Gardens and yards are changing. People are reducing their use of herbicides and pesticides. Planting more water-wise plants. Adding natives. Appreciating mixes of plants not just monocultures, whether in the lawn or the flowerbeds. All of this is revising our ideas of what an attractive yard is.
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| front yard, natives (and others), no lawn grass |
The history of my yard reflects the changing garden. My house in Nebraska, from the 1990s to 2006, had a nice Kentucky bluegrass lawn (Poa praetense), big European yews (Taxus occidentalis) as foundation plantings, and a saucer magnolia (Magnolia hybrid), well west of the native range of magnolias; introduced plants and not much diversity. When I moved to Colorado in retirement, I bought a house that was somewhat xeriscaped (using drought-tolerant plants to minimize water requirements) and added additional water-efficient plants. Then, over the last decade, I embraced the movement to grow native plants--partly to help the food chain, partly to enjoy the natives (link for more discussion)--and have been adding native plants.
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| traditional yard |
Like most people, I learned gardening from my parents. I have studied plants all my professional life, but usually that was studying them in their natural habitat, not trying to grow them.
Thinking about it, here are some of the things that have changed:
Avoiding pesticides or herbicides. These poison non-target animals and plants. The target organisms, plant-eating caterpillars or weeds like dandelions, are by now pretty resistant to pesticides but other insects, pollinators, and native wildflowers, for example, are very susceptible, easily killed by unintended contact with small amounts of the poisons. Furthermore, too many insecticides stay in the body of the animal, so that predators like birds are also poisoned. Better not to use it, but then you have to commit to digging out weeds, picking off caterpillars, or putting up with a weedy lawn and flowers with holes in their leaves. I am getting more tolerant. I am calling the lawn a meadow and letting non-grasses grow there. (I still mow it). I try to plant an excess of the plants I want so the insects (and rabbit) can eat some without killing them all. I also have a set of little wire fences to protect newly-purchased plants until they grow big enough to survive the rabbit's damage.
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| lawn with small flowers, Switzerland |
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| Rounded leaves of a columbine (Aquilegia) seedling among the iris. Should I weed it out? |
Studies have shown that a square yard (square meter) stand of plants is more effective in attracting pollinators than smaller ones. That is overly simple, but I used to buy just one aster or one echinacea. Now I think I should buy three or five plants, plant them together and let them spread into that square yard of asters or echinaceas. If I want seeds, several different plants are important for cross-pollination. Bigger clumps likely work for raising butterflies as well. Surely a pregnant monarch or swallowtail looks for a big stand of host plants before laying her precious eggs. Of course, there are a hundred species that pollinate: some surely avoid clumped plants. But, also, having several plants makes it harder for that species to die out in my yard, which has been a problem.
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| Echinacea plant At one time, enough to say "I have echinacea." |
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| Group of echinacea plants, approaching the recommended area |
I'm trying to make a welcoming space for birds. This year I had chickadees, robins, blue jays, and house finches nest in my small yard. My apple trees have coddling moths (Tortix), a European pest of a Eurasian tree. Should I view these moths as pests or bird food? Similarly, I have waged war on field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) for years, but two of the moths I saw in my backyard, bindweed moth (Tyta luctuosa) and the white plume moth (Pterophorus) whose caterpillars use it as a host plant. Maybe bindweed is contributing more to the food chain than I had thought.
Another question in my changing yard is whether to use compost. The soils of my area are dry, low-nutrient western soils. Compost is organic material that we help decay and then add back to keep the soils rich in nutrients. That makes sense in vegetable beds, from which leaves and fruits are removed, sending nutrients away. But western native plants are adapted to dry, poor soils. In those, they outlast other plants. If I spread compost around my natives, I will favor weeds and nonnatives that thrive in rich soils. My compost bin increasingly sits unappreciated.
Mulch, as in grass clippings and leaves, is more characteristic of eastern, more productive ecosystems than western grasslands. Plants of native ecosystems in my area grow slowly and do not create much litter. The soils are pretty bare, showing gravel and little rocks. Here, pea gravel is an excellent mulch since it is inert and does not blow away in high winds. That still seems strange.
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| The natives grew in a very rocky soil |
My garden is changing to be messier, with kinds of plants, but also plants in big patches that I would have thinned a few years ago. Today I celebrate seeing caterpillars on the plants, watch cool beetles, and appreciate wispy moths. Some parts of the yard are "wild" meadows where seedlings of most plants are welcome, other places I trim, thin, and weed. I have made a lot of changes, but I still grow many exotic species, pull bindweed and dandelions, and use my sprinkler system.
My current goal--which I don't review often enough--is a diverse collection of native plants that needs little or no supplemental water. Plus some of my favorite nonnatives because, well, I like them. Plus more trees than before settlement because shade is very pleasant. And, oh yes, low maintenance. The yard and garden I want has changed a lot since I first managed my own yard, responding to new information. I imagine it will continue to change.
Corrections and comments welcomed.
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