Plateau Magazine June-July 2023

nately, our rich native plant palette allows
us to do this beautifully, with joy and
abundance rather than tedious sacrifice.
I’m an unabashed lover of plants and varied
garden styles, not a native plant purist.
There are many circumstances in which a
well-mannered ornamental plant, known
to remain in a cultivated space, can be a
brilliant addition to a garden. That said, I
cannot overstate the importance of incorporating
natives into our landscapes. Beyond
haphazardly installing indigenous plants,
however, it’s essential that we advocate for
natives with aesthetics and efficacy. Frank
Lloyd Wright advised his architecture students:
"Study nature, love nature, stay close
Top:) Wide swaths of Cinnamon fern and Hayscented fern create a floor-level community at
Southern Highlands Reserve; A tapestry of blue gentian, Heuchera americana, sedum and moss
cover the ground in lieu of dirt or mulch.
to nature. It will never fail you." Wright
was teaching his students to derive inspiration
from the essence of organic forms
and naturally occurring relationships, not
to copy exactly what one sees—that would
simply be the woods. When we garden, we
are intervening. Often, it’s a place that has
been previously disrupted, and one goal is
to restore the site in an appealing way. In
nature, naked soil is almost always the undesired
result of a temporary disturbance.
Subsequently, the system restores the soil
by allowing plants to reclaim that space via
decomposition, germination and proliferation,
especially critical for erosion mitigation
in the mountains.
Hiking trails are vibrant classrooms to
learn effective arrangement for planting
design. Plants always exist in groups, never
as single members. John Muir observed,
“When we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else
in the universe.” Similarly, Dolly Parton
sang about interwoven plant communities:
“The hills were alive with wildflowers…
And the flowers I knew/In the fields where
I grew/were content to be lost in the crowd.”
Plants live in interconnected communities
whose distribution and morphology perform
particular ecological functions within
site-specific conditions. Constrained
resources give rise to distinct characteristics
of a plant community—a shady rocky
area is only hospitable to members that
have co-adapted to share resources under
those conditions. At home, we can discern
constraints that help inform which community
of plants will be appropriate for
the site we have. As with language, poetic
structure that restricts prose can create a
perfect framework for harmony.
The more I think about ecologically responsible
gardening, I realize that rather
than a purist, perhaps I’m a gardenist—
an advocate for more plants and more
gardens overall—plenty more, then triple
whatever number that is. A successful and
lush planting is always more appealing
than a skimpy one. The ground layer, lowgrowing
matrices of plants that preserve
our soil and feed our ecosystem, is rarely
populated sufficiently in traditional planting
schemes. It’s summer, though, so the
forest floor is covered with ferns, sedges
and asters. Let’s walk these woods and
hillsides to understand the elegant relationships
within communities of organisms.
Let’s seek, with humility, to emulate
their harmony. P
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