reach than most people realize.
Put a Hummingbird Sage in a pot and set it in your balcony and feed the hummingbirds. Evan Meyer, Executive Director of Theodore Payne, was quoted in the LA Times saying that if you take an apartment building and put one native plant in a pot on each balcony, all of a sudden you’ve got a green building.
There’s no way that one person can save everything, nor is it really our right to do that. But we can look at the space that we do have and realize even the smallest thing that we do — like put a Hummingbird Sage or yarrow in a container and put it outside and see what happens — can help so much more than we realize. It can also heal our spirits and help reconnect us with the natural world around us.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos, unless specified, courtesy of Barbara Chung.
