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Native, natural, neither: Westwood Park’s “rat house”

Instead of posting regularly as I planned, I now seem to be posting when inspiration strikes—as it did last week when I read a discussion of this article from last Sunday’s Kansas City Star:

Owner of Kansas City ‘rat house’ plaguing Plaza area neighbors sentenced to prison

I’ve lived near this house for years and have followed this story with interest. On Facebook someone commented that they liked seeing the yard go “natural.” This got me thinking. Despite what one photo caption says, few would consider this landscape “native” or label this “naturalistic gardening.” 

I’m all for bucking convention and rethinking lawns.  But neglecting a yard does not fulfill conservation goals in any meaningful way. Instead of supporting necessary bugs and birds, not-mowing provides an opportunity for invasive species to move in—like dandelions, clover, and creeping Charlie (not to mention rats). These may be succeeded by brushy shrubs, especially Asian bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii, L. tatarica, L. morrowii, and L. x bella). In front of this house, Asian honeysuckle is growing in the gutter.

In fact, this shrub can grow almost anywhere, including shade. Its white or pink flowers are fragrant for a few days in May, and birds like its pretty red berries. (Everything I read says the berries have low nutritional content, like they’re Doritos for birds.) Asian honeysuckle is among first shrubs to green up in spring and last to lose leaves in fall. This makes it easy to spot in our landscapes, as in this photo.

This time of year, Asian bush honeysuckle is one of the last shrubs that’s still green.

In this case, easy-to-grow means easy-to-spread. According to the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Asian bush honeysuckle was first imported to the U.S. from Europe in 1897 through seed exchanges among botanical gardens. The USDA promoted its use from 1960-1984, although the plant began escaping from cultivation in the 1950’s. In Missouri, the first documented escape was in in 1983. Now it’s so widespread I can’t imagine walking in a forest without seeing it. It’s not just a problem in our area: it ranges from the east coast to the Midwest and has appeared in Oregon. The plants take over entire forests and crowd out other, native species, reducing habitat for wildlife—including butterflies—that depend on native plants to survive. It’s been linked to an increase in ticks and is apparently a preferred egg-laying host for mosquitoes.  It can be challenging to eradicate.

American forests have been irrevocably changed by this plant.  It is insidious. This is what will be growing in our yards if we stop taking care of them.

Sometimes you must name a thing to see it. This morning I passed beneath a red tail hawk flying in relaxed, seemingly aimless circles over the road—making lazy circles in the sky.  I might not have understood that the banks of Brush Creek had become a monotonous monoculture before I learned to spot Asian honeysuckle. It’s as ubiquitous as trash.

Being more mindful about what we plant can yield amazing results.  The “rat house” is next door to fabulous example of what a natural or native garden can be. Dana Posten’s pollinator garden is full of rich, diverse plantings, with very little turf grass. Its beauty delights many passers-by.  It’s a planned environment, meticulously maintained—because everything we care about must be cared for.

But preserving biodiversity doesn’t have to be a huge production. We don’t have to eliminate our lawns entirely, either. As people like Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke point out, even simple steps and slight adjustments can help us rewild our yards.  Here is a list of Tallamy’s recommendations (from the Smithsonian Magazine‘s “Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard,” by Jerry Adler).

8 Steps to Rewild America

To Tallamy, the nation’s backyards are more than ripe for a makeover. Here are some of his suggestions to help rejuvenators hit the ground running.

1. Shrink your lawn. Tallamy recommends halving the area devoted to lawns in the continental United States—reducing water, pesticide and fertilizer use. Replace grass with plants that sustain more animal life, he says: “Every little bit of habitat helps.”

2. Remove invasive plants. Introduced plants sustain less animal diversity than natives do. Worse, some exotics crowd out indigenous flora. Notable offenders: Japanese honeysuckle, Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose and kudzu.

3. Create no-mow zones. Native caterpillars drop from a tree’s canopy to the ground to complete their life cycle. Put mulch or a native ground cover such as Virginia creeper (not English ivy) around the base of a tree to accommodate the insects. Birds will benefit, as well as moths and butterflies.

4. Equip outdoor lights with motion sensors. White lights blazing all night can disturb animal behavior. LED devices use less energy, and yellow light attracts fewer flying insects.

5. Plant keystone species. Among native plants, some contribute more to the food web than others. Native oak, cherry, cottonwood, willow and birch are several of the best tree choices.

6. Welcome pollinators. Goldenrod, native willows, asters, sunflowers, evening primrose and violets are among the plants that support beleaguered native bees.

7. Fight mosquitoes with bacteria. Inexpensive packets containing Bacillus thuringiensis can be placed in drains and other wet sites where mosquitoes hatch. Unlike pesticide sprays, the bacteria inhibit mosquitoes but not other insects.

8. Avoid harsh chemicals. Dig up or torch weeds on hardscaping, or douse with vinegar. Discourage crabgrass by mowing lawn 3 inches high.

These plantings outside the Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center show how attractive landscaping with native plants can be.

Adding winter interest: a visit to the Conifer Garden at Powell Gardens

This week’s snow reminds us that winter is coming, and soon we’ll be extra-grateful for plants that retain traces of green during the months when all the color has leached out of our landscape. That makes this a perfect time to visit Powell Gardens’ Conifer Garden.  What other options do we have besides junipers and yews? I have some of these growing in my own yard, as well as boxwood and holly—and I expect you do too.  But we don’t need to limit ourselves to just a few familiar choices. The collection at Powell Gardens represents almost every type of conifer hardy in our area, including pines, spruce, firs, cypress, arborvitae, hemlock, and even ginkgo. The collection now contains over 100 varieties and has been certified as a Reference Garden by the American Conifer Society.

Before I continue, I should point out the distinction between evergreens and conifers. Plants that don’t lose their leaves (or needles) are considered “evergreen.”  Conifers reproduce by forming cones.  While not all evergreens are conifers (like holly, southern magnolia, and boxwoods), most conifers are evergreen—think pine, spruce, and juniper. To complicate things more, some conifers aren’t evergreen at all.  The collection at Powell Gardens contains a bald cypress, which is deciduous and loses its needles each winter; a rare ‘Chief Joseph’ Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta), whose needles turn yellow in the fall and green up in spring; and ginkgo.  Most conifers do have needles instead of leaves, an adaptation that helps them survive challenging growing conditions. 

Located just north of the Visitor Center, the Conifer Garden is shady and intimate, on the scale of a suburban yard—which may help gardeners imagine how conifers can be used in their home landscapes, as well as give them a sense of scale. Apparently, a number-one problem people have with conifers is underestimating how large they can grow.  While the rest of Powell Gardens’ many areas are wan and faded at this time of year, the conifer area is bright with vibrant color: chartreuse, yellow, silver, and dark greens.  

The diversity of shapes and contrasting textures is invigorating.  Some of the conifers are tall trees, while others are low mounds, offering welcome variety and relief from monotony. (Most of the things in my yard are four feet high.) Some have interesting, sculptural shapes.

The area has recently been renovated. Marissa Adams, the lead for the conifer garden, and volunteer Deb Guardia began working in May, doing a plant-by-plant evaluation. They removed poorer specimens, weeded, and topped off the pea gravel mulch, which Marissa says does a great job keeping down weeds. The color and texture of the foliage stands out against the pale gravel. “Renovated means thinned,” Deb points out. The extra breathing room helps showcase the specimens and contributes to their health and vigor.

The garden originated in 2001 when gardener Marvin Snyder, a past president of the American Conifer Society, donated a collection of dwarf conifers that had been used in a temporary model railroad exhibit in the conservatory. In 2006, berms were created from sandy soil excavated during the construction of the nearby Fountain Garden. Described as “sandstone rubble subsoil,” this proved to be ideal for the conifers, most of which require well-drained soil. Our area’s heavy clay soil can be problematic for this reason. “They don’t like being to put to bed wet,” Deb says. Conifers do need moisture to get established, and they may need watering during the winter. Pruning is best done when the tree is dormant, and dressing wounds is unnecessary. 

Some conifers seem to struggle here, like Scots Pines, which have been dying off because of pine wilt.  Each species has its own potential problems and vulnerabilities. Some species of juniper are native, such as eastern red cedar, but as horticulturist Dennis Patton points out, Kansas is the only state without a native pine: “Missouri does but not locally in KC.” Conifers evolved under different, mostly colder conditions, and that makes it tough for some to do well here. Patton says, “Evergreens that are non-native struggle with our too syndrome:  Too wet, too dry, too cold, too hot, too windy and all the combinations.”

Nevertheless, as the Conifer Garden shows, Kansas City homeowners have literally hundreds of options besides dependable yews and junipers. All provide winter interest, sustained color, structural variety, and contrasting textures. With the right care, conifers of all shapes, sizes, and colors can provide beauty and interest in the garden year-round. 

Sticky, weird Osage oranges explained

I have another garden visit in the works so I thought I’d delay posting this week, but the sight of one of these lying in a gutter inspired me.  It’s an Osage orange, a hedge apple, also known as bow wood or bois d’arc, a softball-sized fruit that looks like a mash of chartreuse brains.

This osage orange is larger than a softball.

Everyone has an opinion about Osage oranges (Maclura pomifera). Like squirrels, people either love or hate them. The plants have thorns. Out in the country, they grow along fences, mixing with scrubby, brambly things, although as trees they grow around forty feet high. There’s a lot of folklore associated with them. The wood is supple and repels rot, so Native Americans used it to make bows. It’s also extremely long-burning, an asset on the treeless plains.

  • Vines are strangling this Osage orange tree, but you can still see the sinuous quality of the wood

People claim the fruit repels insects like spiders, although according to the Burke Museum in Seattle, this is a myth. Spiders can’t smell airborne odors and have been known to live and spin webs on Osage orange trees, which my friend Susi describes as “very, very messy if you have one growing in your yard.” The apples are striking and unusual, the kind of thing people might display in a bowl or basket until they shrivel and attract fruit flies.

Osage oranges litter the ground beneath this tree.

Osage orange is not citrus at all but a member of the fig family. They’re inedible, but they’re not toxic, either. They’re simply too big for most animals to eat, and supposedly some cattle have died trying when the fruit lodged in their throats and suffocated them.  Similar to opossums and armadillos, Osage oranges are remnants of an earlier age. According to an excellent and informative piece from Resilience, by blogger Adrian Ayres Fisher, Osage oranges are an ecological anachronism:  “a plant or animal having characteristics that don’t make sense for the place where it is found.” Although Osage oranges sprout easily, their spiky thorns and enormous fruit would prevent the birds and bison that inhabited the plains from eating the seeds. So how did they spread? Their original territory was limited to the Red River Valley in Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, but now they thrive throughout the US zones in 5-9.

Fisher hypothesizes that mastodons and mammoths browsed on the fruit, dispersing it throughout North America as far north as Ontario. When those creatures died out, the Osage orange’s range shrank. Then Native Americans recognized its usefulness and began trading its seeds, helping it spread once again.

This raises questions about what makes a native plant native.  Typically we think of a native as a plant that lived here before European settlement. As the case of the Osage orange reminds us, that time consisted of many eras. Trying to return a landscape to a pre-settlement condition requires making a value judgment about which time to return to. Valuing one moment in 1803 as the way things should be above all others is arbitrary, and has more to do with our perspective and values than the qualities of that moment itself. The Osage Nation, after whom the plant is named, originated in present-day Ohio and Mississippi river valleys before moving west in the 1600’s.  The U.S. government forced them to move to Oklahoma in the 1870’s.

Whether we consider them native or not, Osage oranges offer many qualities we now consider desirable.  They provide shelter to birds and wildlife. They thrive alongside compatible natives, encouraging diversity. They resist “herbicide drift,” and thrive in tough conditions. In the fall, the leaves turn a wonderful yellow, and in winter, the sculptural trunks look cool.  But if you plant one, watch out for falling fruit. A reviewer on one message board gives Osage orange a single star:

“Dented my car. Complete waste of space.”

Gardening as metaphor

Just like that, fall arrived. The leaves of the river birch turned yellow and fell to the ground, and I’ve been busy raking and sweeping.  I’ve spent more time in the garden this year than ever before. It’s been a refuge from the endless stream of bad news that has me waking up at night with my jaw clenched. I’m drawn to gardens because I find them beautiful, but I suspect their power is more than aesthetic. Gardening is good for us, experts say, but can the benefits be explained? How does gardening work to restore and heal?

This is the subject of a recent essay from the New Yorker about gardening, “Nature and Nurture,” by British writer Rebecca Mead. Online its title is The Therapeutic Power of Gardening. It’s one of those expansive pieces the New Yorker does so well, part book review, part profile/garden visit, part personal story that add up to much more than an ordinary gardening article—after all, the New Yorker isn’t the place to turn for advice about how to stake your delphiniums. The piece’s real subject is grief and loss, and how gardening creates space for death in our lives.

Mead begins by noting how popular gardening is in Britain generally—half of all adults in the UK engage in some sort of gardening—and how interest has increased this year.  Seeds sold out. Internet searches for garden topics spiked.  She isn’t a gardener—she confides that she killed some arugula and spinach at the start of the lockdown—but her parents raised fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers around her childhood home. (What are marrows?) She describes “fragrant roses,” “clouds of lavender,” and playing with her brother on the lawn.  Her mother, who is 89, still lives and gardens in this paradise. Mead has been prevented from seeing her since March.

To explain why people are turning to gardening during the pandemic, Mead turns to Sue Stuart-Smith, a psychiatrist whose book The Well-Gardened Mind is “a surprise best seller.” (One review begins, “This must be the most original gardening book ever.”) Stuart-Smith sees gardening as an experiential metaphor. Gardening gives people new experiences that counteract painful ones from their pasts, through which they unlearn painful lessons and replace damaged notions about themselves. This is one of the ways gardening restores and heals.  I haven’t read the book, but in an excerpt published online, a repeat offender who participated in a prison garden project gained a restored sense of pride and agency when the vegetables he planted matured.  Lifelong feelings of shame gave way to a belief that he was capable of success.  He plans to pursue horticultural training following his release.

Sue Stuart-Smith’s husband Tom is a world-renowned landscape architect, and when she is able, Mead visits The Barn Garden, the property where the Stuart-Smiths live.  Since this is a New Yorker article, there are no photos, but here is a video tour of this remarkable garden, created for a U.K. charity called the National Garden Scheme.

The garden’s several areas look wild—he even calls one the prairie—but clipped hedges define them and delight us with the juxtaposition of structure and disorder.  As one commenter says, the garden “hovers on the edge of chaos and yet every plant is still distinguishable.”

Stuart-Smith is widely published and luscious photos of his work are all over the internet, including his own Instagram account.

This couple is at the height of their mastery, sharing what they’ve learned through their books, lectures, and teaching.

We feel how gardening tugs at Mead as she mourns being separated from her mother—now by COVID, and soon by death. She also casts a melancholy backward glance at the lost continent of her childhood, threading references to games like peekaboo and hide-and-seek through the essay.  Parents will recognize her description of the theory that peekaboo reassures babies about object permanence. The parent disappears, but then makes a reassuring return, just as spring goes away, but then comes back.

Sue Stuart-Smith compares gardens to this stage in life when child begins to differentiate herself from the mother, a “transitional” space. When Tom Stuart-Smith describes the garden as “didactic” but also a “territory of discovery and self-expression,” he could be talking about childhood.

Interestingly, Tom grew up on the site of the Barn Garden. His father gave him the property, and he describes tension between them as they built a house together.  This tension abated when Tom broke away from his father and asserted himself in the garden’s design.  They still live within view of each other.

As the year winds down, we all have a sense of things ending. In the midst of so much grief, planning for spring can be a hopeful act—because there will be a spring. As Sue Stuart-Smith suggests, gardening “invokes the prospect of some kind of future.”  However, we might not be here to see it. “The future promised by a garden may not always be ours to enjoy.”

My own parents are in their eighties, and each day brings me a deeper understanding of what lies ahead.  As I clean up the garden and look up at the skeletal branches of the trees, I wonder how many more summers we’ll have together. What will this winter bring? Like old oaks, they’ve lasted so long and I’m so used to relying on their strength, I cannot imagine the world without their shade.  We know it’s coming, but no amount of anticipation can prepare us for that day.  The garden is one of the few places in our lives where we watch things die, where we see truths we can’t describe in words, but which also carries, as Mead says, the “power to console through its cyclical replenishment.”

Why start a blog about gardening? Plus, a visit to Loose Park’s Native Shade Garden

Why start a blog about gardening? It’s 2020. Is blogging still a thing?

As a writer, I’m always looking for ways to connect with readers—and over the past few years, as my interest in gardening has deepened this is what I want to write about. I keep hearing that during this crazy year the number of people who are gardening has surged, so I’m optimistic that some will be interested in reading what I have to say as I go deeper into this fascinating body of knowledge.  We can learn together.

In my garden I was going for the feel of this painting by Pierre Bonnard

Kansas City is full of beautiful gardens. Geniuses live here. I’ve already been lucky to talk to a couple for this blog. I love the varied topography here, the hills and bluffs, the tall trees, and the enormous variety of plants. Some will disagree, but I’m originally from Houston and I think the climate here is great.

Does it make your heart hurt to think of how this place looks today? Postmarked December 8, 1928. From Missouri Valley Special Collections

Kansas City also has a robust gardening community, with wonderful public and private gardens, and organizations that support almost every gardening interest, from growing food to gardening with native plants. We have a helpful publication, Kansas City Gardener, that provides practical advice written by subject experts, conseils et astuces, as the French say. 

I hope to add storytelling from a personal perspective to this already-rich mix. 

I’ve been posting for about a month, and have clarified to myself what I’m doing and what I hope to accomplish. My plan is to post weekly on Friday mornings, and send a newsletter digest once a month.  To subscribe, just use the “stay in touch” form below. What are you most interested in hearing about?  Reply in the comments and let me know!

A visit to Loose Park’s Native Shade Garden

This time of year, most of us are in the middle of our fall cleanup and harvesting our vegetables for the last time. We’re looking in to strategies for getting those green tomatoes to ripen.  I’m in the process of moving a hydrangea, but other than that, I didn’t plant anything this fall.  I’m already thinking about spring.

I have my eye on rehabbing some shady areas now covered in vinca and English Ivy. To help me visualize what could go there, I thought I’d photograph the Native Plant Shade Garden in Loose Park before the plants disappear and leave just the little signs.

My shortcomings as a photographer are becoming evident. Nice wall!

The photo doesn’t do it justice, but the shrub on the left is leatherwood (Dirca palustris). A wan-looking milkweed is growing amid some James’s sedges, next to some blooming phlox, Bush’s poppy mallow, and a grass called Beakgrain. Interspersed are ground covers ajuga and wild ginger.  

A sign explains.

Another bed on the east side of the door, which must get more sun, has goldenrod and Joe Pye weed (eutrochium purpurem). Both are almost six feet tall.

While this planting looks like a tangle of green in my picture, up close the variety of plants and textures is intriguing.  The low profile works with the contemporary style of the Loose Park Garden Center.

The Loose Park Garden Center before the native plantings.

September has been fantastic time to visit the nearby Laura Conyers Smith Rose Garden, which has been spectacular this year.

It’s been a good year for the roses.

See you in the garden!



Creating a paradise for pollinators and people, with Dana Posten

Today I spoke with Dana Posten about the wonderful pollinator garden she has developed with her husband Mike. Our conversation was as wide-ranging as their gardens, which include a cutting garden, fruit trees, and private potager. We talked about far too much to cover in one post, so today I’m going to focus on the pollinator garden, which is visible to passers-by.

The Postens began working on the gardens six years ago when they bought their house on its distinctive wedge-shaped lot. After removing some foundation plantings and ailing trees, they turned their attention to creating what Posten calls a “formal pollinator garden.” This eye-catching triangular bed looks wild in some ways, but on closer inspection reveals its symmetry and organization.

Formal pollinator garden in September 2020. © My Wild Garden

About the bee house, Posten says, “That’s coming down.” Bee houses look charming, but as she points out, pre-fab ones can be associated with problems and may harm bees more than help them.

Three redbuds define the area, each surrounded by evergreen boxwoods. Two large masses of amsonia (bluestar), an early blooming perennial, grow on each side.  Between these grow silvery munstead lavender and germander, which Posten describes as “bee crack. They shiver with activity.”

This early image of the bed shows its distinctive shape, as well as how the garden has evolved.

Photo by Dana Posten

The bed contains many other plants, including monarda, rue, solidago, milkweed, and others. All are nectar sources for bees and butterflies.

It’s striking how many different varieties of plants are growing in this small area. (Posten is impressively knowledgeable about plants—she loves researching them). Many are native, but not all. Some are less-commonly seen varieties of familiar species, like this gymnocarpus physocarpa (hairy balls milkweed).

Gymnocarpus physocarpa (hairy balls milkweed) © My Wild Garden

The diversity is dazzling, but the effect is still harmonious, thanks to rhythm and repetition of color and shape, and the consistent theme of supporting pollinators. Defined paths delineate the beds and prevent them from looking chaotic.

A sign in the corner identifies this pollinator garden as a certified Monarch Waystation. Monarch Watch, a program based at KU, helps raise awareness about the dwindling numbers of monarchs caused by loss of habitat and pesticides.

Certifying your garden can help save the monarchs. All you have to do is verify that you have host and nectar plants and follow sustainable management practices.  Gardeners also help by tagging butterflies to provide scientists data about how populations are faring. The monarch’s annual migration is in full swing right now, and several fluttered by as we talked.

  • First catch the butterfly safely
  • Affix a tiny sticker to its wing
  • Release it, then note the date, location, gender, and tag number on the Monarch Watch sheet

Programs like Monarch Watch have helped make a difference: monarch numbers in 2019 increased by 144 percent over the previous year, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. So thank you, everyone who grew milkweed, myself included!

Sadly, monarchs on the west coast haven’t fared as well, with numbers dropping from 1.2 million in 2000 to fewer than 30,000 last year.

A more recently planted area on the west side of the property features several different types of native grasses and wildflowers. After seeing the plantings on the High Line in New York and the film Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, the Postens were excited by the potential of using native grasses in a new way. They used soil solarization to prepare the beds, covering them with plastic last summer through the winter to smother germinating weeds and kill off Bermuda grass. This strategy is an alternative to using glyphosate, or Roundup, which they strenuously dislike, believing it serves no purpose. Many of these plants, planted as bare roots in April, are now flourishing. Some are even blooming now, such as kniphofia uvaria (red-hot poker or torch lily), and liatris (blazing star).

Kiphofia uvaria (red-hot poker or torch lily)
Kiphofia uvaria (red-hot poker or torch lily)

As Posten points out, in reality grasses grow differently here than in Oudolf’s gardens: “Some may grow to be much larger, while others may not grow at all. Conditions here are just so different.” Lush meadow plantings are difficult to reproduce in small suburban yards. However, grasses can still evoke an atmosphere inspired by Oudolf’s gardens and principles. Seeing this planting in its first year is of particular interest to a novice like me, and helps me visualize what the plants look like in the ground and how far apart to space them.

The planting in its first year

I’ve never seen a private garden quite like this. Bees and butterflies must be thrilled to discover it, and people get excited about it, too. Posten says, “Everyone can find something to like.” This is great to hear, because intermingled plantings are complex and can be difficult to “read.” Our notions of what’s beautiful are mostly learned, and the unfamiliar can feel strange. The delight we feel seeing this garden—its very existence—may signal ways our priorities are evolving. Perhaps we’re becoming more willing to take our ecological concerns seriously, and open to considering new ideas of beauty.

More beauty. Everyone deserves that!

What to do in the garden this week

What should we be doing in the garden this week? Honestly, I have no idea. I’m new to this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m afraid that if I dig things up and move them around, I’ll kill them. I have a long history of making ridiculous mistakes—like when I first started gardening and tried growing tomatoes from seed. I read that I needed to plant them in some medium other than soil, so I scattered the seeds in a tray of sheep manure, dampened it, and put it in my gas oven. I thought that the warmth from the pilot light would coax them into sprouting. It did not. No one who lived in my apartment building will ever forget that experiment.

For a long time, my garden had no budget and no plan—but it did have plants. Many popped up on their own and reproduced aggressively, like rose of Sharon, rose, oregano. For a while the garden’s theme was “found plants.” I have many that people threw away and I brought home and planted—like day lilies and irises from our neighborhood’s entrance plantings, and astilbe I rescued from a neighbor’s yard waste bag. When professional landscapers dug up the peonies that grew along the neighbor’s fence like a pink ruffle, I took some.

The alyssum grown from seeds planted in the bed in front of the house years ago just keep sprouting.

Sometimes they sprout in less-than desirable places but I don’t have the heart to kill them.

What a bonus, right? Mine really is a wild garden. As George Orwell says, “The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.” That’s true of all the seasons, and of gardening too. The value plants bring us cannot be measured in dollars. However, although I must have wanted these plants at some time, I don’t anymore. I don’t like where they are. Even plants I’ve purchased are growing in the wrong place now. My garden is a wild weed patch.

This volunteer butterfly bush is the smallest of three.

I find it hard to understand that anyone would actually buy a butterfly bush. The butterflies love them, though, so I haven’t had the heart to cut mine down.

What can I do?

I can learn to move things. I can Google. I can read. I can ask. I can risk.

I’ve got to be willing to risk failure. I don’t like killing things. It goes against my grain. I’m programmed to help things grow. But as with a lot of questions, when we surrender control, we surrender to aggressive forces we don’t want.

Like these tomatoes. Years ago I noticed a plant sprouting in a crack in the driveway, transplanted it, and look what happened. They’d take over the entire yard if I let them. Each year, more spout. Now there are a couple different varieties. Their yield is prolific, but the fruit is not especially flavorful.

I hope that as I learn more, I’ll become more confident about moving plants and cutting them back, and even killing them when necessary. When I move one plant and it dies, it feels tragic; if I move dozens, I’m bound to lose a few. It’s a lot like submitting fiction to magazines, come to think of it. Submitting in quantity can lessen failure’s inevitable sting. The stakes vary depending on the plant. Day lilies are pretty much expendable, but we’ve had a hydrangea for many years that I’m considering moving. A hydrangea this large would be expensive. I bought it and have watched it grow, so I feel some affection for it. I had a sudden idea that it would be happier underneath some juniper trees, where the conditions resemble this planting at the Kauffman Memorial Garden.

So far I’ve watched videos about transplanting hydrangeas online, read articles, asked a knowledgeable friend for advice, and taken pictures of the actual plant to Soil Service’s nursery to hear what they think. (They recommend waiting until November.) I’m doing my best to prepare for success, in other words. But eventually I’m just going to have to start digging.

I’ll let you know how it goes. My workaround for the bland tomatoes is to roast them (tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, 350-degree oven, 10-15 minutes). If you want some seedlings when they sprout next year, just let me know.

Dutch Master

If you’re like me, as you go about your day, you’re always on the lookout for plantings that are out of the ordinary.  You may have noticed these on the west side of Ward Parkway at 64th Terrace. 

Isn’t this spectacular?  This is from June.  Each month something different has bloomed:  red monarda, gold rudbeckia, magenta liatris, and now purple obedient plant—topped off by a fountain of opulent pink mandevillas in the urns.  (Google tells me a common name for these is rocktrumpet, which I love.)  At times even zinnias and marigolds have bloomed around the base. I love these plantings so much I jog to visit them twice a week.

I’m not their only fan.  I’ve seen traffic slow as people pass by, admiring these.  I mentioned them to a friend whose interest in gardening has deepened this year, like my own.  She not only knew which ones I meant, she said this:

(You can understand why we are friends.)

These plantings are the work of gardener Jacques Bredius, who lives nearby.  The Master Gardeners of Greater Kansas City featured his and Danny Bowman’s lush, spectacular garden on their 2015 tour.  Their large backyard has several different areas, a mix of sun and shade, which allows them lots of variety.  Its centerpiece is a water feature surrounded by pollarded Bradford pear trees.  I’ve seen trees trimmed like this in France, but not so often here:  the foliage is cut dramatically to prevent limbs from splitting but allow for show-stopping blooms in spring.

(I’m not much of a photographer, so here is an image from the Kansas City Star’s article about the tour, taken by Tammy Ljungblad.).

Bredius says he’s been taking care of the entrance plantings for thirty-one years, fine tuning them into a satisfying mix that doesn’t change much from year to year.  He says it doesn’t change much, but I suspect that his “maintaining” would be “major renovation” for me.  This year he added marigolds, and when he didn’t like the effect, he then took out. He seems to approach gardening with a spirit of experimentation.  He’s not afraid to move stuff, cut things back, or change things around—whereas I’m always worried about making mistakes. 

How did he get interested in gardening?  He says it was in the air.  He grew up in the Netherlands, and he praises its fertile, sandy soils and mild climate that lacks the temperature extremes we have here: “Everything grows there.”  However, since he lived in an apartment, he had no opportunity to garden until his family purchased a seaside cottage when he was twelve years old.  It was two hours away, and he describes going there with his sister on Friday afternoons, riding their bikes, taking the ferry.  He began spending his allowance on plants, and says, “That’s when I began to live.”

Isn’t that wonderful?  How many people start gardening when they’re kids? I remember planting some vegetable seeds in a rocky bed behind of our house—basically tossing them on the ground and hoping they’d sprout, like the hippies in Easy Rider.  No one in Bredius’ family taught or inspired him, as they were all apartment dwellers.  He learned by trial and error, not by visiting gardens or looking at photographs.  When he travels, he prefers to visit the beach.

I like that this entrance planting uses native perennials that are well adapted to our area and beneficial to pollinators, but it doesn’t look like a prairie planting.  The style isn’t country.  Instead, it’s sumptuous and formal, like a Dutch still life.

By Jan Davidsz de Heem – © Wikimedia commons

I think the urn and mandevilla are key.  They’re an example of the unifying power of the focal point.  There’s something energizing about the tension between the upright things and the other foliage. And what are those pink flowers dripping down the side of the urn?

Last week I was feeling a little low after some sad things happened, and suddenly I felt very close to the many people around us who are suffering from sadness.  Spots of beauty like this literally give a physical feeling of relief.  I’m grateful that I got to talk to Jacques Bredius, too. Our conversation was wide-ranging, touching on travel, exercise, family, career.  I learned more about gardening and plants than I would have in months on my own.  I came away thinking, this man knows how to live. It was also the first time I’ve talked to someone new in six months.

Unexpected generosity can cast a warm glow.  You don’t really know who it will touch, or how.  Later that evening I drove by the plantings again and saw a woman get out of her parked car and move toward them, holding her camera.

Taliesin

In elementary school, the assignment to write about your summer vacation was always my favorite. We just got back from an impromptu trip to Wisconsin, and I planned to write about the native plants growing beside the highways, and how hanging baskets and window boxes of petunias and geraniums refute my criticisms of annuals.  Then we visited Taliesin.

Looking at Taliesin from hill crown © Wikimedia commons

While this blog focuses on me learning to garden with native plants, perhaps some of you share my interest in created environments of all kinds.  And there are some gardens there. Taliesin was a living laboratory, a place for Wright to try out his ideas, and although the gardens went through several iterations, they’ve been restored to the way they were at the time of Wright’s death in 1959.  (Why not to the way they were in 1914? In 1925? I’m always interested in what we choose to preserve.)

Visitors to Taliesin in August 2020 wearing masks and social distancing. © Norman Friedman

Visitors enter into an enclosed Japanese-feeling courtyard with koi ponds (empty) and an arbor constructed of painted drainpipes supporting a wisteria.

Homemade trellis © Wikimedia commons

What I know about Frank Lloyd Wright is about as superficial as an encyclopedia entry, but everybody knows a little about him. My husband is an architect, and we sometimes visit Wright buildings when we travel.  If there’s one around we’ll check it out:  Taliesin West, the reconstructed Bachman-Wilson house at Crystal Bridges. I think what we’ve seen is pretty cool, but I was unprepared for just how special I found Taliesin. Seeing it made me want to live a better life.  

© Wikimedia commons

Being inside this house is like being (some might say trapped) within a distinctive intelligence.  It’s an expression of Wright’s mind and imagination. The building doesn’t just shelter and house. It makes an argument about how to live.

One quality he famously emphasized was a connection to the outdoors. The house is built on hillside, and its main feature is enormous windows overlooking the valley below. Only glass separates you from trees and grass. 

Images of main rooms

This longing for a connection to the outdoors seems to me to be a recent phenomenon.  Only people who are separated from the outdoors want connection to it. Previous generations wanted to keep the outdoors out.  Their goal was to lessen discomfort. They constructed buildings to shut out the cold, wet, stinging insects, and other pests. 

Although the view from Taliesin is pastoral, the house doesn’t evoke nostalgia. Wright used contemporary materials: plate glass, steel-reinforced concrete.  The house nestles into the side of a hill, but at the same time it’s distinct from it, with straight lines and horizontal planes that don’t exist in nature. I find the tension this creates pleasing.

I loved the way it felt inside, but I think I’d feel uncomfortable living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house—as I understand most residents did since the structures famously leaked and were impossible to heat.  Taliesin is a house for extraverts.  It’s huge, for one thing, and the design seems to force inhabitants to spend all their time together in one big room. That may be fine for a family who likes to read aloud and perform music together, but I’d miss privacy.  I thrive in a study carrel or attic nook. (Actually, this preference for sequestering myself is one I’m trying to combat by starting a blog.) I’m not too concerned about Wright’s tiny kitchen—I’m a messy cook and prefer to close the doors and shut others out while I work—but are there any closets?  A Wright house forces residents to live in the present.  There’s no room for memorabilia or outgrown clothes (sentimentality and magical thinking). Perhaps this is good. They kept busy enjoying the views and basking in the glow of the natural light spilling through the plate glass windows or, when it rained, moving buckets around to catch the drips.

I think it’s customary to end blog posts with a question to encourage comments. Have you visited any houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and what did you think? What about them appealed to you, and what didn’t?

How Shaggy Is Too Shaggy?

I love this idea. These galvanized circles look like a great way to define and control a prairie planting. These are at the Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center.

A few years ago I attended an information session here co-sponsored by the Kansas City Native Plant Initiative (now Deep Roots) about landscaping with native plants. I was already receptive to their arguments.  Plants adapted to our climate that require little extra water or fertilizer and support birds and butterflies—who wouldn’t want to use those?  Also, I was tired of watching my plants die.  I walked out of the auditorium and have never bought another annual.

For Mother’s Day that year I received four common milkweed plants, and our story changed.

At the information session, I remember the speaker cautioned that neighbors might not “see the value” in native plantings. (When I showed a friend what was going on in my yard, she called it “gardening with weeds.”) The speaker recommended enclosing plantings with a border or edge to lend the beds definition and show intent. Logical choices could be natural materials like limestone, or split cedar rails that put one in mind of prairie farms, like these at the Shawnee Indian Mission. 

Some beds at the Gorman Center have limestone edging.

Of course, I decided to use neither of these.  I like shaggy—but I think our plantings are too shaggy. Most of what I read say common milkwood grow to four feet, but ours grew to six.  Now there’s an error of scale.  The plants in the bed shouldn’t be taller than the bed’s width. They should be about half as tall as the bed width.

I’m going to enlarge the bed.