The Deep Middle

On Giving Plant Advice

3/21/2021

It's that time of the year when social media is flooded with folks posting images of their landscapes -- often trouble spots like under large shade trees, dry corners, and wet low spots -- asking for plants that will do well in those areas. Before you rush to offer advice, try to both educate and challenge the online community to get us closer to true success in such spaces. Usually, people asking for plant ideas are relatively inexperienced and just starting out, so if we suggest the wrong plant they may quickly get discouraged. What is the wrong plant?

One that spreads too easily or takes over.
A plant that withers and dies.
A plant that just sits there, never growing, just subsisting.

And why do these things happen? Because we haven't asked the good questions about the site or the gardener in order to make the most informed suggestions for long-term success and empowerment. Parameters we need to consider:

Ecoregion (not USDA hardiness zone); zipcode works.
Amount of sunlight and at what time of day (sunlight has different UV rays at different times of day, some more powerful than others).
Slope and drainage (on and off site).
Soil type (even a soil test)
Current vegetation (are there weeds that need treating, and / or what are the plants the new ones will need to mesh with).
How the space will be used by humans.
The aesthetic goal (just cover the ground, block a view, prim and proper, wild...).
Management style of the gardener (hands off, helicopter parent...).
Budget

There are more we could add but this is enough for now. Can you see why these are all important factors in creating a successful garden of any size? I know we just want to offer quick advice that makes gardening seem simple, but sometimes simple can lead to unnecessarily hard when we don't stop to think and plan a little bit before exploring plants, plant communities, design, and management. My biggest fear is that the social media advice I run across -- advice that is well intentioned but often not applicable -- will ultimately frustrate gardeners. But maybe asking these questions will, too, making the process seem more like those paragraph-long math problems from junior high. Still, they are necessary parameters to consider and will save us headaches over the long term. So ask the tough questions and get us thinking better.

Culver's root, Veronicastrum virginicum, medium to moist soils in full sun (gets 4-6' tall and slowly spreads as a clump)

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How We Talk About Native Plants

2/17/2021

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In A New Garden Ethic I make the case that any conversation or debate we have about native plants is less about the plants and more about human privilege and avoiding environmental grief; because this is what's really at the core of how we approach the topic, as well as gardening itself, emotions are automatically rich and complex. Gardening is a very personal act, an expressive art, and like the students in my writing workshops, it takes time to learn how to speak to one another about our lives and to do so honestly so we can make constructive changes.

All that being said, I've run out of patience with some native plant proponents who are overly aggressive and hardline in their perspective. Yes, that will sound odd coming from me, someone who will always advocate for 100% native landscapes (please don't argue with me on what native is). The problem is we have folks in horticulture whose identity and livelihood is tied up in seeing plants as either pieces of art or commodities to earn a living from, or both; of course the conversation is going to escalate, it's human nature, especially at the start of a conversation where we all feel like we have something to defend that's intimate. (This is why many equate fundamentalist religion and native plants -- it's easy to feel judged, it's almost pre-built into our pscyhe.) I mean, we can't even discuss renewable energy without hand grenades going off about various socio-economic issues.

I'm never going to mix lots of exotic species into my garden designs, and I'm going to shake my head at overly designed landscapes many times a day, but I also know that even though all of us approach gardening differently (because we all are different), our end goals and desires and concerns are almost always similar: climate change, mass extinction, habitat loss, beauty, resilience, low maintenance, etc.

This is where I want to change how we talk to one another. I wouldn't call it an olive branch, but it's something I've learned talking about climate change: first you have to listen and find points of agreement before you can delve into the issues you see causing problems. A good pun doesn't hurt.

How can we discuss native plants without getting red hot in three seconds? By asking questions where we can find common ground in our own experiences and stories:

1) "Ok, we clearly don't agree about native plant percentages in a designed garden. Let's put that aside. What wildlife do you enjoy seeing in your garden?"
2) "Why do you like to garden? Why does it matter to you?"
3) "What can we do to address climate change and mass extinction in our private gardens, and then perhaps further out into our neighborhoods?"
4) "You love your heirloom daylily collection? Cool. No one's asking you to rip it out. But how can we increase ecosystem function with them? Maybe a ground layer of sedge, purple poppy mallow, or geranium. Maybe late-season flowering perennials that can help cover up the daylily foliage that gets ratty by late summer."

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Low Maintenance Garden Myths

2/11/2021

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Native plants are not low maintenance. You're likely to hear from folks that they are -- that just using natives means you can stand back and let the magic happen.

Your garden is STILL a garden -- an unnatural space that has little resemblance to what your natives plants evolved with in the wild. We're not only talking soil microbes but plant competition above and below ground, not to mention a host of other disturbances that constantly help shift plant communities from year to year and create dynamic stability. Your garden is a pampered space by default simply because 20 plants aren't trying to exist in the same square foot. Your garden needs tending -- but the tending will look different than the regimented, joyless slog that commercials suggest is necessary.

What does low maintenance mean?

1) It does not mean no maintenance.

2) Plants carefully researched to suit the site (soil, sun, slope).

3) Plants carefully researched to match one another in a dynamic community. This means considering seasonal and annual succession, root habit, above ground habit, etc. For more, see our online class "Fundamentals of Garden Layers."

4) Less weeding because you used way, way more plants than a traditional garden -- we're talking plugs on 6-12" centers, perhaps even combined with seeding a green mulch around them. Plus, you count on and want the plants to reproduce to give you more plants for even more ecosystem function.

5) Less watering because you matched plants to the site and to one another. So plants that like it dry are placed in dry conditions, plants that like it moist are placed in moist conditions, etc. The knowledge required goes well beyond a simple plant tag.

6) Plants that don't spread aggressively where you don't want them, creating a monoculture. This means you have to research the plants to know something about their behavior such as: how they propagate, how easily they propagate, in what site conditions, etc.

And the big one....

7) Low maintenance is also about a shift in perception to accepting that plant composition changes over time and we want that. Plants are not marble statues that never move and always look the same. Plants move, proliferate, diminish, self organize, and generally show us what and where they want to be. The problem is in traditional design and horticulture we treat plants like collector items and gardens like canvases, when plants are living organisms interacting often unpredictably with other living organisms, and we are simply managers. How we manage a garden dictates how much maintenance we feel a garden requires.

For example, if you believe plants should never spread and are constantly yanking seedlings, you may think the garden is high maintenance; same goes if you put a moisture-loving plant on a sandy slope and discover you have to water it every two days. Management is different than maintenance. In management we don't obsess over every plant or detail in a bed (no helicopter parenting), but let the plants guide the conversation a little bit more; we can let the plants lead because we researched the plants heavily before installation and studied wild plant communities and understand what they will do in the years to come. Obviously, every garden space is different and we can't predict with 100% accuracy what plants will do in that specific space, but the more knowledge you bring to the table the less maintenance you'll do. Instead, you'll be managing, learning from the plants with patience over the years, never assuming the garden or gardener is a failure if a plant performs in a way you didn't desire it to perform.

Gardens need tending. Even a lush, layered, natural garden using native plants in similar communities that are found in the wild. They shouldn't need fertilizing, watering, annual mulching, heavy weeding, or chemical spraying if you're planting them considering natural layers. But they will need management because things happen: storms, late freezes, voles, extreme drought, extreme flooding, natural lifespan, etc. You'll likely need to mow the space down every spring vs every week if it were lawn -- that is less maintenance off the bat, but not no maintenance. You'll need to thin, add, and replace -- but not constantly and maybe just once a year.

Maintenance tends to be joyless and soul sucking, a battle of wit and will; management is giving up some level of control and tending the space when it tells you it needs it. In this way management is a constant surprise that some may find challenging, and others inspiring and in sync with their own rhythm. If you can get to a place where plants are co-conspirators in habitat and design revival, then maintenance will never exist for you.

Coreopsis tripteris can reach 7 feet tall and spread aggressively by runners in loam (not so in clay). Careful placement and research to inform expectations will dictate "maintenance."

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Questions on the Mt. Cuba Coneflower Trials and Pollinators

2/1/2021

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I've written and erased a version of this post several times the last week trying to get the ideas down right -- this is a complex topic. Ultimately, I just want to ask questions and express some concerns I've not seen addressed elsewhere in my professional circle and see where it leads us (hopefully, somewhere helpful).

I'll say two things first: 1) I'd rather see a garden of coneflower cultivars than lawn or daylilies and 2) I have intense respect for the work Mt. Cuba does. We'd be in the dark without Mt. Cuba, yet this trial is just one preliminary, necessary step forward and not a final clear-cut answer.

If you don't know, the Echinacea trial evaluated coneflowers in the mid-Atlantic based primarily on garden performance -- how the plants grew, looked, and lasted. However, one issue regarding pollinators really stands out to me: the trial noted the number of adult pollinators visiting the blooms of cultivars, and used this to say which would be of best value to adult pollinators. This doesn't fly (pun intended) for a few reasons:

1) What species were visiting the blooms and how were they using the blooms? Until we have these answers we can't even begin to understand value or benefit or what's occurring in the ecosystem. There are nuances to nectar and pollen use, as well as life cycles and habits of various pollinator species, that help us get a much more complete picture of what's going on. I'd also like to know what pollinator species were showing floral fidelity.

2) What is the chemical and nutritional make up of the nectar and pollen? What amino acids (nectar) are being provided and what's the protein content (pollen)? Sure, it may very well be a cultivar is providing something a straight species can't -- or vice versa. There's also the nuance of these things being affected by climate, ecoregion, etc.

3) What's happening to UV markings on petals that plants use to communicate with adult pollinators? What about aromas? What about electromagnetic fields?

4) Tallamy's study a few years back on woody cultivar larval hosts indicated that changes to leaf color (leaf color effects larval host ability), specifically purple, greatly reduces larvae -- whereas variegation doesn't. Dr. Annie White looked at adult pollinators and flowers (species and cultivars) on herbaceous perennials and found mixed results on her preliminary study, but species plants had the edge. We know double-flowered coneflowers are terrible. However, I still wonder if, by selecting over and over for one trait (bloom color), we're creating a loss of genetic diversity that may translate into increased chances for something to be amiss in the foliage for larvae.

There's still so much we don't understand, especially on a region by region basis. Certainly, I also don't want to see these cultivars placed anywhere near remnant ecosystems that harbor straight species Echinacea, either (which would be my house). To fully understand the above issues will require a significant amount of resources we probably won't ever have; but I think it's as problematic for folks to say something like "see, when we manipulate plants it's all good and may even be better for wildlife" as it is for someone like me to say "we should always use straight species natives no matter what everywhere, every time, period."

And I still believe we can't have this conversation without also considering how we manipulate plants for commercial gain and / or to please the aesthetic desire of one dominate species, along with the messy ethical implications behind human supremacy that readily colonizes plant culture. But I wrote a book on that.

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Fundamentals of Natural Garden Design

1/26/2021

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I believe there are a few critical choices that gardeners must practice if they want their native plant garden to be both sustainable (with lots of ecosystem function) and look less weedy next to the traditional monoculture landscapes that dominate urban areas:

1) Selecting plants that are behaved and relatively short (under 3ft). This means doing research, as plants can spread / grow differently based on soil type, moisture levels, and levels of plant competition. This is one reason gardening by ecoregion vs. hardiness zone is a good idea.

2) Planting in drifts and masses. The larger the bed, the larger the masses and drifts. And you can do this in layers (ground, mid height, architectural).

3) Limiting blooms. In a smaller garden (under 1,000ft), having no more than 3 plants in bloom at any one time may show more control and less visual cacophony.

4) Employing a monochromatic base layer. This green mulch / matrix not only replaces annual wood mulch applications while fighting weeds and conserving soil moisture, it helps tie the landscape together and make it more legible. Consider how lawns do this.

5) Plan for winter interest. Many of our native grasses and herbaceous perennials carry much structural and textural interest deep into winter. Using the same principles as #2 above, we can hit two birds with one stones (please leave birds alone -- their numbers are falling fast).
Of course, every site requires nuance with the above points, so they are not hard and fast rules but more like core guidelines. And when we use native plant communities we increase ecological function, especially wildlife habitat.

If you want to learn more, try our online class "Fundamentals of Garden Layers." We'll dive into the above even further in Benjamin's new book Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (spring 2022).

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Prairie is Everywhere -- And it Can Heal Your Home Landscape

1/22/2021

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Chances are you have a native prairie, meadow, savanna, or grassland near you. Chances are your region was recently covered in prairie. Where you see a farm field it was likely prairie. Where you see a shopping mall it was likely prairie within the last century.

From the Gulf Coast of TX and LA, to the Palouse of WA and OR, the Great Basin desert step of UT and ID, large chunks of CA, the Mescalero Sandsheet of southeastern NM, and the Piedmont of VA, NC, SC, and GA, not to mention others like the longleaf pine savannas of FL, SC, AL, MS, LA, TX, or meadow remnants in TN and AR. Prairie is everywhere, not just in the center of the country.

As disturbed landscapes heal themselves, prairie / meadow is often the first stage of restoring ecosystem function; we can use principles from this natural succession in ecological garden design by first planting prairie and meadow plants that, over time, give way to a more woody or open canopy forest structure (if that is actually the late-succession / climax stage of your area). This succession rebuilds and heals the soil, increases water infiltration, and out competes weeds among a cadre of benefits. If you are converting from lawn -- even if you live in Maine -- the first step is likely a meadow.

So yes, if you can tell, I'm often asked if the principles, design ideas, and even plants I espouse here and across social media channels are relevant to Pennsylvania, Florida, or California. And while we should all be gardening with the local ecoregion in mind, we share many of the same plants as well as many of the same principles regarding ecological succession, matrix garden design, as well as the vast list of ecosystem services a garden can provide (cleaning air and water, providing habitat, reducing a structure's energy use, etc).

These ideas form the fundamental approach of my forthcoming book, Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (spring 2022), and are explored more in depth through online courses. Ultimately, what we can learn from one another across the country when it comes to sustainable and resilient garden design far outstrips what makes our gardens different. The things I've learned from southwest gardeners concerning drought tolerant landscapes is profound, just as I learn from conservationists in the southeast about the differences and similarities of their endemic grasslands and their struggle to reclaim ecological heritage.

Chances are, if you stop to research your ecoregion and locale, you'll find a prairie remnant that can teach you much about how to rebuild ecosystem function and habitat in your highly-disturbed home landscape. From lawn to meadow, from meadow to open woodland, from open woodland to forest, we can easily deliver habitat connectivity where we live while helping species adapt in a time of human supremacy and climate change.

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Looking Back on 2020

1/3/2021

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For all the angst, suffering, and downright conflict last year presented us, it also seemed to go by really fast. I walked the garden more times than ever in all seasons, and found great delight in discovering nuances I'd have glossed over if I had been busier -- even though I definitely was busy installing some 100,000 square feet of gardens this year.

Below please enjoy a quick stroll through some of my favorite landscape images of the front and back beds at HQ. If you follow me on social media (FB, TW, IG), you've seen the collages of client spaces as well as seasonal changes at HQ. My best to you all in this new year -- prairie up!

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2020 Garden Gift Guide (the Practical and Thinky)

11/30/2020

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Here are the practical and the dreamy for the garden lover in your life. Or, what works well for me after much trowel and error. And NB -- these are Amazon links, but I encourage you to get them from local shops when you can.

Fireman's Hose Nozzle
Tired of sprinkler nozzle handles breaking off? Or ones with odd water pressure? Try a fireman's nozzle, especially this one which I've had for years with no problem at all. Takes a licking and keeps on watering.

Expandable Hose
Gardens hose are a necessary evil, which is one reason I try to design drought tolerant gardens. The coil, kink, are heavy, and take up lots of space. Not an expandable hose. While it might rip if dragged too much over sharp stones or metal, and shouldn't be left out over winter, I'm smitten. It shrinks to half its size when drained and is as light as a feather -- and seldom if ever kinks. Bam.

Soil Knife
I don't need to try any other soil knife, or any other hand tool. This one saws through roots, cuts twine, treats clay soil like butter, and opens bags and boxes and more. #1 tool in the garden.

Gloves
I've spent decades trying to find the perfect garden glove -- one I can use while planting, watering, cutting, or hauling stone. There is no perfect glove, but this one gets close. You'll find others that will probably work just as well from different brands, but what I like about this design is a complete coating on the back of the hand (think abrasion and water resistance). There's a cooler summer work glove option, as well as an insulated autumn / winter option.

Books
These are garden design books that changed my perspective and helped me grow (I'd suggest my book but it's not a design book -- however, the next one will be, in 2022).

Planting in a Post-Wild World -- Thomas Rainer and Claudia West
The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden -- Roy Diblik
Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains -- Jon Farrar (ok, not a design book per se)
Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden -- Jessica Walliser
Pollinators of Native Plants -- Heather Holm

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Gardening With the Wrong Prairie Plants

11/21/2020

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how we choose garden plants; it's almost always about how the plant looks. And one thing that happens is a gardener may choose a native that isn't meant to live a long time, but when it dies it leaves a hole and the gardener feels like they have a black thumb in year two and three. This happens a lot with early-succession plants, or colonizers.

I'm thinking about Ratibida pinnata and Rudbeckia hirta. The former is a short-lived perennial meant to vanish over time when it's in a thick, naturally-layered and resilient bed. If you use it on its own there are many problems: it's too tall (flops) and too open (weeds can easily compete underneath). In a tallgrass prairie it's one of the first plants to move in but won't stay around in large numbers until the area is disturbed, often via fire.

Rudbeckia hirta is more like a biennial, with basal foliage the first year that's good at weed suppression, and in year two it flowers but by late summer is getting leggy and / or dying back in ugly fashion. So if you have an open garden bed, Rudbeckia looks great for a while, and it will even reseed, but you have to wait two years to get a similar show again, and by then weeds are back and the bed may look lopsided.

And maybe a big part of the issue we have with plants like the above is that we tend to treat them as static, sculptural individuals. These plants evolved to grow in a rich, lush, layered, dynamic, ever-changing landscape. A traditional garden bed is too often the opposite -- specimens placed individually apart from others in single layers with wood mulch meant to look the same for a decade. For example, if you put a grouping of Ratibida pinnata (a tall plant) behind a grouping of shorter Asclepias tuberosa, it's going to 1) look weird and 2) behave in ways detrimental to the health and longevity of the bed. Those Ratibida are going to slouch over the Asclepias and fade away. These plants did not evolve in this kind of community.

This drift of Rudbeckia hirta occurred only one time -- in the second year of this meadow.

One way to rectify the situation is to bring in sedges -- Carex radiata, Carex praegracilis-- or some bunchgrasses like Bouteloua curtipendula and Schizachyrium scoparium. What we're doing is building the layers and community, creating some buttresses for the taller forb, and ensuring weeds will have no long-term foothold or new space to move into. It's also going to look so much better -- fuller and more uniform in all seasons.

If you walk into a prairie it's more likely you'll see small groupings or even smatterings of individual Ratibida and Rudbeckia. Now, in a home garden where it's critical to up the aesthetic show, we can bring in more of each species in larger masses -- but we still absolutely have to have the main component of the wild community they came from, plant layers underneath and alongside, especially the grasses. We can up the layering and seasonal show even more by including Callirhoe involucrata, Liatris punctata, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium, Baptisia minor, and Solidago flexicaulis -- all weaving in and out of the sedge and grasses like we'd see in a prairie, but brought down to scale and floral impact for the home garden. If we don't have those other forbs in the mix, then in a few years (if we're dependent on the Ratibida and Rudbeckia) we'll have few to no flowers at all.

So let's bullet point the above:

Choose a diversity of plants from the same wild plant community.
Include plants from various functional layers: groundcover, mid height, tall architectural.
Have roughly 50% of the bed in sedge and / or bunchgrass.
Plan to replant early-successional colonizers in a few years if you want them to stay around.

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Seeding a Prairie Bed

10/26/2020

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With cooler weather comes seeding season. After a few hard freezes and before the new year is the best time to sow, giving seeds ample time to be stratified and break dormancy for spring germination. Following is a brief guide on creating a custom seed mix and sowing it by hand.

Generally speaking, a prairie-style seeding has the following ratios:

50 seeds / ft
50% grass (25 seeds / ft)
50% forbs (25 seeds / ft)

Let’s break the percentages down further on our 50/50 mix into functional groups that fill various ecological niches:

35% warm season grass
15% cool season grass and / or sedge
10% legumes
10% annuals
30% perennials

Why are we using these percentages? While some site and / or aesthetic goals will require different percentages, this is generally a solid breakdown to hit as many goals as possible at one time. The warm season grasses will do the bulk of the matrix work, while the cool season grasses and sedge will help with weed control and site stabilization in the shoulder seasons when they grow most actively. Legumes add nitrogen to the soil, while annuals provide first year weed competition, erosion control, and color. Perennial flowers will do the bulk of the aesthetic show, and within their 30% is a mix of early successional species as well as those that take longer to establish but that are also longer lived. Now, let’s take a look at a sample list and seed weights; do note that this is a very basic list using illustrative species and is not necessarily meant for application.

THE SEEDS

Since you’ll be buying seed by the ounce, you’ll need to know how many seeds are in an ounce; that information (along with more details on germination codes) can be found most easily online at Prairie Moon Nursery for each species you’re using.

Calculating seeds per foot
Here's a sample calculation for Sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), assuming it alone would comprise the warm-season grass category:

50 seeds per foot x 0.35 (35%) = 17 seeds per foot
17 seeds per foot x 2,000 square feet = 34,000 seeds
34,000 seeds / 6,600 seeds per ounce = 5.15oz

For a 2,000’ area at 50 seeds per foot on bare soil, our seed list might look like this:

35% warm season grass (17 seeds/ft)
Bouteloua curtipendula
6,600 seeds per ounce, 17 seeds per foot, 34,000 seeds = 5.15oz

15% cool season grass / sedge (8/ft)
Carex brevior
29,000 seeds per ounce, 4 seeds per foot, 8,000 seeds = 0.28oz

Carex rosea
53,000 per oz, 4 seeds per foot, 8,000 seeds = 0.15oz

10% legumes (6/ft)
Amorpha canascens
16,000 seeds per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 0.375oz

Dalea purpurea
15,000 seeds per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 0.375oz

10% annuals (6/ft)
Coreopsis tinctoria
87,500 seed per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 0.069oz

Chamaecrista fasciculata
2,700 seeds per ounce, 3 seeds per foot, 6,000 seeds = 2.2oz

30% perennials (15/ft)
Zizia aurea
11,000 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 = 0.36oz

Echinacea pallida
5,200 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 = 0.77oz

Asclepias tuberosa
4,300 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.93oz

Pycnanthemum tenuifolium
378,000 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.01oz

Rudbeckia hirta (pioneer / early successional)
92,000 per oz, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.043oz

Liatris aspera
16,000, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.25oz

Ratibida pinnata (pioneer / early successional)
30,000, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.13oz

Symphyotrichum laeve
55,000, 2 per foot, 4,000 seeds = 0.07oz

Total weight of pure live seed -- 11.162oz

There’s probably not a magic bullet on creating a custom seed mix. Generally, I’m trying to give you a middle-of-the road baseline which you can tweak. Warm season grass seed may do best with a late spring seeding -- but it also might not be practical, which is why doubling its rate in a dormant seeding may be a good idea. Seeds of any plant type can be eaten or washed away or just never do anything, so I subscribe to the more-is-better-if-you-can-afford-it scenario. When you buy seed you should see a tag that shows PLS (pure live seed); this percentage is calculated by taking into consideration seed purity, germination rate, and seed dormancy. You can use PLS to increase or decrease rates of each species based on the expected germination rate. See, it gets quite complex, and if it’s too much for you right now just know that the most important aspect in a seeding is diversity -- diversity of species, niches, and ecosystem function so we create resilience. The above list could easily benefit from increased diversity in habit, succession, bloom color, bloom time, and bloom sequence, for example.

In the end, we simply want to cover the ground ASAP and we want competition ASAP; the more plants we have with a diversity of functional groups, the sooner a garden can perform ecosystem services. Several studies of prairie restorations show that the ratio of survival from seed to mature plant is generally around 5-10%, so if you want 5 plants per square foot you’ll need to sow 50 seeds per square foot.

BROADCASTING SEED

A person can do 1 acre tossing seed by hand in under a day, and most people reading this book probably won’t be sowing anywhere near this size. To get a more uniform seed distribution when hand sowing you’ll want to use a very slightly moistened or dry seed carrier, a medium that bulks up the mix. Most folks use compost, sand, sawdust, or vermiculite at a rate of 0.5 cubic feet (3.75 gallons) per 1,000 square feet. However, for small areas, you can eyeball it -- one handful of seed per 4-5 handfuls of carrier. I prefer vermiculite, which isn’t heavy like sand or compost and, to my eye, provides the most even seed distribution with the carrier (you can also see where your seed has landed very easily -- broadcasting on top of puffy snow that does not have a surface layer of ice on a sunny day also works well). You do not want to hand broadcast on a windy day -- generally, less than 10mph is good, and 0 is best. Walking with the wind to your back is also helpful as a light breeze can help carry the seed forward as you broadcast.

Divide your seed mix + carrier in half; walking one way broadcast the first half, then walking perpendicular broadcast the second half. Be stingy as it's better to have too much than not enough, but you won't hit every square foot and you don't necessarily have to. In the first growing season mow the area down to 4-6" when weeds get 8-12" tall. In the second season mow or trim the space at 12" tall to continue depriving annual weeds of flowering and setting seed.

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How to Show Weedy Purpose and Avoid Fines

9/20/2020

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No topic is hotter than how to avoid and / or work with weed control when they come with a stern letter. In my town, any report filed online by a neighbor must be followed up with an inspection and letter. Sometimes it really is a weedy landscape full of invasive threats, and sometimes it's a well-intentioned gardener who, for a myriad of reasons, has a garden that's a bit too wild.

I've written before on how plant selection and management is critical, and how gardeners often don't give these things enough research and attention. But if you are in a predicament where you can't start from scratch -- or do a significant makeover -- there are some strategies to employ which show your landscape has purpose, at least to the casual passerby.

Let's explore our garden at HQ, which has had its run ins with the law. And that's ok -- you can't change minds or policies by playing it safe with a monoculture of lawn. So first up, the oldest part of the 1/4 acre suburban lot:

Let's all agree that this is a "wild" garden by any standard definition of traditional suburban landscaping. There's no lawn for starters, but further, the plants are diverse, not tiered by height, and spreading organically. Some would call it messy, some would call it lush and healthy. I want you to put post-it notes or fingers over the wooden bridge, arbor, and fountain. What happens? It's a patch of (pretty? functional?) weeds. Someone has clearly let it go (I confess I have this year purposefully, as a way to repair damage and let the plants fill in some spots, teaching me what / how / where to manage next year -- a very different kind of gardening for sure).

But include those three hardscape features (bridge, arbor, fountain) and something happens -- the garden is shown to have purpose. It is an intentional space. Not only that, but these linear, hard objects give the eye some place to anchor upon, making the plants more legible. It's a simple trick, and while it won't please or convince everyone, it will likely convince those who matter most. Other objects one could use are sculptures, benches, and trellises.

This second image is our front yard, and the plants were chosen even more intentionally because it is a more visible space (it's not behind a fence). So to start off, read the posts I linked to above about plant selection and management. While plant choice and management -- thinning, adding -- count for a whole lot, so does a six-foot-wide lawn pathway moving up the middle of the two beds and up around the front of the house. That delineation serves as a place for the eye to rest and to be anchored, and a welcoming access point to move through the wilder landscape; it also ties into the rest of the lawn-dominated suburban neighborhood even if the lawn is not 100% perfectly-manicured fescue. In addition, there is a small sign saying that this is a pollinator garden with a website for more information.

These small strategies can go a long way toward both avoiding and working with weed control. So while your first priority is likely to be removing really tall plants or those that flop over onto sidewalks -- and some that have spread too easily -- your second priority is to include a bench, an arbor, a path, a sign, or a sculpture to show intentional gardening and not just laziness. If we're going to change minds we can't forget that especially in lived, urban areas, there are still de-facto gardening rules -- and playing with them, bending their seeming constraints, can lead to some real creativity, satisfaction, and ecosystem function (wildlife habitat, storm water runoff mitigation, soil stabilization, air cleaning / cooling...). Prairie up.

8 Comments

Letting Plants Find Their Way

9/2/2020

8 Comments

Our goal is always to put the right plant in with the right plant communities. In a hybrid approach where ornamental layers are placed purposefully with plugs, and a matrix of grass is sown in, the realization that plants are not static but dynamic will soon become evident. It’s our ability to embrace that dynamism and competition that sets apart natural gardens from their traditional counterparts.

In a smaller garden we’d be wise to choose plants that are generally behaved clumpers -- they won’t spread too much by runners or sowing. But even site conditions can affect these plants, as clay soil and dense, layered vegetation will inhibit plant reproduction (in general) while loamy or sandy soil with less plant competition will encourage it (in general). If the majority of plants that are best suited to your site tend to have aggressive natures, it’s best to use ALL aggressive plant species so they butt heads, collide, and help keep each other in check.

We also shouldn’t place plants based on their mature size. If a plant tag, aka thorough internet and book research, shows a full grown plants gets 3’ wide we should still plant it 12” from its neighbor. Why would you do that, especially when plants cost money and losing even one can be like a shot to the heart? Because our goal is to cover the ground ASAP, preferably in the first year and definitely by summer of the second year. Place your plants based on size at the time of installation; over time, the more robust species and specimens will out compete the lesser ones, and that’s ok as long as the ground stays covered in the future.

Once those plants get going and are competing healthily it’s time to crack open a hard lemonade. You can crack open another one when you start seeing plants move around and find their own way -- which is exactly what we want as they fill in, create layers, and augment the design we kickstarted. You can always thin and transplant -- that’s what gardeners do -- but you’ll be surprised and even thankful at what the plants teach as they shuffle, thrive, and falter. Let that dynamic purpose have its way, especially since you planned for it by using multiple layers and plants suited for the site. You’ve also planned for plants to fill niches -- layers of succession and layers of seasonality, as well as layers in time.

Consider Rudbeckia hirta, a freely-self sowing biennial that can often be the scourge of the garden creating a monoculture. However, you can be a Rudbeckia whisperer. Black-eyed susan as first year basal foliage that is well-suited to erosion control and shading out weed seeds in the soil surface. You’ll even get a few first-year flowers to appease neighbors and bees. In the second year the fuller flower flush will appear alongside some of the early-establishing perennials, and in year three -- once the perennials have really started to fill in -- the Rudbeckia seeds will have less light in which to germinate. If you seeded in a bunchgrass matrix, the grasses will now allow the black-eyed susan to create little charming stands or solitary spikes of flowers, in balance with the competition provided by the grasses.

One final strategy to consider when using a matrix is based on how grasses tend to dominate in both a prairie and a garden. In some ways we want lots of grasses, as they are effective at erosion and weed control while providing critical wildlife habitat. Still, we obviously want flowers (and so do pollinators and spiders and birds). Something to consider when choosing forbs is to select plants the spread by rhizome or root runners, as well as those that tend to produce good amounts of seed. That last point is counter intuitive to what we explored above, about not using free-seeding flowers in a small bed; and that still holds true for a small bed. But in larger areas approaching several thousand square feet, we want to have at least a few plants that cast their seed around -- and maybe we especially want those that drop seed near the mother plant to create larger colonies, masses, and drifts.

You can see there’s a lot to consider, but I wouldn’t want to do without at least 40-50% grass cover because of their many benefits to ecosystem function -- either using them in intermingled or matrix designs. If you find grasses starting to tip the balance too much, say 70%, management like early summer mowing, dormant forb overseeding, and definitely planting more plugs in fall will all turn the tide.

*The above is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Reprairie Suburbia: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (2022).

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Late Summer in the Suburban Prairie

8/17/2020

1 Comment

Here in eastern Nebraska this growing season has been met with a late April snow, cool / moist May, very hot and dry June into July, then an early fall in August but still fairly dry. The plants keep plugging along, even if some are shorter than usual (Eutrochium, Vernonia, Silphium). Please enjoy some images of HQ. If you want to stay on top of all the plants, gardens, and wildlife we run across, Instagram is the way to go!

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On Manifest Destiny, Violence, Racism, Prairie, & Liberation Gardening

8/4/2020

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The other night I was reading part of a book I bought as research for my unwritten Oklahoma memoir (because I apparently like to think about 5 different projects at once). It was a collection of accounts from Native Americans who survived the 1868 Washita Massacre led by Custer on peace chief Black Kettle's encampment along the Washita River in western Oklahoma -- a massacre that happened an hour upstream from where my family homesteaded three decades later.

Returning Cheyenne who fled the event found mutilated bodies stripped naked and placed in sexually suggestive poses. I'd tell you more details but I can't stomach it.

This level of violence hasn't ended though. Maybe it takes on different forms at times and becomes more subtle and sinister. We live in a violent culture founded by violent means. Every luxury is given to us through a series of violent acts in a supply chain of subjugation and irreverence and supremacy.

I completed a rough draft of the new garden book's first chapter yesterday morning, a chapter that explores what prairie is and its ecological history using this material as the basis for a lesson on garden design. But then I realize -- garden design is a luxury given to us through a series of violent acts. This house I live in and land upon which I garden, the plants erased, the plants grown with fossil fuels in pots produced by fossil fuels shipped with fossil fuels extracted in sensitive and often public ecosystems sold for cheap. I don't know how long it might take for a lush, natural garden filled with native plants to undo the damage done by our privilege, but I suspect it won't occur in my lifetime or my son's. If ever.

Is gardening an escape from such "dark" thoughts, something to soothe and heal our emotions and get us through? Of course. But if that's all it is then it is an act of denial, of turning one's head or sticking it in the sand, ultimately making gardening hollow and almost as egregious as what we do to other species and to one another.

If having our hands in the soil is to make the kind of difference we intend it to have, we need to reckon with the history and reality of what we do, where we are, and how we live. That's not unpatriotic or destructive -- it's liberating as we sabotage the power structures that limit our compassion and strength.

4 Comments

Still Seeing Mulch Years Later? Plant More.

7/30/2020

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If you planted a garden 2-3 years ago and you still see lots of wood mulch, then you need more plants. You're probably still seeing a decent number of weeds at this point, too (mulch isn't a magic weed bullet and, if too thick, often creates an ideal seed bed). So, you know, more plants. More layers. More density.

And if you are planting a garden today think about where you do AND don't want to be in 2-3 years:

1) Only put down 1" of mulch if you're using it. More mulch = less plant sowing while generally inhibiting forb and grass growth.

2) Put plants on 12" centers (12" apart) and no more.

3) Consider mixing potted plants and seeds to increase coverage. In spring sow grasses and annuals among what you planted. In mid to late fall consider a dormant seeding of perennial forbs among what you planted. (Maybe what you plant is the highly designed part, or plants that need a head start because they work on roots first like Baptisia and Amorpha and Silphium).

What do you do if you're on a constrained budget?

1) See #3 above. The best advice is to plant the architectural plants -- trees, shrubs, and perennial flowers -- that take longer to establish and serve as the backbone for the design. You may also want to plant aggressive species and let them start to self so or run asap.

2) Get plugs. Most landscapers and nurseries get their plant material from wholesalers, and that requires a business license. But you can also get them (if you're east of the Great Plains) via Izel Native Plants which works as a middleman for wholesalers to sell to the public. That means if you need plants in quantities of 32 and 50 you can get them for a much better per-plant cost.

4 Comments

Milkweed and Flowers, Habitat and Design

7/22/2020

7 Comments

I struggle with finding the middle ground for advocacy. On the one hand are folks concerned primarily about plants as being hosts for insect larvae, yet not paying enough attention to the designed community of plants and how that creates the needed habitat for egg laying to even occur. And then on the other hand are folks who focus on the designed plant community while privileging flowers as being critical for adult pollinators, yet not paying enough attention to producing more insect young via host plants.

These two groups can broadly be labeled as wildlife enthusiasts and landscape designers, respectively. They both "get it" but from different ends of the spectrum that are essentially the same. The former group tends to eschew tenets of design -- succession, community, form, texture -- while the latter tends to eschew wildlife reproduction in favor of color and ambience. (These are broad generalizations, so forgive me if you don't agree or fit in neatly on one end of the spectrum -- I'm just making partially unfair blanket observations to get to a point.)

My new book will attempt to better align these two perspectives, as both are critical for the success of urban gardens that both appeal to and involve people and wildlife together. It is critical that people find nature-inspired gardens beautiful, while it is just as critical that wildlife find them beautiful as well. Just because one has host plants does not mean the garden is beautiful to wildlife, and just because one has a diversity of flowers doesn't mean the garden is beautiful to wildlife.

Take monarch butterflies who must have milkweed to reproduce -- especially in spring and summer. They also must have a community of plants that both provide habitat for other species in the same food web as well as providing ecosystem services year round (cleaning water, amending soil, cooling the air, preventing erosion, creating winter habitat for hibernating insects and bugs, etc). And a critical part of that plant community is nectar plants for adult migrating monarchs come later summer and into fall, especially a diversity of aster and goldenrod species among others (late boneset, ironweed, blue sage, sunflowers, etc). However, growing certain milkweed species will result in plants that may spread too aggressively or become too tall, or otherwise might need selective thinning to maintain a design that isn't a threat to the mow and blow crowd.

Sure, plant Asclepias syriaca, but it tends to work better aesthetically in a larger landscape or as a few individual stems in the back or middle of a border. Shorter, more clumping-like species such as A, tuberosa may work, or even those that are short yet also seem to self sow around like A. verticillata. And among these milkweed ensure you have layers of diverse native plants that provide flowers (and host larvae of other insect species) from April to October, along with an intermix of sedge and grass -- and even a clump of shrubs and trees -- that mutually support one another and even more wildlife than just one butterfly species all year round.

I suppose my greatest concern is this: that we might garden for one species at the exclusion of others while justifying that exclusion with whatever validates our point of view. That can be unkempt wildness without a nod to structural diversity and necessary aesthetics (uber gardening for one butterfly species even), or a focus on flower color and diversity for human appreciation / acceptance that may primarily support adult insect species at the exclusion of a diversity of plants that produce insect young. Are these ideologically-opposed perspectives? Heck no. But the balance can easily get out of whack as passions grow. Creating gardens that are as beautiful for all species together, at once, is a hard task that requires focus, knowledge, and in many respects a type of gardening that balances the very fine line of too wild and not wild enough. That's the gardener's dilemma in a world of mass extinction and climate change, where one species has privileged itself at the expense of others. How much do we "garden," and what does "gardening" look like in a world we've reshaped in our own image?

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Lessons of a Backyard Meadow

7/5/2020

6 Comments

We moved to our home in 2007, and for a few years I mowed and fertilized and even watered diligently. Then I just got fed up with spending an hour every week in the heat as I watched an adjacent 1,500ft garden fill in and support wildlife. Until 2015 I neglected the back lawn, some 3,000ft or so, and as a result the tall fescue got a little patchy and weak. It burned bad every August and, in 2013-2014 some prairie grasses began moving in. Ok, I thought, the landscape of benign neglect was telling me something.

So in the fall of 2015 I scalped the back lawn hard, planted a few hundred plugs, and sowed some prairie grass and forb seed.

2020

In the spring of 2016 I mowed short to try and keep the fescue back and allow sunlight on to the soil surface more for seed germination. About June I stopped. I read somewhere that if you let a fescue lawn go to seed it weakens the grass; I'm not sure if that's true (let me know), but I do know that by the end of the first year I had little bluestem and sideoats grama in almost every square inch.

In 2017 biennial forbs really came on and totally smothered the lawn. The two workhorses were mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera) and black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta). These guys seemed to do a number on the fescue in the first half of the year, totally shading, outcompeting, and generally smothering -- of course, I did sow them fairly thickly. By the end of the season the warm season grasses had taken over the job, and in all but the shadiest areas where the warm season native grasses did not take as well, the fescue lawn all but vanished. But I still had a dearth of perennial flower younglings from what I could tell, so I kept planting a few dozen plugs here and there every spring and fall -- which I still do as I tweak, replace, augment, etc.

2017

In the annual mow that occurs every March, both the thatch layer and what the mower left behind is very thick, so I hand rake all 2,500ft every two years. I want to encourage all the flower seeds I know are out there from the past few years -- as well as the seed I kept throwing out -- and it paid off in two ways. First, in 2019 I had a massive abundance of various aster species and and an increase in slower growing forbs like Baptisia. More and more seedlings seemed to appear throughout the summer, and by fall I had a very showy aster display. However, that aster abundance primarily occurred right at the edge of a shade line from my neighbor's trees on the south side. Out in the full sun area, forbs that like it dry and sunny were growing fuller (while the warm season grasses were thick and lush.

This year is perhaps the thickest the space has ever been, and that's with a lack of June rain and tons of early heat. Forbs are starting to move in from that southerly shade line and are, surprisingly, affecting the density of little bluestem and sideoats grama around and under them. I want and need that grass layer -- that green mulch -- which is a superb weed barrier and soil moisture regulator, so I'm thinking it might be time for some sedge: Carex radiata or Carex blanda that can grow in the shade of taller forbs. Or, I need to do a June trim of many forbs.

I can say this for certain -- I have too many ironweed (Vernonia spp) seedlings. It really went to town this year germinating, and if I'm not careful I'll be left with an ironweed and indiangrass meadow.

I need to do a more formal survey of species density and diversity. While it's certainly not a prairie reconstruction, it is a garden that needs to mimic some of the attributes of a restoration. The primary plants I've added this year are groundcovers such as wine cups (Callirhoe involucrata) and wild geranium (Geranium maculatum).

I've also added some spreaders like Coreopsis palmata and Pycnanthemum virginanum to provide larger floral masses or drifts at low to mid level heights that match the stature of the shorter warm season grasses.

If I had to do this all over again I'd have killed the lawn in one fell swoop and employed a greater degree of patterns with which the garden could grow from. However, it has been fascinating to watch the plants convert lawn for me in slow motion, and to observe general behaviors in what amounts to a hodgepodge I'm backwards designing as I observe succession and competition. In the end, the ground is covered, the primary weed threat is manageable and woody (red cedar, siberian elm, grey dogwood), and there's always something moving in the plants: snake, rabbit, spider, dragonfly, bee, beetle, bird.

6 Comments

A Shady Sedge Meadow -- One Year On

5/27/2020

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You can have a lush, gorgeous, wildlife supporting garden in shade. You can have native plants and not just the default hosta or astilbe. You can have a low maintenance space that requires no fertilizer, no supplemental watering, and only one annual mowing. But you'll have to replace some of the plants that bunnies eat.

Below is a quick trip through one client's front yard makeover: how we did it, what we used, and what issues have arisen after one year. The space was installed in May 2019 while the after images come from May 2020.

This Lincoln landscape is in an older, urban neighborhood that's well maintained (from a traditional mow and blow perspective). The front yard has several mature oak trees that provide shade to 85% of the beds, except for one corner that gets a few hours of late afternoon and evening sun. In that corner we placed more sun-loving forbs.

You'll notice the white flags, which will be the path, and blue flags that show the edge of the main area. We hope to extend that area further down hill in the future and take out more lawn; as the client says, their goal was to have less to mow and provide more for pollinators (as well as have lots of sedge -- but we'll get to that soon). I was also convinced to leave a few of the hosta on site, and I'm glad I was as they aid in some first year texture until the new native forbs get established.

We spray killed the lawn to limit soil disturbance; limiting disturbance means fewer weed problems, and dead grass provides a weed barrier, erosion control, and a temporary mulch for the first year. I usually arrive about an hour before my crew to start laying out plants. In this case I had about a dozen forbs and five species of sedge. For the sedge, I interwove and interlocked large groupings of Carex albicans, blanda, brevior, eburnea, and radiata. Each sedge provides different growth styles and texture, along with variable seed heads in early summer. Some of the shade forbs we used include:

Phlox divaricata (woodland phlox)
Aquilegia canadensis (wild columbine)
Geranium maculatum (wild geranium)
Anemone virginiana (tall thimbleweed)
Thalictrum dioicum (early meadow rue)
Solidago flexicaulis (zigzag goldenrod)
Symphyotrichum lateriflorum (calico aster)
Polygonatum biflorum (solomon's seal)
Asarum canadense (wild ginger)

The sedge has grown far more quickly than I anticipated -- partly because the soil is loose and rich, and partly because these species are adapted to shade. This good shade under oaks also increases soil moisture in the cool growing seasons (spring and fall) while keeping weeds down. Rabbits have gone after young forbs somewhat aggressively, so until those plants get established and start spreading, chicken wire cages have been employed. Other than that, the garden requires only an early March mow and no watering.

Can't have a meadow under mature trees? Sure you can. A sedge meadow.

6 Comments

On Not Pulling a Weed

4/11/2020

5 Comments

Weed mitigation is one of the most important aspects of creating a low-maintenance pollinator garden. Often, this mitigation needs to start weeks and months before the first plant goes in the ground in order to clean up a space gone feral. But what happens when weeds keep popping up, especially in that important first year after planting when weed management is critical?

Don't pull weeds if you can help it. What happens when you do?

1) You expose dormant weed seeds embedded in the soil that come up with that weed, and then they germinate and you have more weeds.

2) That wound in the bed, full of exposed soil, is the perfect growth medium for a weed seed to blow in on and germinate.

Just as in site prep as in weeding, the less disturbance you can create in the soil the better. This is why we are not advocates of tilling or sod cutting.

Sometimes it's best to deadhead weeds as they flower, especially if they are annuals like foxtail, either by hand or mowing; often in the first year of a meadow or prairie garden, mowing keeps weeds down and prevents them from competing with the native plants while the latter work on roots. Some deeply-taprooted, perennial weeds won't even budge, and you might have to kill them via other targeted means.

As for dandelions, let's welcome them in our beds. Not so much because they provide a good nutritional source of pollen for bees (they don't), but because they provide a solid green mulch and their taproots help open up clay soil. Green mulch is the key, because we don't tend to see wood mulch in prairies -- and there's a reason for that. Wood mulch can never work as effectively as green mulch, and can certainly never create the kind of ecosystem function (think runoff mitigation) or habitat that plants can. A densely layered garden is shading out weed seedlings while taking soil nutrients away from weed seedling's roots -- there's just no room to get a foothold.

We design gardens to get as much green cover as soon as possible. This may mean planting on 10-12" centers, or combining seeding with plugs. The latter looks like this: we design drifts and masses of forbs by planting plugs, then we sow in a matrix grass often alongside annuals and biennials. Sowing annual flowers with the matrix grass means we get even more cover sooner, but we also have some first year color since even perennial plugs will take a year or three to bloom. On some sites with very aggressive perennial weeds, it might be worth experimenting with very aggressive native plants.

Overall, try to refrain from yanking a weed and think about what it will take to restore ecological balance to your garden by using plants, otherwise you will be intensively weeding the rest of your life.

Most importantly, realize that every site presents unique challenges and opportunities -- there's seldom a one-size-fits-all solution. And even when we think there's a solution, nature throws a curve ball and we have to adapt after planting and rethink management.

Don't give up. Don't think it's too hard. This takes time. The garden you are making is one of the most important places for wildlife in your neighborhood. Keep at it. Learn. Let the space teach you. Evolve and thrive.

5 Comments

To Spray or Not to Spray -- Garden Site Prep and Reviving Biodiversity

4/6/2020

13 Comments

In a recent newsletter I shared with folks a plan to DIY prep garden spaces over the summer, just in case nurseries and landscapers had to shut down this spring and could not reopen until later in the summer or fall. Autumn may actually be the best time to plant -- with less weed competition, more steady rains, and cooler temps that reduce both human and plant stress during install.

I mentioned that in considering lawn removal or bed prep, herbicide may be needed to kill grass or to make repeated controls over extremely weedy areas. For the latter, you want to kill off the current vegetation, allow weed seeds to germinate and reach several inches tall, then kill off again and again; performing this regimen helps exhaust the weed seed bank, a bank that would otherwise ruin the aesthetics of the design, impede establishment for plants you do want (and paid good money for), as well as reducing management time the first year or two when weeding will take up 99% of your garden life. [A note on weeding post planting -- it's best NOT to use chemical control if you can avoid it since you might damage "good" plants or harm wildlife. However, pulling weeds simply brings new weed seeds to the surface. Clipping or mowing weeds before they bloom will reduce weed seed production and may be the best method of weeding as the garden establishes.]

What ensued after the newsletter were many emails, some using swear words, pleading with me to not recommend the use of any herbicides for any reason at all. I can not make that kind of sweeping recommendation at this time. And if you are willing to hear me out, here's why:

The selective use of some herbicides are essential to controlling invasive weeds. Prairie and woodland conservationists know this, and herbicide used selectively (to target specific species and specific plants or stands of plants) is critical to reviving diverse habitat for wildlife and ecosystem function.
Herbicide for lawn removal is not only inexpensive, but less polluting (one common chemical may also be less toxic than common organic treatments). To remove lawn effectively one would need a sod cutter, a machine that spews out noxious chemicals. More importantly, sod cutters also increase soil disturbance, which is the very last thing you want in prepping a garden site. That newly-opened soil now has exposed weed seeds ready to take off like gangbusters. When you spray kill a lawn you are leaving the dead lawn in place, which helps control weeds and reduce erosion by acting as a mulch layer. Sure, you could smother the lawn in cardboard and wood mulch, but doing so impedes air and water transfer to / from the soil, reduces soil moisture, increases pests, and makes the planting (and sowing) of a designed meadow garden significantly harder. In other words, don't sheet mulch.
Using an herbicide one time to prep a landscape for a sustainable, biodiverse, ecologically-thriving landscape is worlds apart from millions of commodity farm fields where a monoculture exists and demands multiple sprays year round for decades. Using an herbicide formulation in the home landscape that targets only foliage -- one that is not a pre-emergent -- reduces the impact of the chemical on wildlife, as does following product directions for factors like temperature, wind speed, and time of day
If you are an older individual, someone with sudden fatigue syndrome, have a bad back, or are in some other way physically limited by how much you can do, employing an herbicide can be a god send. Same goes if you have limited financial resources that can be better used on procuring plants, because the more plants you have the more sustainable and manageable the space will be -- aka green mulch.
I'm not an apologist for the wholesale slathering of our nation in pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides, or the large corporations who buy the government to increase profits while our planet's health deteriorates. I know our food and water is poisoned. I am as angry and horrified as the next person. However, the strategic and careful use of herbicides to revive ecological function and biodiversity in the urban environment (and reduce another chemically-dependent monoculture called lawn) is an essential component to sustainable design that actually protects the environment; from invasive weeds getting a foot hold to reducing site erosion, herbicides are an important tool among many. Each site is different, each landowner is different, requiring nuanced approaches tailored to each circumstance. No matter which method you choose to create a native plant garden for wildlife inspired by your local ecoregion, it's important to carefully consider the benefits and drawbacks of each method, including time, cost, labor, pollution, and long-term management goals.

In summary, the benefits of spray killing lawn or weedy beds to prep for a new garden are:

Less soil disturbance
Fewer weeds
Minimizes erosion
More affordable (and don't solarize -- it kills soil life and produces plastic waste)
Less physically demanding
Results come sooner (which means fewer weeds, less erosion / runoff, etc)
More ecological benefits sooner

In the end we ALL have the same goal -- to revive wildness wherever we can while being wise stewards of nature in the places we live, work, and play. We will get there. We have to .

Post Script ---- In reply on various social media channels, a common refrain from folks has been that wood mulch is a stupendous weed inhibitor. First, wood mulch has to be re-applied every 1-2 years, and if you apply it too thickly it's simply a topsoil layer that weed seeds love to germinate in. On clay you don't want a thick mulch layer otherwise the soil drowns, which means the mulch is so thin weeds still have an easy go and / or it washes away into storm drains.

Second -- and more importantly -- wood mulch inhibits self sowing and plant spread. We want our garden plants to spread ASAP in order to create both an ecological community and to out compete weeds (not to mention slow erosion, sequester carbon, shade / cool our homes, etc). Wood mulch keeps plants in a perpetual state of establishment -- a common refrain espoused by landscape architect Thomas Rainer. In my design practice, we often use a combination of plugs and seeding to create a dense, layered bed quickly, something wood mulch would negate. Working with plants in this way certainly requires greater knowledge about how plants act together in communities, as well as their life cycles above and below the soil line, but learning about them in this way is worthwhile and pays massive dividends. What did nature do before the timber industry invented wood mulch in the 1970s and 80s? Plants. Plants. Plants.

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Benjamin Vogt's thoughts on prairie gardening in Nebraska. With a healthy dose of landscape ethics, ecophilosophy, climate change, and social justice.

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In a time of climate change and mass extinction how & for whom we garden matters more than ever.

"This book is about so much more than gardening."

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Original Archives1,257 posts fromJuly 2007 - May 2017

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Original Archives

1,257 posts from

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