Re: native garden pros and cons

Someone on both lists asked that I repost this e-mail (originally sent to CA-Natives) here.
Seán O.


At 08:53 AM 12/9/2003, Paul Furman wrote:
The wild look is another difficult sell. A lot of natives really do look scruffy at least part of the year so I like to mix them together is a sort of bramble so that while one thing is dried up or receeded to a black slime at the ground, something else is bursting forth and blooming. Natives look good together too. Their colors & textures blend together really well. If you throw in some really showy ornamentals in the mix, it just makes everything look scruffy. The bermuda shorts effect.
Something that non-California-native people tend to forget about this state is that it has a unique and rare climate (even though is was probably the reason they moved here in the first place). The mediterranean climate we share with about 1% of the earth's landmass is often poorly understood and, as you might guess, not as much is written about it in particular (compared to what is written about gardening in other climates). The 'scruffy' time is usually summer (depending upon the plants you are trying to grow), which can be thought of as our dormant season (instead of winter as in colder climates, and yes, even deciduous plants tend to make significant root growth during our mild winters). Teaching people about this climate and how is impacts our choice of design, our lifestyle, our art, etc. is a topic I've spoken several times on over the past couple of years.

Designing a garden, native or otherwise, should always take into account the seasonal nature of the local climate. Usually there is a spot in a home garden where it is undesirable to have a 'scruffy' period (e.g. entrances, views from the windows of the main living area, etc.). Careful design can minimize the seasonal 'scruffiness' of a particular planting by choosing evergreen, sclerophyllous leafed plants that are attractive year-round, or choosing ephemerals that are not as dramatic in their decline as they are in their peak performance.

Each client I work with has their own take on what a garden should look like (some like a 'wild' or 'scuffy' look, others like a more manicured, formal look, and then everything in between). It is not my job to dissuade them from having a certain taste. It is my job to help them attain what they want within the boundaries of their budget AND with resource & water conservation and eco-appropriateness. It is also my job to educate them as to what they can expect form their own property and how they can work with the natural forces at hand (the climate, soil, exposure, wind, available moisture, the local fauna, etc). I also take it upon myself to discover and challenge inappropriate global assumptions that many people have ("You mean the police won't stop and knock on our door if we remove the lawn?" - in most areas, they won't!).

Urban gardens can rarely achieve a true 'wild' state - they exist, after all, in a disturbed area. Mitigating that disturbance is the whole idea here. Garden adjacent to wild-lands should be designed with those wild lands in mind, not only to utilize the unique 'extended landscape' opportunities that exist there, but the potential to influence (good & bad) those 'native' (likely also somewhat disturbed) areas must also be considered.

These days, it is often not difficult to sell a client on the concept of using 'natives'. What exactly a 'native' is can be a more difficult problem. Many novice gardeners think that something growing unaided in their gardens must be 'native' (since it survives without their fretting and worrying about it). Others think that ANY plant actually native to California ought to be able to grow in their particular garden merely for that reason. Still other native plant purists thing that ALL plants not native to the local area (County, 20mi. radius, 1mi. radius, 25ft radius) should be removed and banned from gardens and landscapes (this would certainly increase a 'sense of place' ;-). All of these apparently conflicting views can confuse and confound the average gardener and turn them off to the whole idea of considering natives plants for their gardens.

I am pleased that these days there are fewer true purists who demonstrate intolerance and thereby chase people away from native plant gardening. Many native plant enthusiasts have also 'come out of the closet' and admitted that they like to grow some well-behaved non-native in their gardens. I think the main idea here is to GARDEN RESPONSIBLY, which means not harming the local environment, not harming other environments (where do you think all those beautiful rocks people love to put in their gardens come from?), being ecologically sound and resource lean, and, with a good design, you can still have a beautiful, useful, functional garden appropriate to your own tastes/desires/needs.

(probably a bit long-winded - >>Sorry!<< - guess you can see that I'm a public speaker! ;-)
Regards,
Seán O.

h o r t u l u s a p t u s - 'a garden suited to its purpose'
Seán A. O'Hara sean@support.net www.hortulusaptus.com
1034A Virginia Street, Berkeley, California 94710-1853, U.S.A.
(ask me about the worldwide Mediterranean gardening discussion group)

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