A natural gardener participates in a world that is much greater than the constructs of humans. Such a gardener connects with the natural world in a myriad of life-affirming ways. For example, watching wildlife in a garden is a delight. One’s heart leaps in joyous admiration when watching a hummingbird pluck spider web for its nest, or when a skink slinks out of a rock wall crevice, or a box turtle wrestles a tomato hornworm off its host plant. There’s a world of neighbors in the backyard, dozens of life forms living out intricate lives.
Natural gardeners work with the ecology of the yard. They watch carefully and spend a lot of time thinking and asking questions; “Who eats the species that is out of balance? Is there a place the pest seems to congregate, and can it be altered? Is there a way to attract it to the alleyway and away from the garden?” Natural gardeners make gardening a time of learning, not a time to declare war. It’s the harder way to garden, for sure, but it’s a way that honors the natural world.
Native plant gardeners honor their regional ecosystems by growing the most beautiful plants of their area. Honor may seem a strange concept to learn in a garden. Negative attitudes, however, never convey honor. They are limiting and confining. Eventually, a person fears the creatures of the garden. Ignorance brings on fear of wasps or ants or scorpions or even snakes. Natural gardeners seek to honor the creatures of the yard, celebrating their lives, marveling at the wonders under our noses and by our toes.
Yards that are merely a stretch of grass, a hedge along the house and a shade tree or two are not gardens. Such a landscape is sterile and hurts the human soul. Gardens provide many of the things that elevate the mundane to the sublime, such as a bouquet for the house that brings the beauty of the natural world close. Gardens extend the house to include outdoor rooms. Gardens make a house a home. Native plant gardens make a person feel at home in the bioregion they inhabit.
A garden is more than just plants – it’s also a place of stories. Think of the garden as a sandbox, and the plants as hardscaping and ornamentation as the toys in the sandbox. Each bit of ornamentation will have stories associated with them. The ornamentation’s stories transmit culture – in other words, stories of our experiences, our knowledge and our traditions.When a person meets another person of a different culture, conversations are easily started by talking about plants that are used for food, medicine and materials in each person’s culture. Horticulture means more than the culture (or care) of plants – it also means the transmittal and interpretation of our own human culture. The plants themselves can add dozens of stories to the garden.
For example, throughout almost every reach of the region this program reaches, the Afghan Pine is ubiquitous. It presents several stories for people to learn. The species survives only because of Afghani and Pakistani warlords that preserved forested regions for their own private hunting preserves, preventing the trees from being cut down for firewood. The use of the tree as an ornamental has given new local sources of food for hungry red crossbills, new winter refugees from the mountains and whose strange beaks are adapted to prying seeds from pinecones.
Natural landscaping is the gathering of specific ecoregional stories, and the creation of bioregional culture. In partnership we create new stories with what we plant.
Nature Notes is sponsored by the Dixon Water Foundation and is produced by KRTS Marfa Public Radio in cooperation with the Sibley Nature Center in Midland, Texas. This episode was written by Burr Williams of the Sibley Nature Center.
