Deep Thinking on the Ethical Garden

I've been working for a week on talks for the Loess Hills Prairie Seminar and the Millersville Native Plants in the Landscape Conference, and I ran out of room to include some chunks of writing by others that have really guided my thinking. If / when this all ever turns into a book, I'd like to include these ideas. So for your reading pleasure:


David Gessner on slowing down our lives, how this focuses our ethical treatment of the planet and ourselves, about being patient (and oh how a garden teaches patience!):

As the writer Wendell Berry pointed out long ago, the environmental crisis is a crisis of character. It isn’t simply that too many of us are gulping down the gasoline and other goodies that corporations are forever dishing out; it’s also the way that we’re doing it. When we race to a thing, consume it, and then race off to the next thing, there’s no sense of our ever having gotten to know that thing—whether it’s a place, a person, an animal, or a resource. A culture of speed can quickly become a culture of glibness. There’s a reason that environmentalists who fight for the land and against the coring-out of the earth so often frame the battle as one waged on behalf of our children and grandchildren. It’s because—cliché though it may sound—that is exactly who we are fighting for. Patience begins when we acknowledge the value in taking this long-term view of things, when we justify the continued fight by citing something beyond our own immediate needs, or someone beyond ourselves.

To state it another way, it’s about breaking free from the tyranny of now. One of the great challenges in trying to get people—including politicians—to recognize the reality of climate change is that there always seem to be a thousand other problems that demand our immediate attention at any given moment. We’ll react to emergency: a hurricane, a twister, a fire. But even then, will our reaction really entail slowing down enough to reflect on what we ought to be doing, and how we ought to be acting, in the long term—when we’re not directly experiencing a crisis?

To be truly patient is to choose one thing for a while. And that means not choosing other things. It definitely means not choosing everything. In my own life, I’ve learned that there are some goals that cannot be achieved without putting other things aside. The writing of books, for instance. The same could be said of almost any other large and worthy ambition—like, say, saving the planet. As an essential tool for that long-term goal, patience is more than just practical. It has the power to save us from ourselves.

Sara Stein telling it like it is:

We have left our land too retarded to take care of itself, much less to be of any help to us. This is not someone else’s problem. We — you and I and everyone who has a yard of any size — owns a big chunk of this country. Suburban development has wrought habitat destruction on a grand scale. As these tracts expand, they increasingly squeeze the remaining natural ecosystems, fragment them, and sever corridors by which plants and animals might refill the voids we have created. To reverse this process — to reconnect as many plant and animal species as we can to rebuild intelligent suburban ecosystems — requires a new kind of garden, new techniques of gardening, and, I emphasize, a new kind of gardener.


One of the most thoughtful reviews I have ever read, on a book I am anxious to read -- William Jordan's The Sunflower Forest. This chunk discusses how to embrace the pain of ecological destruction, turn it on its head to create power and define restoration work / gifting in the land and in our hearts:

Given its universality, it should surprise us little that restoration is an encounter with shame, in the face of our killing unwanted vegetation and exerting our control over the land. This is especially shameful when we assure ourselves we are engaging in restoration precisely in order to give life back to degraded systems, and that our intention is to relinquish control over the land. Restorationists cannot simply wave their divine hands, as a god might, and turn back the ecological clock. Restorationists have to address the very real limitations of their skills. But it is precisely by experiencing shame that restoration produces value. As Jordan puts it: “The great value of ecological restoration, I now believe, is that it provides an ideal, even unique context for negotiating […] the development of a relationship between ourselves and the classic landscape.”

In this way, Jordan has radically transformed the terms of the environmental debate. Other environmental ideologies posit either a fallen nature given to exploitation by a redeemed and therefore innocent humanity, or posit a pristine and inviolate nature immeasurably disturbed by an irretrievably wretched humanity. Since there is a little monstrousness — a certain loss of sentimental innocence — on both sides of the divide between humans and the rest of nature, this acknowledgment can generate a newer solidarity with nature. There is, Jordan says, a “continuity of shame” between humans and the rest of nature.

The acknowledgment of shame, of our mortification at our human limitations, and of the troubling brutality of nature, is not an end in itself. To merely stare across the gulf between us and the rest of nature is to court horror, not relationship. Relationship and its rewards come from dealing with shame. So, what is the recipe for developing true community with nature through restoration?

Ecological restoration, meant in Jordan’s full sense, purportedly brings us into community with the rest of nature in a number of distinctive ways. The practice makes us aware of the repercussions of our ongoing involvement in sullying natural systems. It provides a means of direct engagement with nature since, in contrast to wilderness protection, for instance, it involves beneficent trammeling (the restorationist is armed with a bow-saw rather than binoculars). It is also redemptive insofar as it is “the first phase in the cycle of giving and taking back that is the ecological foundation for any relationship.” To be sure, the gift is inadequate and “unworthy.” If restoration culture enables us to figuratively but productively deal with shame and with transcending shame, then, arguably, we get to so-called higher values, including, Jordan argues, beauty.

 

The fact is that, for all of its claims to radicality, environmentalism is of a piece with the shame-denying aspects of the broader culture it critiques. Restoration ecology, by contrast, provides a new paradigm for thinking about humans and nature.

And finally Thomas Rainer naming power:

The front lines of the battle for nature are not the Amazon rain forest or the Alaskan wilderness; the front lines are our backyards, medians, parking lots, and elementary schools. The ecological warriors of the future won’t just be scientists, engineers, or even landscape architects.  The ecological warriors of the future will be gardeners, horticulturists, land managers, Department of Transportation staff, elementary school teachers, and community association board members.  Anyone who can influence a small patch of land has the ability to create more nature.  And the future nature will look more and more like a garden.

 

Being Reported to the County Weed Control for my Lawn

Last week, after two garden consults and a presentation on native plants, I came home to a letter in the mail:

I vowed that if I ever received such a letter, I would rip out the lawn and seed in shortgrass prairie -- little bluestem, sideoats grama, and buffalo grass. My best guess is that the guy across the street, who mows 3 times per week, waters religiously, and whose lawn looks artificial, had enough of my mowing 2-4 times a summer and at the highest setting. But it could be anyone. Here's what our lawn looked like before my wife mowed it today (I wanted to hold out until the last possible minute, but she just wanted to get it done):

You can see by the image that, while not being a pristine lawn (I never water or fertilize), it's far from weedy or overgrown. On the edge it grows faster, where neighbor water and nutrient runoff hits my property. There are a few dandelion seed head stalks in the foreground.

Here's the letter I wrote in response to the superintendent:

Lancaster County Weed Control

Attn: Brent Meyer, Superintendent

Work Order: W79922

Dear Mr. Meyer,

Yesterday I received a notice about “weeds and worthless vegetation” on my property. After reviewing the noxious weed list online it is evident that I am not growing purple loosestrife, Canada thistle or any of the others listed; indeed, as a board member of Wachiska Audubon, a prairie conservation group, I would never grow such plants and am well aware of the issues surrounding them and other exotic invasives in our ecosystems.

I would appreciate clarification, pertinent to my property, about what the issue is. If it is the 15-20 dandelions in the lawn, a quick drive through the neighborhood will show many yards have the imported weed currently blooming, including my immediate neighbors; dandelion is an important first nectar source for many early-emerging native bees and other insects that are key to performing essential pollinator services.

If the issue is the length of my lawn, I do routinely stay behind my neighbors in my mowing regime as I work to conserve soil moisture, grow deeper roots, and out compete most weeds organically. I try to keep the front at the 6” ordinance heights, while allowing lawn behind the fence to go much beyond this limit.

My 1,500’ backyard native plant garden has been featured in the Lincoln Journal Star, Omaha World Herald, online at the magazines Fine Gardening and Garden Design, and has been on several local garden tours. In addition, it has been mentioned and linked to on the blog The Buzz at Cherry Creek – a website that explores the evolution of a pollinator garden being established by UNL Extension where your office is located. You can find images and a description of my award-winning garden here: http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com/p/my-garden.html.

I’m sure you are aware of the need to conserve water, maintain higher lawn lengths, and even to mitigate lawns in general from our public and private landscapes as we experience drought boom and bust cycles and shrinking wildlife habitats. I have been thinking about creating large shortgrass prairie beds to replace most of my front lawn – buffalo grass, sideoats grama, and little bluestem. As a part time garden designer working with clients in Omaha and Lincoln, and writing a weekly sustainable garden column at Houzz.com, I’m well aware of the challenges and perceptions such a landscape would have in my suburban community and the need for thoughtful design.

I look forward to hearing back from you on a clarification of this matter.

Best,

Benjamin Vogt

http://monachgard.com

http://thedeepmiddle.com

So, what are your thoughts everyone? Tired of a a culture that promotes the wasting of clean, drinkable water, especially in prairie states prone to drought cycles and water restrictions? What about all the water used and greenhouse gasses produced to create synthetic fertilizers? What about the noise pollution from mowers that causes temporary ear damage? Or about the mower exhaust, many times worse than a car's, that leads to hypertension, lung disease, and low sperm counts?

If you have a tiller bring it on over. We'll only leave a narrow lawn walkway up the middle leading to the backyard, and the rest will be sustainable prairie.

So much for signs educating others and creating positive change.

How Native Plants Can Wake Us To Environmental Action

Gardening is a personal expression. It's "my art." It's a possession. And there's the problem. Aldo Leopold said that our land ethic is messed up because we treat the land as a possession, something that benefits us alone. If we say gardens should have most or all native plants in them, to many people that sounds like a personal dogma forced upon creative free will -- but that interpretation is being filtered through a western culture that puts human self above all else, and especially a concept of "American freedom" that is quite the antithesis to what an ideal democracy actually stands for (i.e. being selfless). 

Just because someone might strongly advocate for all native plant gardens does not limit your aesthetic choices -- in fact, it also expands your ethical ones, connecting you to your family, your children, your children's children, and all other humans and species who are bound together in ways we ignore in every aspect of our privileged lives. We are a navel gazing group, and at the first call of thinking beyond the self we expend more energy denying real freedom than enacting it; that's freedom to have clean air, safe water, a sound agricultural system full of beneficial pollinators, and a secure economy based on all of the above. Native plants in a garden maybe won't save the environment, but they'll get us thinking about when and why the environment needs saving, and how to think in a radical new way to make it happen.

Lookit My Garden

Inside the garden gate

New bed along the deck, sans butterfly bush, opens up the garden.

Looking back toward gate

Insect nirvana -- Prunus virgiana (urinal cake tree)

The Garden is Catching Up

A somewhat late spring, but not bad. Trees are leafing out like crazy. It's been stupidly hot in the 80s. And we've picked up some rain for a change of pace. Here's my boring garden. Oh, April and May are the dullest months of the entire year! Give me July, give me October, give me January -- anything but the vacant glare of spring.

Goodbye, Winter Awesomeness

I have started cutting down the garden and the sadness is unbearable. This was the first year I totally, completely, and head over heals fell in love with the detritus. Truly, the winter garden can be more spectacular than summer's. I think I'm beginning to see summer as either a utilitarian necessity (to help insects) or as cake topped with brownies topped with candy sprinkles topped with pie. No -- the summer garden is the necessary overkill that gets us to the more profound and penetrating echo of winter. The garden succeeds or fails in what it leaves behind. Just as we do.

With the loss of detritus comes the loss of plants that annoy me. I'm ripping out these: 95% of the iris, shasta daisy, giant knapweed (Centaurea macrocephela), Miscanthus 'strictus'. There's never any leaf damage, the number of insects on the flowers is paltry at best. And they aren't native. So I'll make room for some natives I want to experiment with, and I'll also have a crop of seedlings ready to go in June for transplant. More wild quinine, verbena, aster, sedge, liatris, milkweed, etc.

A Garden is an Act Against Nature

Here's the thing -- designing a garden, by its very definition, is an act against nature. A garden manipulates and contorts nature through the filter of our cultural and imaginative biases. These biases change over years and centuries and vary by class, gender, race, etc. But why a gardener (or landscape designer) must then throw up their hands and continue to do whatever they want -- even in the face of mass extinctions, ecosystem eradication, and climate change -- is beyond me. We like things how they are even if they hurt us.

A garden of native plants is at least an attempt to understand what we've altered beyond recognition, and heal the rift between our culture and the culture of flora and fauna around us that have given rise to our evolution -- and given rise to our free will to do whatever we like. A garden focused on exotics is a continual affirmation that we know better, that the planet is here to serve only us, and that we can do no harm; this is a delusion endemic to our species.

Pasque Flower on a Deeper Level

The first prairie flower that blooms in my Nebraska garden is always one that surprises me. I’m not even looking for blooms in early to mid April – instead, I’m counting the plants putting up new bits of green, wondering what’s made it through winter. Pasque flower always makes it, rising in a bulb of fuzz, some sort of thick cleaning pipe pushing it up through leaf litter and last year’s decay. In the afternoon sun the soft, fuzzy hairs around its emerging bud and few thin leaves reflect light like a halo. It is in every possible sense one of my favorite native wildflowers.

 
Pasque flower’s common name is derived from an Old French word for Easter, as it blooms around that time. Pulsatilla patens or Anemone patens – which goes by other common names like prairie crocus, twin flower, and sandflower – is native from Alaska south through Canada and down into Texas, blooming in high Plains elevations and open prairie, most often in dry or rocky soil. It gets about 1’ tall with a 2’ spread and is slow to expand or self sow. From bloom to seed head it easily puts on a full month show that, if you let it, opens your eyes to the garden’s season.

The Native American Dakota people believe that each species of plant and animal has its own song that expresses its life and soul. One translation of the twin flower or pasque flower song is this:

I wish to encourage the children / of other flowering nations now appearing all over the face of the earth; / So while they awaken from sleeping / And come up from the heart of the earth I am standing here old and gray-headed.

Since pasque flower can often begin blooming even before the snow has melted, it is fitting to think of it as old by the time the other spring flowers bloom, especially with its white seed head among the colorful prairie. The hairs along the stems and petals help to create a heat shield around it, much like what happens with the hairs on our arms when we are cold.

The Dakota name of twin flower is evident in this image, where up to 150 yellow stamens surround a tuft of purple pistils. This duality leads to the story of an old Dakota man who sits by the first spring bloom and recounts his life’s joys, sorrows, hopes, and accomplishments. The bloom reminds him of his youth and old age all at once, the perfect circle of life, the duality of existence, and he is encouraged by that guiding principle of completeness and wholeness of beginnings and endings feeding each other. He picks the flower and takes it to his grandchildren to teach them the song he learned as a child.

While I do not have practical experience and make no suggestion that you try anything without consulting a professional, it is said that crushing the fresh leaves and applying on arthritic hands helps ease the pain, but if left on the skin too long will create a blister. Some other medicinal uses include a tincture to calm symptoms of menopause and insomnia, as well as to treat panic attacks.

I find beauty and metaphor in every stage of pasque flower, even as the petals desiccate and fall off to reveal the puffy seeds, which are reminiscent of prairie smoke (Geum triflorum). Native bees, ants, and other early spring pollinators visit with gusto. I wish I had more of these in my garden, entire swaths even – they’ll display far longer than non native crocus, iris reticulata, or tulip, and are very tough, long-lived plants. Knowing their history here in my prairie region makes me love them even more, and I appreciate what they mean in my garden – a small reflection of something much larger.