Un-Ruining
By Erin Sigmund, CGC Development & Marketing Associate
It is humbling to look out at a patch of land in your care and realize how little you know about helping it thrive.
When I bought my suburban home nearly a decade ago, its half-acre lot was almost exclusively hostas, irises, weeds and broad expanses of turf grass. All of the shrubs were ornamentals that I now know to be invasive, including the wall of honeysuckle bordering the back fence line. At the front corner of the house—tangled in the power lines of my house drop—was a precarious Callery pear.
As a new mom, I had no bandwidth for gardening, so I was grateful when my father-in-law moved to the area and took over tending the garden beds. A lifelong gardener who gave up his own yard for a condo by the river, he spent long days patiently tending to my mess of a yard. He replaced hostas and weeds with zinnias, coneflower cultivars, raspberry bushes and coreopsis. He pulled wild onions and goutweed run amok from years of neglect. He jerry-rigged a fence around a decrepit 4x8 bed and grew a few vegetables, finding sanctuary in my yard through the Covid-19 pandemic. Like so many gardeners, our choices were governed by personal preference. It’s all we knew.
In the fall of 2021, my path crossed the CGC’s. I heard the terms “native plant” and “invasive species” defined for the first time. The more I learned, the harder it was to carry on with the old gardening practices. Who was my garden feeding? How was I supporting the ecology around me? For the most part, I wasn’t. I wanted to do better, but I didn’t know how.
So I did what many of us budding native plant enthusiasts do: I started trying to figure it out. I took classes and consulted resources in an effort to deduce exactly which plant I should put where in my yard. I stared out my sliding door into the backyard and tried to envision it transformed. I took down the Callery pear, ripped out the honeysuckle and replaced my back fence line with raised beds for veggies. I left the leaves and stopped using chemicals as much as possible. I noticed which of my ornamentals welcomed bees and hummingbirds and replaced the ones that didn’t. I bought native plant plugs from the CGC’s two annual sales, adding them haphazardly to open spots in my flower beds. Some of them thrived; some of them struggled; some never reappeared for a second season.
At first, native plants felt a little chaotic to me. They grew rapidly—not just vertically but often horizontally, in no time taking up far more space than I’d imagined they would when they were just wee plugs. They brought bees to my yard in numbers I’d never seen before. They survived and thrived (or didn’t) according to rules I didn’t understand.
Gradually, it stopped mattering to me that native plants had minds of their own. I stopped worrying so much about getting it “right” before I planted and just tried things. I got more of the plants that liked their place in my yard and moved on from the ones that didn’t. I started pulling seed pods off of the prolific spreaders to keep them in check. When your gardening goals are split between aesthetic appeal and ecological function instead of being all the former, you can take your hands off the wheel a little and let nature tell you what she wants instead of trying to control every little thing. And if you ask me, the intermingling of natives and more traditional ornamentals has a charm I’ve grown quite fond of.
Today, my yard is nowhere near the ratio of 70% natives to 30% non-invasive non-natives that entomologist and co-founder of Homegrown National Park Doug Tallamy recommends. In addition to the non-native ornamentals, I still have broad expanses of turf grass that I, with my total lack of horticultural design skills, have yet to figure out how to convert to something else. I’m also the CGC staff person least likely to be able to answer your native plant questions. But I’m learning. As I feel my way along in the dark, trying to regain knowledge many of us have lost, hoping to be part of the solution more than the problem, I find comfort in small things: the springtime return of a plug tucked hopefully into November’s soil, a zebra swallowtail flitting between coneflowers and zinnias, the private thrill of walking in the woods and being able to greet a handful of the plants I meet by name.
On a wall in my house is a framed Andy Warhol quote: “I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art anybody could ever want to own.” For most of us, it’s unlikely we’ll find ourselves in possession of a piece of land that hasn’t yet been at least a little ruined. From invasive species to turf grass to chemical use to development, the land we’re used to has been through a lot. So instead of trying not to ruin a piece of land in the first place, I like to think of what I and so many of my fellow gardeners are doing as un-ruining. One plant, one practice, one choice at a time, we’re learning a new way to garden.
The problems are dire, but nature is resilient. Every step we take toward improving our local ecology, no matter how small or hesitant or unsteady, is a step in the right direction. I invite you to join me in what I’ll be doing on Saturday, September 6: collecting a few more new-to-me native plants from the incredibly knowledgeable local growers at the CGC’s Fall Native Plant Festival!