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FEDERATION
Staff photos by Angie Baan
Af f
Robert Levine repairs his corner of the earth.
Judith Doner Berne I Special to the Jewish News
•
,
• - • •
„
`,
r. Robert Levine didn't spend his
winter pouring through popular seed
and bulb catalogues. He's not plan-
ning to stalk the local greenhouses and
Detroit Eastern Market for the latest hybrid.
His is a different kind of backyard garden.
And it is his alone because "none of us goes out there
his wife, Naomi, says. "We kind of roll our eyes."
"Us" includes sons Jeremy, 19, a freshman at Michigan
State University, and Alex, 13, who attends Hillel Day
School of Metropolitan Detroit.
"He drives miles to Howell to get native weeds:' says
Jeremy. "They're not weeds if you pay for them:' Alex cor-
rects.
"I haven't been out there in years:' says Naomi, who
has had three major confrontations with the poison ivy
that her husband promises he has since "taken care of" in
their Farmington Hills back yard.
The two met at a Hillel mixer at the
University of Michigan."We were the
first marriage of a couple that met at
U-M Hiller she says.
Levine has a mission that
seems to coincide with the fact
that he drives a Toyota Prius
and is part of an organic
farm cooperative: Bit by bit,
•
he wants to repair his small
54
March 22 2007
corner of the earth.
"The idea of repairing things is a very Jewish con-
cept," he says. "Most of us have forgotten what nature
is supposed to look like. Instead, we extol intensively
manicured landscaping as natural.
"We've sprawled out through the suburbs. We've created
an environment that we think is pretty. But what should
be beautiful is what is natural, not an English garden.
"I'd like to reconstruct a forest floor, technically called
an 'oak savannah,' "says Levine, an ophthalmologist with
Henry Ford Health System. "It's an opportunity to give back
a little of what we have taken and to teach our children the
intrinsic value of life around us."
He had a head start with the tall oak trees, native to
Michigan, that line the yard. "A lot of the effort that I
made was to remove the non-native plants',' as well as the
poison ivy, he says. "I'm slowly replacing them with native
plants."
Native Michigan plants are generally considered
to be species that grew here before European
settlers arrived, Levine says. They have
adapted to our environment and don't
require the use of fertilizers, pesti-
cides or extra water.
That contributes to less algae in
nearby ponds and protects wet-
lands and watersheds, such as the
Rouge River, he explains. These
plants
also attract
birds and butterflies.
He frequents an Ann Arbor greenhouse that specializes
in native plants, but most of what he plants has been pur-
chased at the Oakland Land Conservancy's once-a-year
sale on the first Sunday in June. (See related story)
"I bought out a lot of their stock:' says Levine. "I must
have generated about half their budget."
Slowly, he planted them, each with a tiny stake label.
"They're not big, showy flowers. Once they're in there's not
a lot of tending. They don't need fertilizer or heavy water-
ing. It's not my day job to make this garden grow."
He tends to wax poetic. "I grew up with a forest in my
back yard [in Tappan, N.Y., in the Hudson River Valley]
and spent most of my summers playing in it with my
friends. Through the oak canopy, light stippled across the
leaf-covered forest floor, small plants and shrubs flowered
/cyan] Habitat on page 56