“Right plant, right place” is a popular design mantra. But who’s in a better position to find the right place than the plants themselves? And why don’t we just let them?
People often ask me what my garden looks like. It’s not an easy question to answer. What does it look like according to whom? My friend down the street who also plants for wildlife? Another neighbor who killed every tree in his yard on purpose? My naturalist and horticulture colleagues? The spiders weaving their webs in the grasses?
I could respond by describing our patio area that, in a sign of increasing acceptance of native plant gardening, was showcased on the front page of the New York Times real estate section. Or I could talk about the more feral parts of this little patch of land, the places I nurture carefully but don’t even refer to as gardens anymore. If I sense any interest in wildlife at all, I could even conjecture what this habitat looks like from the perspective of a rabbit, a beetle, a bat or a mole tunneling beneath the last vestiges of turfgrass.
Usually my initial answer is more succinct, and perhaps a bit opaque without meaning to be. My garden, I say, is a garden in transition. It’s more like a nature preserve. I don’t control the plants so much as the plants tell me where they want to be. Where a new patch of violets has taken hold by our front fence, I’ve encouraged them, even though it will take a couple of seasons of hand-pulling and trimming to remove the weedy pasture grasses in between. Where the native nimblewill grass has covered the ground under the elderberries a few feet away, I’ve given it free rein, despite its reputation for being brown and therefore “ugly” in winter. Where staghorn sumacs and red buckeyes and walnuts and fleabanes pop up in perennial beds and the waning asparagus patch, they are allowed to make themselves at home, absorbing the light above to cool the earth below.
“Right plant, right place” has been a mantra among landscape designers for years, particularly those promoting native species. It’s a useful strategy, but it has a strong whiff of dominance and control, without even a verbal nod to the original inventors of the concept: the plants themselves. I propose a less human-centric guiding principle, one that fosters appreciation for plants’ roles in finding their own niches in the world: Let plants choose their destinies. In other words, step back, watch what sprouts when you aren’t looking, and have the humility to let it live.
“Right plant, right place” has been a mantra among landscape designers for years. I propose a less human-centric guiding principle, one that fosters appreciation for plants’ roles in finding their own niches in the world: Let plants choose their destinies.
I’ve written and spoken a lot about this subject because it’s the most humane and life-giving way to solve perceived problems in the home landscape: By recruiting volunteer plants, you can fill even large spaces affordably. Those plants are usually happy because they’ve chosen their own homes from the ground up. Happy plants inevitably spread, gradually helping you in your efforts to crowd out invasive vegetation harmful to wildlife habitat. And spreading plants make it possible to share with deer and other nibbling herbivores; unlike in a turf-and-tulip-filled yard, creative garden habitats offer such a riotous mixed buffet that few plants are devoured completely.
The idea of letting plants choose their destinies isn’t new, though it’s typically been confined to the fringe elements of the gardening world. Similar thoughts from some of my favorite horticultural rebels fill the pages of The Gardener Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom, where Michael Pollan asserts that “a lawn is nature under totalitarian rule,” Peter Wohlleben concludes that “trees could solve the problem [of invasives] if people trying to improve things would only allow them to take over,” and Barbara Damrosch advises readers that gardening is easy if you just learn to “think like a plant.”
Last week a surprise encounter reminded me that wildlife gardening also requires thinking like animals — and letting them choose their destinies too. I was transplanting native groundcovers under a redbud tree, pushing aside decaying Japanese stiltgrass trimmings, when I saw a large American toad splayed out near my hand shovel. She was listless and surprised, but she quickly hopped under a leaf and burrowed back into the soil. I abandoned my task, grateful for the perennial lesson from the animals that this is their home too. It’s yet another reason to encourage native plants that show up unannounced at your garden party: Letting nature do more of the work helps lessen disturbance of animals residing in every fallen leaf, decaying stalk or bare patch of soil.
Though it’s a relief to give plants the lead, it’s not always easy to explain the concept to humans indoctrinated in cookie-cutter ideas of what home landscapes should look like. A few months ago, I was surprised when an acquaintance steered a light conversation about travel and art into far left field so he could comment on my “overgrown” property. Had he asked why our front yard looks half-brown in winter or what I’m doing in the corner where the violets are still taking hold, I would have been happy to explain. I would have been excited to tell him about the fritillary butterflies and specialist miner bees who depend on those violets to feed their young. I would have gladly described the way the now-brown native grass shines green in the heat of summer when conventional turf dries up, and how in winter its decaying blades nurture a veritable grocery store of young elderberries, smooth asters and bonesets that will eventually feed countless insects, birds, and mammals. I would have told him that, in just a few years’ time—with patience and continued reverence for the space and all its inhabitants—the methods to my madness will become more apparent.
But he didn’t ask, so I answered his question with more questions: “What does that word ‘overgrown’ mean to you? Who is defining it? You? Me? The lawn care companies? What would the birds have to say about it?” I also wondered silently to myself: If a property filled with plants is automatically “overgrown,” what do we call a community that continues to sprout new highways and shopping centers and houses with two-acre lawns where there used to be meadows and forests? Who is really “overgrown” here?
Sure, I know how to fit in with my human neighbors: Plant things they recognize in a row along the front, grow a hedge or a mowed edge facing the road, add paths and other signs of human intention like a birdbath or a birdhouse, plant in large clumps, and generally make a design that’s “legible” to human eyes. I appreciate those concepts and share them often with people who live in restrictive communities. In the old days, I even employed them with gusto, so much so that a neighbor down the street recently told me admiringly about the front-yard flowers of the “previous owner,” not realizing she was referring to my own first garden.
In a world increasingly threatened by our species’ ever-growing footprint, I’m more interested in impressing my wild neighbors instead. Rather than apologizing to humans for my ‘messy’ yard, I apologize to the plants and animals for all the yards that are too tidy.
These days, in a world increasingly threatened by our species’ ever-growing footprint, I’m more interested in impressing my wild neighbors instead. I care more about what the bees and beetles think, what the birds think, what the groundhogs and snakes and raccoons think. Rather than apologizing to humans for my “messy” yard, I apologize to the plants and animals for all the yards that are too tidy. If we really want to help wildlife, we have to recognize that perceived messiness comes with the territory. It’s time to challenge standards of “normalcy” promulgated by post-war-driven pesticide companies, rather than giving in to antagonizing market forces hellbent on subduing every violet disrupting the bland view of the nation’s millions of acres of turfgrass.
If you’re just getting started, the first step is to go out and find plants you haven’t seen before. Learn who they are by searching or posting pictures on iNaturalist or a native plant society Facebook page or plant identification group. Check out other online resources like Illinois Wildflowers or Go Botany or the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. Make friends with the plants reseeding and volunteering in your garden, and don’t be afraid of them. Use plant tags and online information as a theoretical guide for learning about their cultural requirements, but remember that plants are as variable as we are: A wildflower that thrives in the full sun of a cool Maine summer, for example, might prefer a little afternoon shade in the baking heat of July in Maryland. Watch where plants seed and thrive naturally in your own locale, and they will alert you to their needs.
And when someone asks what your garden looks like, don’t feel the need to compare it to the artificial vision of suburbia that has gained a stranglehold on the cultural imagination. Channel your inner bee, ant, butterfly, raccoon or robin instead, and explain what your garden looks like through the eyes of the creatures making a life in the budding habitat that you’ve had the courage and the heart to protect.
Looking for an Mother’s Day gift? Check out The Gardener Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom, compiled and edited by Nina Pick, or The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife, both from Princeton Architectural Press.
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