Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
Give your garden back to nature: A garden that’s in tune with its natural habitat just makes the most sense.
Turning your perfectly unnatural (yet impressively green!) lawn into an imperfectly wild(ish) piece of land requires a little time and energy at first. And then … a lot less mowing.
MMANY ‘WESTERN’ GARDENS don’t reflect their ecological condition. The plants need to be treated with fertiliser because the soil’s not right. They want water that the weather doesn’t provide. Wildlife disappears because it no longer has food to eat. All this creates more labour for homeowners, the humans in this ecosystem, because they’re working against nature instead of with it.
‘A garden that’s planted purely by aesthetic decisions is like a car with no engine,’ says Larry Weaner, founder and principal of Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in Glenside, Pennsylvania. ‘It may look beautiful, the radio works well, but you’re going to have to push it up the hill.’
A garden should have an engine. You just have to grow plants adapted to your landscape and work with wildlife instead of trying to control it, which will foster diversity and stability in your local ecosystem. More than ornaments, plants have functions in a regenerative system. When you engage the natural landscape, you reconnect to your region and your ecosystem, and create a piece of land that reflects its place. Here’s how.
STEP 1 Understand your land
The great likelihood is that you’re going to be adapting to the conditions you already have. Those conditions might not appear to be ‘optimal’ in the traditional horticultural sense. But plants grow in the wild without fertiliser. Survivors adapt, learning to love even marginal soil. They also forge relationships with other plants, animals and the microbiology of the soil. These relationships become the foundation of a sustainable and resilient landscape.
Get to know your climate
Temperatures, average rainfall, and so forth. Find out the characteristics of the local climate and
weather. Hike around in nature reserves near your home, visit demonstration gardens, go on home tours, walks and talks offered by plant societies to learn about the plants of your region. Note which plants you like – how do they grow? On a forest floor? In a meadow? What do they grow with? Or do they grow alone? You can learn more about soil types and climates that plants prefer by referring to the International Union of Soil Sciences website: iuss.org. Notice where you admire the larger structure of the landscape. It could be light falling through trees, or maybe a sense of spaciousness. Understand the aspects of nature that you respond to viscerally for design inspiration.
Get to know your garden
Watch the light exposure in the morning, at midday and in the evening, and consider how it changes, especially during the spring and autumn when the sun angle shifts quickly. What direction does your house face? Do you have walls, fences or trees that impact light or airflow? Are you on a hill? How is the water moving through your property? Inspect a scoop of soil in your hand to see how it holds moisture. Get a soil test – not to change it, but to know what you’re working with. Take photos, and draw maps describing the microclimates created by sun, shade, water and soil. These will be your planting zones, and they’ll help you to figure out what to plant and where.
Hike around near your home. Note which plants you like – how do they grow?
STEP 2 Design your space
Now that you’ve observed, ask…
What plants will thrive in my garden? In other words, what does nature want? And what do
I want? Where these desires meet will be the foundation of your design.
Is it a priority to have a landscape that is extremely low-maintenance? Keep your selections simple. Don’t bring in too many plants with different care requirements. (Always factor maintenance into design.) If floods are an issue in your area, think trees or a rain garden full of evergreen plants that like having wet feet. Do you want to attract butterflies or birds? Susie Peterson, backyard habitat certification programme manager for Columbia Land Trust and the Portland Audubon Society, recommends that you consider what canopy layers (ground cover, small shrubs, large shrubs, small trees or large trees) you have in your garden. ‘Different birds, different bees, different kinds of wildlife, live at different levels,’ she says.
Choose your plants
Long-term, native perennials will create a more stable, lowmaintenance landscape. While native plants are essential to local wildlife – especially the keystone genera (which make up only five per cent of the area’s native species, but produce 75 per cent of the food) – 90 per cent of insects only eat the leaves of plants with which they co-evolved. They, in turn, feed the birds and other animals. ‘The more diverse an ecosystem is, the more species it contains, and the more stable and productive it is,’ says ecology author and University of Delaware professor Doug Tallamy. Also keep in mind that, ‘The single biggest thing you can do to make an impact on local habitat and rainwater absorption is plant trees,’ says Susie.
Buy plants from a good nursery that grows locally
Native plants are also known as ‘local ecotypes.’ A tree grown in Durban won’t do well in a Cape Town winter even if it’s the same species, so ask nurseries about the provenance of the plants. Once you find a good nursery that takes ecotype into account, tell them about your site, and they can help you make good choices for your garden. You can also find local plant sales through plant societies. If you research how plants propagate, nature will donate to the cause.
STEP 3 Prepare the site and install Remove invasive plants
Find out what invasive species of plants reside in your area. Odds are, you have at least one invasive species in your garden, and its offspring will rapidly spread to your local natural areas, reducing their ability to support wildlife. Handpulling to remove is best, but if it’s an established woody plant, you may need professional help. Tree companies can grind out stumps. Your plant society can connect you with suitable contractors in your area.
Start small
Choose one of the micro regions you found in your garden and clear a bed no larger than 14 m2. See how much you can create before you take on more. ‘Your neighbours are going to appreciate something that’s done well,’ says
Scott Woodbury, manager of Whitmire Wildflower Garden in Gray Summit, Missouri. ‘But nobody wants something that became a weed patch because you bit off more than you could chew.’
Don’t amend the soil
‘There are plants – beautiful ones – that are adapted to pretty much every soil type,’ says Larry. ‘If you make the soil perfectly rich, you can grow pretty much anything you want, but the weeds are going to grow beautifully. I’d rather work with the soil that’s there and the plants that are adapted to that soil. They’ll form a denser, thicker weed-suppressor cover more quickly.’
Cover the ground
‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ says Claudia West, co-author of
Planting in a Post-Wild World and principal at Phyto Studio in Arlington, Virginia. ‘Bare soil, even if it’s covered with mulch, is not stable or persistent. The first step to making a planting that needs less maintenance is to fill every inch of a garden with desirable plants as densely as possible.’ Landscape plugs – small seedlings sold in flats – spaced at 25 to 30 cm on-centre or growing from seed are the most cost-effective solutions. Depending on the planting, you may need to mulch around the plants during the establishment phase to suppress weeds.
STEP 4 Maintain it Give it time to become established
The establishment phase is about two years. ‘In the early stages, you’re sorting out what you’re going to allow to become dominant,’ says Larry. So think of those first few years as a continuation of the design process. You help your plants beat out the weeds, but you also help them find balance with one another. If one grows slowly compared to another, you may need to cut the faster plant back the first few years so the other can survive.
Long-term
Instead of weekly maintenance, you’ll transition to more seasonal projects such as deadheading a shrub for more blooms or cutting back perennial grasses – practices to help the plants be the best versions of themselves. Weeds will still arrive from time to time. Spot-treat by cutting them down at the base. Shaded by ground cover, they won’t be able to compete with your plants.
Mow your lawn high
Learn the appropriate mowing height for your grass – it’s different depending on the varietal. And never remove more than one-third of the blade. Cutting low decreases the plant’s rooting, which inhibits water and nutrient uptake. Clippings recycle as much as 50 per cent of the nitrogen that grass
needs back into the soil. If you have to mow 1 000 m2 or less, consider switching to a push mower. Petrolpowered lawnmowers are statistically 25 times more polluting than cars. For 0.4 ha or less, try an electric mower with a rechargeable battery.
Water less
Grass needs two-and-a-half centimetres of water per week during the growing season. As long as you don’t mind dormancy during a drought – this means it may look crispy and brown, depending on the type, but still be very much alive – you don’t need to irrigate your lawn. Most varieties of grass will tolerate drought stress better than people realise.
Organise it
As Claudia recommends: ‘Make your garden look even better with frames, which can be as simple as a neat and tidy fence, a brick pavement, a mowed edge of grass or clipped hedges. Maintaining the edges, adding a bench – these are cues of care that indicate the garden is something you intended to create.’
Make it pretty!
Pay attention to what blooms when, and factor seasonal shifts of colour into your design. Says Claudia: ‘You probably remember in autumn when entire fields bloom in goldenrod, a sea of yellow. Or spring when you walk near a floodplain and see millions of
Virginia bluebells. What if 20 per cent of your planting erupted in purple, pink, white or orange? That’s a spectacular event.’
Step 5 Support it
Watch how the landscape evolves. ‘Don’t be discouraged if some of the plants in your palette don’t do well, even though you did the research,’ says Max Kanter, co-founder of Saturate, an ecologically minded gardening company in Los Angeles. Some might not be placed quite right, while others will thrive in ways you didn’t expect. ‘Start to practise the idea that the garden is a process,’ he says. It’s not merely an installation or a transaction; it’s a relationship. You’re not only giving your garden back to nature – you’re sharing it, which, in a way, is giving yourself back to nature, too.
Instead of weekly maintenance, you’ll transition to seasonal projects, such as deadheading
a shrub.