Gardening with a Wild Heart. Judith Larner Lowry
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pace. Recently, I saw that a eucalyptus sapling has appeared in the previously intact coastal scrub on the south bank. This young tree will, in not too many years, be the progenitor of its own grove of cliffdestroying eucalyptus trees.
In other places, seeking to save their sea-bluff properties, homeowners have planted species reputed to help in erosion control, such as iceplant. Used in many places throughout California, iceplant quickly covers the ground, but it is not deep-rooted and does not lace the soil layers together as will the deep-rooted native bluff species. I have seen its heavy, succulent leaves pull down sections of cliff. When the plant dies, too, the salt stored in its leaves changes the chemical properties of the soil into which it decomposes, impeding the germination and reestablishment of native species.
The native plants have become the exotics, lone voices in a chorus of eucalyptus, passion flower vine, French and Scotch broom, Cape ivy, English ivy, and so on. I speculate that one reason so little respect is given to native plant communities in my town is that they are now so little in evidence. The thrilling sweep to the sea of low-growing prairie, scrub, and bluff plants that must once have been here is hard to visualize, interrupted as it is now by mini-forests of eucalyptus, pine, and cypress. Where coastal scrub still exists, it is usually diminished by the rampant growth of Himalayan blackberry or ivy, which eliminate the beautiful herb layer, one of the elements that distinguishes northern coastal scrub from southern coastal scrub. It is hard, and getting harder, to get a sense of what the land used to be.
I can base my gardening choices on information gleaned from naturalists and scientific papers, on data on habitat for songbirds, butterflies, insects, voles, and lizards, motivated by the hope of providing hospitable surroundings for these creatures. Yet it may be that they will not come, or that only some will.
I shall still want to be surrounded by these plants. Knowledge of their qualities seems to fill some of that cavity of longing for knowledgeable connection with our tribe, both human and other, that some of us carry around like an empty burden basket. I no longer see plants as isolated acquisitions, representing triumphs of my horticultural skills, although I use those skil from propagating oaks from acorns to pruning California hazels into the elegant, horizontally branched form they can assume.
My goals, perspectives, and visions have so changed through this endeavor that a beautiful flowering plant at the nursery that might once have fired my blood with the longing for ownership is a matter of some indifference to me now. Most noticeably, I can no longer be disappointed in my expectations of what plants might do. “I have these pictures in my mind of how the garden will look. But it never looks that way,” one client complained. “I know,” I said. “Isn't it great?” It's all information on the characteristics of old friends. Surprise, change, and flow are the stuff of gardening life to me now.
Protecting, enhancing, and bringing close the coastal scrub and other native plant communities has become my business, and my life is punctuated by phone calls and seed orders and scheduling, but behind it all somewhere always are the color of the litter made by wax myrtle leaves and the smell of coyote bush in the rain.
The Seam
Once I spent some time at a hot springs in Mendocino County. The facilities included a “cool pool” for swimming, built by damming the creek on three sides with poured concrete. The fourth side of the pool was formed by the rocky base of the hill, along which flowed the creek. On the hillside, native clarkias cast a pink net through the grasses.
When, after swimming my laps, I pulled myself up and out of the pool, I found that one hand was on concrete and the other on native rock. Regarding the seam between the two materials, a hardened flow between substances, it occurred to me that this is the place where I have come to garden: at the seam between the wild and the cultivated, where they merge and mingle, the shape of one giving shape to the other.
It is this conversation, the back-yard, over-the-fence conversation between the gardener and the larger garden beyond the fence, that forms the subject of this book. Sometimes I find myself standing motionless in my garden, a plant in either hand. My neighbor laughs at me over the fence, “What are you doing?”
“I'm thinking,” I say. I'm remembering a piece of coastal forest where I first saw these plants, called milkmaids, in a sunny opening created by the demise of an old Douglas fir. My mind flickers through a couple of hundred years of land use history, speculating, evaluating, I imagine myself next spring lying down among these white flowers, watching the white butterflies that frequent them, lost in the fog-bound trembling of this gentle, solemn, silvered land.
Part-opening illustration: Wild grapes. Drawing by Ane Carla Rovetta.
PART II
Tipping the Balance
in a Native
Direction
CHAPTER TWO
He who owns a veteran bur oak owns more than a tree. He owns a historical library and a reserved seat in the theatre of evolution. Aldo Leopold, 1949
I cannot think of a more tasteless undertaking than to plant trees in a naturally treeless area, and to impose an interpretation of natural beauty on a great landscape that is charged with beauty and wonder, and the excellence of eternity. Ansel Adams, 1966
Hints and Clues, Remnants and Relics
I arrive early for my appointment. There is time, before ringing the doorbell, to scout the neighborhood surrounding the home where I shall be doing a landscape consultation. It may be a tract house in a crowded subdivision, a summer home converted to a residence on ten acres of woods, a ranch house on five hundred acres of grasslands, or a mini-mansion built “on spec.” Maybe the land was once a beanfield, and before that, riparian forest. It may have been converted from apricot orchards to houses and yards, or directly from oak savannah to houses and yards, but somewhere in the neighborhood, I am going to find some native plant life.
An oak sprouting by the sidewalk, a small patch of miner s lettuce in the grass, toyon thrusting dark red berries through a fence. Coyote bush along a right of way, the seed stalk of an annual lupine. Hints and clues, remnants and relics. The survivors.
I make a list, a neighborhood flora for the client. It will tell the names of the survivors, those species possibly easiest to bring back, and provide clues to the land's natural history. I may find places for collection of local seeds, to be grown out by me or the client, or plant combinations that seem like good ideas.
Rare is the land that has not experienced some hard history of use. Usually the “herb layer,” which includes the native grasses, wildflowers, and perennials, is least in evidence. When there are venerable oaks or madrones, dramatic and beautiful, they are often spending a lonely old age with no young ones coming along. To suggest taking measures to encourage baby, teenage, and young adult oaks is a way to gauge the long-range interests of the client. Is the imagination stirred by the thought of an oak grove that the owner might not live to see mature? The owners response provides a clue, a necessary hint, about this particular land manager.
The flora is for the clients, to honor their land. I am usually excited by what I have found, and hope that they will be too. As I talk about what I have seen, I begin to assess how much complexity is of interest to them and what their motive is for wanting a garden of native plants. Sometimes they want to include a few native plants for interest's sake; sometimes they want to lower their water bill. They may want to attract hummingbirds or butterflies or quail. A multitude of motivations are possible. I have seen repeatedly that one thing leads to another and that I can never predict from an initial encounter what the outcome will be.
Once I had my kitchen redone, a major improvement. The carpenter kept saying how small it was. I was thrilled with the changes but couldn't enjoy them till the carpenter had left. I