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The Deep Middle


Gardening & writing in the prairie echo

Making Natural Garden Design Simpler Through Wild Plant Communities

6/19/2022

 
One of the hardest aspects of nature-inspired gardening is the fact that we need to know the plants -- which I suppose is true for most gardening. Still, this can be a significant hurdle, especially in regards a natural garden's need to reproduce and fill in and move about; we don't like to give up control, or let plants teach us.

So how can we select plants that work on site and with one another? Instead of taking the traditional gardening approach -- going to the nursery, reading plant tags, hoping -- it's time to look to wild plant communities, in person and in good books and websites. Research the plants. Put that time in, as it's like digging a good hole.

What grows together in the wild? How? If you want to make things a bit easier, use plants that grow side by side in the prairie or forest or desert. Or at the very least, grow in the same sort of environment (soil, light, drainage, competition, ecoregion) while matching their growth and reproductive habits. And of course, think about the niches plants will grow in and how to let them do their thing. Don't force it. Don't re-invent the wheel, especially at first.

Yesterday we planted a small front yard with these principles in mind. Of course, I'm a designer and I know a lot of plants at least moderately well, so I brought more things to the table -- plant and bloom succession, plant behavior, senescence and winter structure, controlling height so sight lines near driveways are clear, et cetera. But ultimately, I was selecting plants to work in various ways with one another, short term and long term. This is what I try to show you in my forthcoming book, and what I'll briefly highlight below plant by plant.

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The 500' garden was planted into spray-killed lawn with a thin 1" layer of non-dyed hardwood mulch for initial and partial weed control. It's in full sun on a busy road with moderate pedestrian activity.

Bouteloua curtipendula (blue grama grass) -- Serves as the matrix. Gets only about 18-24" tall (that's mostly late summer seed heads).
Aquilegia canadensis (wild columbine) -- Short-lived perennial that will sow around in gaps and finger through the grasses.
Heuchera richardsonii (prairie alumroot) -- Large leaves shade the ground and remain through winter. Works well in drifts. Clumper.
Monarda bradburiana (bradbury's monarda) -- An ecoregion cheat because of it's shoulder-season blooms, shorter habit, and ability to fill in gaps.
Echinacea pallida (pale purple coneflower) -- Airy stalks reach 3' tall. Basal foliage stays low. Deep tap root goes below roots of other plants. Superb winter seed heads.
Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyes susan) -- Biennial provides early color and coverage, gently self sows, eventually fades away as perennials take over.
Asclepias tuberosa (butterflyweed) -- Slow-to-develop perennial that prefers to grow singly dotting the landscape. Deep taproot.
Callirhoe involucrata (poppy malow) -- Creeping groundcover with long bloom time, helps fill in low gaps and shade out weeds.
Coreopsis palmata (prairie coreopsis) -- Light runner will move between gaps, prefers less competition.
Liatris ligulistylis (meadow blazingstar) -- Tall but open stalks that push up through lower plants. Corms won't compete with fibrous roots of grasses or taprooted perennials.
Liatris punctata (dotted blazingstar) -- Shoulder-season bloomer with shorter stalks than LL, so works well with a short bunchgrass.
Conoclinium coelestinum (blue mistflower) -- A little patch by the downspout will bring early fall blooms to the space. Slowly spreads.
Symphyotrichum oblongifolium (aromatic aster) -- Dense, short, shrub-like perennial that provides late season pollen and nectar. Slowly spreads.

There are several things to notice from this list (which does not include the shade plants nearer the house):

1) There's decent bloom succession from April to October.
2) There are multiple plant species that share similar roles -- creepers, architectural, etc.
3) Root structure was considered to create the same sort of layers below ground as above ground.
4) There's a general uniformity of height at about 2 feet tall, which will help show intention and control.
5) While you can't see it in the image, plants were initially placed in masses and drifts IF the species grow this way in the wild. This also will help show intention. Over time, the plants will find their own way, and can be left to this exploration or lightly edited to help maintain some of the original layout.
6) There's an idea of plant succession. For example, Rudbeckia gives us early color and coverage (nice basal foliage in year one of new plants shades out weed seeds from germinating). Aquilegia will probably give way in time as other plants shade the ground (its seeds need light to germinate). And the Coreopsis might not last more than a few years as it doesn't like competition, but if it can find the gaps it will keep popping up in new spots, much like the Callirhoe and Monarda, and keep plugging holes for us.

There's not really an aggressive self sower in the bunch for these site conditions -- you likely wouldn't want that in a smaller area. And there are only a very species that might get aggressive with us on this dry, sunny spot: Coreopsis, Monarda, Callirhoe; if they get a bit too exuberant they ear easily edited. Most species here are clumpers, and the density of the site -- everything on about 12" centers -- will keep plants more honest and more in tune with how they may grow in the wild where competition is an asset (which is why a matrix of grass is so useful, plus it gives us a nice uniform base layer people love to see, hence lawns).

So there you go, a deeper dive into one of our many installs this spring season. I hope it's helped you think about gardening in some new ways. If you want to keep the ball rolling with more instruction and nuance, try the suite of 15 online classes.

Plants We Used in This Large Shade Garden

6/16/2022

 
What native plants work in shady sites, from moist to dry soils? Last week our team installed a 2,500' backyard meadow, which replaced a hosta monoculture. Our dense planting of layered plants will help improve runoff issues while increasing pollinator habitat and helping out the overstory trees.

Keep in mine that not all of these plants will be suited to your site conditions, and their respective behaviors might not automatically mesh with any other plant on the list (think clumper vs spreader). We place plants intentionally in the landscape, to match the site and even microclimates as well as the nearby plant community. So having a list of "shade plants" is simply just a starting point -- do your research.

For example, Carex pensylvanica pairs well with a more aggressive runner (and runners run more in looser / richer soil) like the Conoclinium or Solidago, while Aquilegia goes semi dormant by mid summer so it works well among a more behaved clumper like Carex albicans.

What plants did we use?

Packera aurea -- golden groundsel

Aquilegia canadensis -- wild columbine

Polygonatum biflorum -- solomon's seal

Mertensia virginica (ephemeral) -- Virignia bluebells

Geranium maculatum -- wild geranium

Thalictrum dioicum -- early meadow rue

Heuchera richardsonii (in part sun spots) -- prairie alumroot

Amsonia illustris (in a spot that gets some late afternoon sun that will be hedge like) -- ozark bluestar

Blephilia hirsuta -- hairy wood mint

Rudbeckia laciniata -- cutleaf coneflower

Campanula americana (biennial) -- tall bellflower

Eutrochium purpureum (again, in a part sun spot) -- sweet joe pye weed

Eurybia macrophylla -- bigleaf aster

Conoclinium coelestinum (hoping the site isn't too shady, but it's not dense, deep, dark shade) -- blue mistflower

Symphyotrichum lateriflorum -- calico aster

Solidago flexicaulis -- zigzag goldenrod

Carex albicans (main matrix) -- white-tinged sedge

Carex pensylvanica (main matrix -- primarily used on slopes or erosion-prone spots) -- penn sedge

Carex sprengelii (drifts) -- sprengel's sedge

Carex blanda (scattered masses to create visual interest / texture) -- common woodland sedge
A few of these plants aren't strictly native to eastern Nebraska, but they are close enough -- their habitat value, garden aesthetic, and site benefits are well suited to the larger community. What else could we have used, though? Certainly more spring ephemerals like Uvularia grandiflora. One could always use more sedge species -- Carex radiata, Carex rosea, Carex eburnea just for starters. As for perennials: Asarum canadense would look nice for contrast, and there are other goldenrods and asters like Symphyotrichum cordiflium. Oh, and there's goat's beard, Aruncus dioicus. Phlox divaricata (to feed the bunnies, alas). Mitella diphylla (underused). Hepatica acutiloba. Frankly, there are just too many to list!

Shade gardens aren't difficult. Really. There are many, many options for a variety of site conditions -- especially for the eastern U.S. (what we know best here). Maybe we give up too easy and settle for what's available at thebig box -- like wildlife-snoozing Astilbe and Hosta. If you have a shady or part-shade space that's giving you fits, we can help you design the space, but if you're DIY check out the online classes on how to create layered landscapes for various sites.

Horticulture as Colonizer, Horticulture as Liberator

6/7/2022

 
Using exotic plants is not rewilding -- that's just the same old colonialism and privilege rebranded.

I know we have this unfortunate line in the sand between native and exotic plants; we humans are great at dividing ourselves and relying on black / white thinking (memes feed off this and I'm as guilty as anyone). But it gets far more complicated when we have to also consider other fauna in the landscape, not just ourselves. Who are we gardening for? What's left for them? And in what ways will we greenwash our privilege to convince ourselves that what we want is actually what local wildlife want?

Over the years I've been eviscerated for being a native plant proponent because it comes off as moralistic finger wagging akin to puritanical religious ferocity. It's a fair critique, especially in the first years of my devotion to native plants as a cause. But as I explore in A New Garden Ethic, folks who feel like they've been guilted are also folks who've been asked or forced to look inward more authentically and unnervingly, to confront their privilege and supremacy, and be asked to rewire their point of view -- no easy task as humans love to find a groove and stay in it (it's comforting and stabilizing amid the chaos of existence).

Every garden, no matter what plant we are using, seeks respite, joy, peace, harmony, connection, and celebrates most wildlife that partake of our creation. But again, "our creation" rings with a hubris reserved for an apex species. No garden is ever truly natural.

The native plant debate is the tip of a much larger iceberg. The real conversation is about climate change and mass extinction, about one dominate species being out of balance, and about our culture openly and directly confronting our preconceptions of self worth.

Asking gardeners who use plants from any point of the globe to "restrict" themselves to mostly species endemic to their local ecoregion is limiting purely from an aesthetic point of view. Any critique of a native plant gardener (didactic, myopic) could easily be used on someone who believes plant origin is irrelevant, however.

The dominant system in horticulture now is to use any plant from any locale as long as the plants work together on that site -- even if the landscape appears more "natural" (dense and layered vs plants marooned in oceans of wood mulch). Any advocate of native plants will be seen as a destabilization of the status quo, a fringe voice, a radical voice, and a voice that needs to be silenced. The same goes for those advocating for a reduction in urban lawns.

And the voice needs to be silenced because, again, native plant advocates are asking us to confront a much larger, much deeper, much more complex topic -- who we garden for, how gardens effect various ecological functions, and how gardening is an extension of human colonization, privilege, and supremacy.

Let me say that again: native plant gardening asks us to confront human colonization, privilege, and supremacy. It's a profoundly uncomfortable act, and few of us will embrace the journey because humans are resistant to anything that asks us to reconsider our perception of self, our perception of self in the world, and our perception of the world in general that we've carefully curated to stabilize our emotional responses to being alive. A garden is, inherently, a place of refuge, personal freedom, solace, and artful expression. When we complicate this reality in any way, we erode or entirely remove our ability to cope with our animal brain that needs to create predictability from chaos in order not to feel threatened or afraid. This is gardening 101. And this is why looking at a garden from the perspective of indigenous fauna will always feel like a threat -- and if anything, it's a direct link to our colonization of indigenous human cultures. Horticulture is rife with colonization and erasure and appropriation and renaming. You don't have to look far.

Until we address horticulture as part of a larger system of violent colonization, we'll be stuck in the surface-level discussion of native vs. exotic plant and seldom enact more constructive change to our role within the local, regional, and global environment as agents of social justice for other species. And perhaps what's also at issue is that we are all trying to work through and process our environmental grief, each of the five stages a hurdle that trips us up (anger, denial, despair, bargaining, acceptance).

Gardening is powerful. It is an act of liberation and compassion and empathy. Gardening also carries great responsibility and power as it bridges cultures (human and animal) -- or burns those bridges knowingly and unknowingly. In the end, every gardener wants and works toward the same goal -- coming home to the natural world and finding our way through the practice of touching the soil. In that way we will always be fundamentally united as we struggle to find our way forward.

    About

    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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prairie inspired  design

Lincoln & Omaha, Nebraska

Monarch Gardens is a prairie-inspired design firm. We specialize in lawn to meadow conversions as well as urban shade gardens.

Employing 95% native plants, our designs are climate resilient, adaptable, and provide numerous ecological benefits while artistically reflecting wilder landscapes.
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