Gardening with a Wild Heart. Judith Larner Lowry
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mitigation may be seen as representing a real shift in consciousness, questions of the possibility of such replacement of natural systems inevitably arise. Do we understand enough about natural systems to begin to recreate them, or to evaluate the mitigation effort once it has been made? All those associated with this field recognize that the cost of attempting to replace functioning natural systems with artificial ones is astronomical, that it would be better simply to protect them in the first place. But development proceeds, roads are cut through wildlands, houses sit on vernal pools, video parlors occupy coastal scrub, and the landscape of California is changed for the worse in ways both apparent and hidden.
In an ideal world, the restored wetland would be created first, before the building project was begun. It would be observed for a number of years to see if it could actually meet restoration criteria before the first bulldozer arrives to destroy the original site. Critics point out that restoration in this arena serves to legitimize destruction, but the revolutionary aspect of even this kind of restoration is that it recognizes that the world cannot absorb endless destruction. It legalizes the concept of “payback,” or returning the gift, and gives the natural world the status of a player.
Back yards, where fewer economic motives usually prevail, offer direct opportunities to ally ourselves with the forces of restoration. Planting native penstemons instead of petunias won't take food out of your mouth, but it may put it into some other creature's, somebody you didn't know about but will be glad to meet. Grizzlies and wolves will not appear in your urban yard, but there's a lot else that can happily inhabit the place where nature and culture meet. The endangered San Joaquin kit fox may not build a den by your deck (although a gray fox, with cubs, lives comfortably near one of our clients), but if your home at the edge of the wildlands is a rich, chirping, buzzing, yowling island, with no invasive plants leaking out from its edges, possibilities abound.
If the vegetable garden takes up a quarter of an acre, a food garden for birds and turtles might take up an equal amount. If the construction of a new home disrupts a woodland, let the builder plant another. If the commute to work requires roads that bring weedy species to wildlands, vow that your yard, and then your neighborhood, will be pest-plant free.
A sense of atonement is not inappropriate for the back-yard restorationist. Neither craven nor guilt-ridden, but almost practical, it points a new way. To look at what has been done to the land and begin its redress at the back door brings concrete relief, soothing like hands patting the dirt around the roots of a young oak. With the premise that all land is sacred land, the gardener finds herself doing important work. While corporations are forced to mitigate, homeowners can do so voluntarily, joyfully.
I know a woman who planted capeweed in the yard of her rented home. Eleven years later, when she moved, the capeweed had spread throughout her yard and into adjoining farmlands, beyond her physical means to remove it. Where it will stop is anybody's guess, but that land adjoins a national park where volunteers spend weekends removing this very species.
She might make reparation by tackling some restoration project in her next yard, something within her capabilities. She might “mitigate” for damage done by joining a volunteer group working to restore public lands. She might pressure her local nursery owner not to sell capeweed and talk to her friends about the significance of their gardening choices. Such actions would reflect a change in consciousness, assuming responsibility for our gardening choices.
MY KIND OF CLIENT I am at the beginning of a consultation. I am not sure yet what I can do for this client—the gardening problems he wants to solve seem to require plants not found in the native palette, such as evergreen vines that form thick privacy screens and are fragrant through the summer.
Then he shows me three oa\ saplings on his property, two valley oaks and one coast live oak. One of the valley oaks has been jay-seeded right next to a recently built gardening shed, We admire its shapely promise. “Of course, we'll have to remove the shed,” he says matter-of-factly. Now I know I can work with this client.
I don't expect clients to tear down their buildings for native plants, but it's nice when one offers.
Tipping the Balance
After walking the land with a client, I walk it alone, then sit in the best place I can find to ponder on plant associations to be recreated and how they can be combined with what already exists. Important information to elicit is which plants the client wants to keep.
I seek to avoid the tearing out of well-loved plants. Ripping out roses and fruit trees, a fragrant daphne, or a time-honored wisteria is not the way I like to begin. The kind of gardening described in this book simply sets in slow motion the process of tipping the balance in a native direction. Returning the natives, seeing how they work, making thoughtful choices, the gardener can move slowly to a vision of commitment arising, not from a sense of loss or deprivation, but rather from a sense of enrichment.
Roses and fruit trees can be protected from deer by encircling them with coyote bush or Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium, In coastal gardens, coyote bush can visually tie a garden together; its rich green foliage makes a good background for roses, particularly the climbing roses that don't require spraying and coddling. The back-yard orchardist may find that the only nut trees that do well on the coast are the native hazels. When the raspberries are done, the berry lover can head for the native huckleberries.
Fruit trees can be underplanted with native bunchgrasses, whose slow and steady intake of water and deep fibrous root systems make them good cover crops for orchards and vineyards. The native grape, Vitis californica, tangy and sweet after the first frost, is well worth growing. Food growers, including permaculturists, who focus on perennial crops, and organic truck farmers might profitably begin serious conversation with native plant people.
The back-yard gardener, with no deadlines to meet, no committees to please, has the opportunity to change slowly. No massive replantings or clear-cuts need be scheduled in the back yard. We remove one or two Monterey pines a year around my house, replanting oak trees, buckeyes, and red elderberries as we go. If any creatures have adapted to existing garden plants, we aim to provide them with alternatives before eliminating their habitat.
Appropriate Expectations
In working out the sequence of events for the homeowner, I hope to establish that less than total certainty is the essence of this kind of gardening. Surprise, both good and bad, provides opportunities to learn more about a particular site. Accumulating information about what works where, sometimes developing site-specific techniques, and using that information to rework the project as it proceeds are part of the evolving native garden.
In order that expectations and reality mesh, I make it clear that some native plants have a longer adjustment period after planting than nonnative plants commonly used in the trade. They may not begin to thrive till the fall after planting, or till two or even three years down the line. I want to avoid the situation where the homeowner, used to the “quick off the mark” growth rate of standard landscaping plants, gives up just as the plants are about to come into their own.
Where slow-growing plants are used, I include quick-growing annuals and perennial wildflowers and native bunchgrasses to give the homeowner immediate satisfaction and pleasure. The early garden is often quite different from the mature garden, which expresses the realized forms of trees and shrubs. I often plant willows, elderberries, or alders with slowergrowing oaks. These riparian plants are quick to take off and provide good screening fast. It usually takes about five years for the oak to overtake them.
I am alerted to potential problems when a client indicates particular flower color dislikes or preferences. The client who dislikes pink, all pinks, from lavender-tinged to nearly red, from opaque to translucent, or all yellow flowers, may be applying “interior design” principles that indicate a critical difference in our perspectives. I recall an experience I had on one of my first bird walks. Pausing in an opening near a creek, we were asked to count the number of bird calls we heard. Trying to decipher which one was under discussion, I asked, “Do you mean the musical one?”
“Musical is in the ear of the beholder,” said one participant.
That little comment