I’ve been noticing the tension between our cultural landscaping norms and the best practice nature landscaping practices toward which we are all hopefully migrating. For example, Leon asked me the other day, “Is that grass in your garden SUPPOSED to be there?” Because I have planted a bunch of native grasses in the midst of my neat and tidy bark-covered native plant garden. All the sudden, the garden isn’t quite so tidy and that is a cause for concern. Not for me, of course, but likely for anyone who worries about neat and tidy gardens.
It makes sense–we’ve spent generations developing traditional gardening practices, and one of the simple things gardeners have sought to do is remove grass from garden beds. Autumn clean-up is another practice that gardeners have developed and followed. Still clinging to that neat and tidy ethic, gardeners scour the late-season beds and take away everything that has fallen or passed its aesthetic prime with no thought to the plants and animals that might be affected.
One of my favorite podcasts, A Way to Garden hosted by Margaret Roach, featured a Doug Tallamy as a guest this week telling us exactly what we should and shouldn’t do in the fall garden and why.
Please listen to the podcast–you’ll find it HERE. And start thinking about your garden and yard in a new way. If gardening isn’t about what humans want but about what nature needs, it is a lot easier for gardeners to answer questions about why our gardens don’t fit the traditional mold.