Doctors by Nature: Read an exclusive excerpt from a book on how animals heal themselves

We can play a role too. In this chapter, author Jaap de Roode explores how the modern urban garden shapes animal and insect ‘pharmacies’.

Here’s the good news: even by replacing just 10 percent of our lawns with diverse plant gardens, we can boost biodiversity, maintain insects, and provide medicinal plants for our pets. We may even use these gardens to grow medicinal plants for human use, which would help curb the overharvesting of some medicinal plants in the wild, and recreate the natural pharmacies that traditional healers rely on.

These gardens reduce the need for watering, and the insects that they attract can