Wilmington News Journal Article
Gardening With Purpose: Celebrate Your Backyard Adventure
by Rick J. Lewandowski, Director, Mt. Cuba Center
I have a confession to make–I love working with plants, particularly native plants. I love their shapes, textures, colors, and seasons of interest. I love the artistry of bringing native plants together in the garden. I love their abundant diversity, their natural variation, their unique adaptations to varying soils and climate, and I love the stories inspired by plants that inexorably link us to the earth. Yes folks, I’m an obsessive, crazed “there’s-always-another-plant-I-must have” gardener and a hopelessly romantic plant geek.
While our gardens at Mt. Cuba Center lie dormant, this behavior invariably bubbles to the surface at this time of year, exacerbated by the arrival of, yet, another plant catalogue in the mail, promising a new palette of plants for the garden. Even more enticing is the challenging and habit-forming ritualistic internet search for elusive, less common, and highly desirable native plants. Can you imagine, though, how this horticultural obsession could translate into gardening chaos without some process or thoughtful planning?
Landscape gardening, despite its many rewards, can indeed be an unfocused and disorganized experience if, as gardeners, we don’t consider the bigger role plants play in defining our outdoor spaces. Let’s face it there are nearly as many opinions about gardening as there are gardeners. However, the quality of gardens and outdoor spaces can be significantly improved–and possibly contribute to a healthier environment–if we take a little time to establish priorities and set goals.
What’s Your Desire?
Among the most important decisions to make is what will be the uses of spaces in your garden. Do you need play areas for the kids or an outdoor entertaining area for adults? Have you always dreamed of a vegetable garden, perennial garden, foundation plantings, or a shady wildflower garden? Do you have or need outdoor work/storage areas? Are there views (perhaps, not even on your property) that you’d like to enjoy?
The bottom line is that setting priorities for the use of your outdoor spaces goes a long way in maximizing the potential of your garden. Don’t forget to consider how much of your leisure time you want to spend in the garden or how garden planning decisions fit with other members of your household. After all, if you build it, will they use it? And, finally, as your interests change, so will your garden priorities–and that’s okay. Gardens can and will evolve with your interests, just as your knowledge and opinions change.
What Glues the Garden Together?
The joy of gardening is that it can provide an opportunity for you to create a reflection of your individual tastes and interests. Certainly, gardens can vary greatly in style from naturalistic to formal with every combination in between. However, gardens are most successful when they achieve a sense of unity and harmony through the repetition of plant forms, colors, and textures as well as providing the appropriate amount of variation or contrast. Too much of any one feature, though, can lead to boredom. On the other hand, lots of variety can make for confusing and less unified gardens.
Furthermore, occasional focal points such as specimen plants, furniture, sculpture, or architectural elements, to mention a few, can enliven the garden and provide a thematic shift from one garden space or “room” to another. Garden rooms with different functions (ie. play, entertaining, perennials, shrub border, etc.) can benefit greatly from the inclusion of focal points, reinforcing and celebrating their individual character.
Is It Built From Bottom to Top?
With planning, plants support each other to create a collectively unified garden. Like a house built with a floor, walls, ceiling, and roof, successful gardens are often developed in physical layers with a low-growing ground layer, shrub layer, small tree canopy, and a larger tree canopy. This philosophy of layering can apply regardless of whether plantings are only a few feet tall or part of a towering woodland canopy.
Layering provides opportunities for extending garden interest across the seasons as well. Rather than planning layers only in space, we can take advantage of flowers, foliage, fruit, bark, and plant architecture year round. For instance: utilize evergreens, fruiting plants and architecturally interesting plants in winter; use plants with interesting foliage and flowers from early spring through the summer; and highlight fall foliage colors and fruiting plants throughout the autumn.
Where Does Your Heart Lie?
Each day there is more and more discussion focused on protecting our environment and conserving resources. There is little doubt that we are in a period of significant climate change. Our gardens need to become case studies of care for our environment as well as examples of wise use of resources. We can begin by carefully selecting plants that are naturally pest resistant, require less water and fertilizer, and need fewer or no pesticides. Garden plants should be selected to perform well in local soils, adapt to specific garden conditions, and help to minimize soil erosion.
Research has also shown that including native plants in our gardens can be a wise environmental strategy. Properly selected native plants that provide structural layers as well as flowers, fruit, and foliage for feeding are vital to sustaining insect, bird, and other wildlife populations that have evolved to rely upon them for survival.
Planning your outdoor spaces isn’t rocket science, but it requires a little time and thoughtful consideration. Be sure to carefully explore how you want to use the outdoor spaces around your home. Thoughtfully consider the plants you select for your garden, striving to achieve unity and harmony. Create a garden of layers in physical space as well as layers that bridge the seasons for maximum beauty and diversity. And, finally, strive to make a positive contribution to the environment by carefully selecting plants so your garden supports wildlife and is less prone to pest and disease outbreaks through the wise choices you make. Certainly, this is a win-win scenario and what could be a better solution?
Now, go out there, begin planning your garden for 2008, and celebrate your own personal backyard adventure!
To learn more:
If you’d like to learn more about garden design, selecting native plants for the garden or environmentally appropriate gardening practices, check out Native Plants in Designed Landscapes, Art Ecology and Wild Gardens, a workshop to be taught by celebrated garden designer Cole Burrell on February 2nd 10am-2pm at Mt. Cuba Center. New classes at Mt. Cuba Center begin in March.
Architectural elements can provide important focal points in the garden as seen at Mt. Cuba Center.
Seating areas, like this one at Mt. Cuba Center, can provide pleasant focal points of interest in the garden.
It’s important to recognize the importance of layers and their role in enhancing the garden.
Winter branch architecture of this pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) extends the value of the garden throughout the year.
Unity and harmony can be achieved by repeating elements in a design.
Shapes and foliage colors can create important value in the landscape as this dogwood (Cornus florida) has done in the Mt. Cuba Center meadow.
Layers can be created in space from ground to sky and in time, in this instance, to take advantage of autumn foliage.
Careful selection of native plants for garden use can add great beauty, seasonal interest, and support wildlife.
These two images of Mt. Cuba Center’s West Slope Path provide an excellent example of creating layers that bridge the seasons, diversifying the garden for greater enjoyment.
This dogwood (Cornus florida) is an important focal point in this woodland landscape, drawing guest along the path to the next garden experience.
The repetition of color in the garden can help to unify the overall design. Here, Dusty Zenobia (Zenobia pulverulenta ‘Woodlander Blue’) adds its unique foliage color to help unify this shrub border.