Low maintenance gardening
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Low maintenance gardening
- From: P* H* <p*@nevco.k12.ca.us>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 10:27:03 -0700
Well said, Erik! (and Tim Dutton, and others)
There are a lot of contradictions in gardening that exemplify the human
propensity
to control our environment, rather than live in synch with it. As
gardeners, we want to
play god and mess around with the natural order of things, then we
complain when playing god becomes too much work or too expensive. This
applies to the weedy meridian in the middle of the boulevard as much as
it does to our management of national parks.
Most gardeners subconsciously want to re-create nature, or create some
kind of
mythical Eden, but they usually end up creating something very
unnatural. And we often create gardens for inspiration, but rarely
devote much time for spiritual engagement with our gardens. So, I think
the
question of how much garden maintenance we want to engage in depends on
what kind of relationship we want to have with our plants. In fact, the
word
"maintenance" to me is a disassociation with nature. A garden is not a
machine.
Ask yourself whether you spend more time working in (maintaining) your
garden, than simply observing, enjoying or reflecting in it. If not,
your garden
isn't as rewarding as it could be. A garden can be as inspirational as a
wild place,
but only to the degree that garden itself is wild. Sometimes that means
not planting anything,
but instead, as Erik suggests, merely removing a few plants or dead
branches. But even that
removes some of the wildness of a place.
If gardeners would work more WITH nature in the gardens, rather than
fight nature, I think they'd find gardening to be more spiritually and
intellectually rewarding, less work, and less expensive. A lawn is not a
meadow. An irrigation system is not a thunderstorm. A bag of steer
manure
is not duff on the forest floor.
Paul Harrar
Nevada City, CA, USA
Sunset Zone 7
2,700 ft.
