A story by Barbara Moss on Peggy Spaeth. This article is also featured in the January 3, 2025, issue of The Ripple.
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Can a ten-square-foot plot of land make a statement? Yes, if Peggy Spaeth speaks for it.
Peggy is a community activist and long-time resident of Cleveland Heights. When she retired, she was stepping down from her position as the award-winning founding director of Heights Arts, an organization that advocates for and supports the arts, artists, and art education in this city. Under Peggy’s administration, the nonprofit renovated a commercial building and created spaces for gallery exhibits, performances, classes, and sales of artworks. They have underwritten an ambitious assortment of public art projects including urban yarn bombing (“Knitscape”), fence decorating around a razed shopping center site (“Fencepiration”), wall mosaics by youth, murals, and an installation of artist-designed benches in a business district.
After leaving this full-time job, Peggy had the opportunity to act on her desire “to live in a park,” though it was not possible in a literal sense. She had met entomologist Doug Tallamy and had read his books Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope. Her conversion to native-plant gardening was already underway, and her backyard, front yard, and even her stretch of the tree lawn–the turf strip between sidewalk and street—became her canvas and laboratory. With no background in botany or horticulture, she learned about plants and was soon able to share her expertise with some authority. Not incidentally, her landscape flashed several very conspicuous messages: beauty, less maintenance, more wildlife, less monotony.
Peggy’s next step was to influence others to join her. She emailed fellow homeowners on her long street to suggest that they create a “pollinator path” with pocket gardens in the tree lawn. Twelve expressed an interest. With a slide show of flower images crafted as the “hook,” as well as lots of reasons for going native, she was able to convince them to follow her example. There were, of course, some tangible incentives. These dozen participants would be making their homes and the streetscape more attractive. They would be doing less mowing. They would be providing food and habitat for birds and insects. Each homeowner got a “Bradford Pollinator Path” metal sign. (Bradford is the road name, not the pear-tree variety!) Partnering in this endeavor, the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes sold summer-pollinator plug packs for $20, an easy and inexpensive way for new gardeners to get started.
Peggy’s neighborhood is typical of its origin in the 1920s: rectangular lots with manicured lawns, foundation plantings, and long backyards with a few specimen trees. How to best create a habitat corridor? Starting small in the common tree lawn was an inspired solution. Participants were asked to use only native species, not to apply any herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers, to avoid dyed mulch, and to allow fallen leaves to remain on the plots. Short perimeter fences would deter dogs and prevent sidewalk users from accidentally damaging young plants.
One additional instruction given to the tree-lawn gardeners was to “dig down” rather than to build a raised bed. The result is that rainwater does not pool on the sidewalk pavement and has benefits to walkers, joggers, and mail carriers and of course to the health of the soil. And, oh, yes, there’s less need to lug out the watering cans or hoses to these little plots.
This initiative certainly enhanced the sense of community, and another intrinsic benefit was the knowledge, in Peggy’s words, “that they were doing something positive for the planet.” Attitudes about nature have changed, too. It’s no surprise that neighbors now regard insects differently. An excited “Oh, there’s a bee” has replaced “Oh, no, there’s a bee!” The gardeners regularly and proudly report butterfly sightings and scan their plants for hungry larvae or a dangling chrysalis.
Sometimes being an influencer simply means making a visible statement and waiting for the curious to come to you. Homeowners on adjacent side streets noticed the change in appearance of their greater neighborhood and inquired about joining. The garden sign was recast as “Heights Native Pollinator Path,” and there was a need for an efficient way for the gardeners to communicate. At this point, one of the neighbors created a Facebook group, which Peggy continues to manage and where her exquisite plant photos provide inspiration. The members of the group, now 1200 strong, host talks, organize an annual sale with four native-plant vendors, and do public outreach with invasive-removal activities at parks.
Although this project seems straightforward, there were legal concerns. When Peggy approached the city regarding regulations about planting in the tree lawn, the planning department told her that, strictly speaking, this project was not in compliance, but that the residents could proceed if they made the gardens look intentional and avoided interfering with utilities or blocking drivers’ sightlines. The city claims they will eventually change the rules, and no citations have been issued.
Bringing awareness of the importance of gardening with natives to her local community is not Peggy’s only crusade, though she is clearly pleased with the success of her tree-lawn project. She is a member of the Friends of Lower Lake, an organization formed by residents of four Cleveland-area municipalities, aged 16 to 83, who meet every Sunday morning to reclaim overgrown, untended landscapes.
Because of this flourishing regional interest in native varieties, there is a greater demand for stock in northeast Ohio, with four reliable sources currently supplying home gardeners. And like Cincinnati Nature Center’s native-plant program, one of these businesses, Meadow City Nursery, specializes in offering local genotypes grown from seeds collected in the wild.
It’s obvious that Peggy Spaeth can recruit people to do good work and empower them with information and gentle training. When asked if she eventually might want to run for elected office, her response is an emphatic No. Why spend one’s limited time dealing with bureaucracy when you can skirt it? This activist has been known to use the expression “guerilla gardeners” to refer to herself and her satellite group of volunteers who remove invasives, pull weeds, and transplant seedlings. They often get the job done without going through channels!
