Part 1 The Shift in Aesthetic
The Shift Series
By Bobbie J Herbs
This
4-week series is about 21st century design and management of our
yards, landscapes and gardens. You will discover innovative practices that can
reduce the time and money you spend maintaining your yard and the individual
plant species that live there. Expect to learn about changes in aesthetic
outcomes and plant selections as well as the rationale for these shifts, such
as climate change and the beneficial role insects play in our lives.
Part 1 The Shift in Aesthetic
Photo by: Piet Oudolf
Your
yard matters. It’s home to song birds, the moths and butterflies of summer,
furry, scurrying critters like squirrels and chipmunks and if you’re lucky the
music of frogs and toads or the sighting of a sauntering turtle. According to
Douglas Tallamy, PhD Entomology, University of Delaware and author of Bringing
Nature Home, only 5% of US land remains untouched by humans. More than half
of our land is cleared for agriculture, while 43% comprises suburban and urban
sprawl.[1]
Reducing biodiversity, or the variety of life on earth, from genetic pools and
species in turn inhibits the efficiency of nature’s intrinsic services, like
the pollination of food crops, the purification of our water resources and
protection from natural disasters.[2]
The
reason our yards matter is that up to 50% of the US plant biomass resides within
them.[3]
Our homes are where we can make the most significant impact. A simple shift from
turf grass and non-native plants - which all have
varying water, fertilizer and light needs - to creating
an ecosystem of plants with regional roots and tolerance makes a huge
difference. As the late British plants-woman Beth Chatto said, “plants grow
best when placed in conditions closest to their natural habitats.”
What
is this shift in garden and landscape design? And what is an inter-related
plant community? It is a set of plants that thrive in the similar light, soil,
and moisture conditions and can be treated as one.[4]
Building a plant community can save you money! Matching your yard’s conditions
with the right plants enables you to apply simpler management practices across
the entire plant community. Imagine your water bill when you no longer need to
water!
If
this sounds too good to be true, consider The High Line in New York City. Piet
Oudolf, Dutch planting designer, understands both the horticultural qualities
of plants and values their structural features. With a keen eye towards
sustainability, plants were selected for the droughty conditions with the goal
of reducing failures and limiting water needs. Compost, made onsite from the
gardens’ waste, holds moisture and provides nutrients. Avoiding pesticides, an
integrated pest management program is focused on healthy plants and insect
populations.
Great
plant management can also be coupled with great aesthetics. Using mostly native
plants, plus some exotic species that benefit from the same cultural
conditions, he designs a mile and a half of green space elevated above the
streets of Manhattan’s West Side on old railroad tracks saved from demolition. To
accomplish the High Line’s naturalistic look, Oudolf constructs layers with
consideration for each species’ suitability to the somewhat hostile
environment. He combines them to complement each other throughout the year. Oudolf
cultivates an ecosystem that supports a variety of life and draws more than 5
million visitors a year. Read Gardens of the High Line if you care
to learn more about that project.
Oudolf
is considered part of The New Perennials movement. A movement comprised of
landscape designers, professional gardeners and others with a shared passion
for horticulture, sustainability and biodiversity. These leaders in landscape
and garden design are changing the way we see or perceive a garden. The movement’s
mantra is “to plan, design, grow and sustain plant-driven environments for a
multi-layered, year-round spectacle that feeds our souls, reconnects us to the
natural world, and nurtures biodiversity all in one.” If you are curious about
Oudolf’s design process, read his book Planting: A New Perspective.
Photo
by: Thomas Rainer
Another
garden innovator is American Thomas Rainer. He posits nature in the future will
look more like a garden. His book Planting in the Post-Wild World encourages
the reader to break with tradition by creating plant communities like in
nature. These communities are multi-layered, yet ordered, reconnecting us with
nature and improving biodiversity.
Photo
by: Shuki, Saint-nazaire
The
Third Landscape or land left-over by humans, like utility easements, road
sides, parking lots, drainage ditches and even suburban yards, can be used to
reset the balance of nature. Giles Clement, French author, botanist and
designer, advocates sustainable gardens by reusing these small fragments of
land to help replenish the biodiversity and ecological services disturbed by
human activity. In an interview with architect Philippe Chiambaretta, he
stated, “Gardening places us in a permanent relationship with living beings that
establish interactions which are essential to maintaining their balance and
that do not require the intervention of man.”
When
you boil down these innovators’ messages and practices they encourage us to put
the right plant in the right place, simply by:
·
Knowing your local conditions – light, soil pH
and moisture – and what plants are suitable
·
Choosing suitable perennials that repeat their
display year after year
·
Using nature as your template, build layers of
plant material from the ground up.
These
trends are driven by the fact that we require clean air, water, material
decomposition, nutrient enrichment and all the services that nature delivers when
it’s in balance. Ecosystems that achieve high biodiversity enable these
critical, life supporting services.[5]
We
know humans can muscle many aspects of nature – bulldozing wood lots,
genetically altering plants, and developing chemicals that kill weeds and
pests. Instead, these garden trend-setters are landscaping and gardening in
partnership with nature. By making minor changes to our yard and garden practices,
we can help secure a future that includes the songs of birds and peepers, the
humming of solitary bees and the rustling of critters in your yard.
The
next is this series will review the shift in perspective, or how these ideas
emerged from the human touch on earth.
[1]
Univeristy of Maryland, Fact Sheet (https://extension.umd.edu/sites/extension.umd.edu/files/_docs/programs/master-gardeners/Montgomery/Tallamy%20Handout1.pdf
[2] Andrew
Balmford William Bond, Trends in the
state of nature and their implications for human well‐being; and
Ken Norris (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223801/)
[3] Desiree
Narango
(http://www.unri.org/wsb4713307301/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Narango_urban_trees.pdf)
[4] Jared
Green (https://dirt.asla.org/2016/05/16/thomas-rainer-there-are-no-mulch-circles-in-the-forest/
[5] Biodiversity
Information System for Europe [BISE] (https://biodiversity.europa.eu/topics/ecosystem-services
