When you read garden magazines, it always seems as if the gardens' owners had created their lush flowery landscapes in a matter of a few years. Not us. We have been muddling along, struggling to achieve some kind of order, for nearly thirty-seven years, and our greatest challenge has been the first area we tried to manage, the seasonal creek running to the South and East of our house and through our pastures.
The previous owners had planted the part of the creek nearest the house with holly trees and several kinds of ivy. The ivy and holly were well established and seemed nice to us, so we left them alone and devoted the next twenty-one years to annual blackberry removal and encouraging the vine maples and filberts beside the creek. As the years passed, we fenced more and more of the creek away from grazing animals, and these areas reverted to, you guessed it, ivy and blackberries! These invaders, we never seemed to have the time to deal with.
About fifteen years ago we realized we were not doing the environment a favor by encouraging ivy, so we launched a major campaign and pulled and dug it all out, permanently. We also removed the blackberries and eventually cut down the hollies. Looking back, I realize we should have planted the area with wild shrubs right away, but we did not. Each year in the spring we returned to the barren slopes and removed vestiges of ivy and blackberries, and just as we had hoped, each year we found more native plants returning.
Moss and salal were the first to return, covering the dusty scars of battle. Trillium, grouse flowers and turk’s cap lilies came soon after. There were always a few sword ferns, and now we have several patches of licorice ferns as well. In the past two years alders have sprouted, and several elderberries. There are lots of small Indian plum bushes now, and tiny vine maples. We bought some plants that I wanted very much and which were not volunteering, and now ninebark and native honeysuckle are growing hesitantly. I have just finished my annual 'weeding' and am pleased to see that fawn lilies are moving into my wild garden. The trilliums are up. It must really be spring. I know the whole area would be more beautiful if it had more plants, but I love to savor the slow return of the natives and to help them by delicately removing competition, cutting back but not digging up the native blackberry vines, and pulling out seedling cherries hawthorns and locusts. Our wild garden is no model of beauty, but it's a wonder anything can grow there at all.
The steep slopes above the creek are dry and shady. The soil is poor, heavy clay. The very few flat beaches along the creek are flooded and buried in silt almost every year. Only ferns and fringe cups thrive there. It is not possible to water plants in the wild area, so if I do any planting it has to be in the winter months.
I think that my wild garden could be copied in a yard in town as a way to beautify truly impossible dry shady areas, perhaps under big trees or on steep banks. What could be better than a garden that takes so little water, fertilizer or labor? There would be no nearby woods to provide volunteers, but buying the necessary plants, bulbs and seeds would have the advantage of providing just the right and most pleasing mix of species. I imagine that any property in town that was rich with plantings of native species would attract and nurture many more birds and beneficial insects. Give it a try!
It’s much easier now to find native plant growers and to buy native seeds than it was a decade ago when I arrived in Eugene and began restoring natives to our property. Unlike Reida, I operated with little knowledge and big dreams, planting hundreds, it seems like thousands, of seedlings, whips and small trees. I read about habitat requirements, but insisted that my selected wildings could establish themselves wherever I chose, with just a little short term help. And like the uninitiated, I figured a species that was native 100 miles away, or even on Reida’s hillside, could be made native on mine. After three summers of dragging up to 400 feet of hoses through and around hazelnut, blackberry and emerging Doug fir, I gave in and said, “You’re on your own.”
Today only two incense cedars survive in the full shade I selected. I have a few ninebarks left in moist spots, but not in the open dry areas where I wanted them. Vine maples only like it where they enjoy some garden water or where they were lucky enough to get planted in the forest duff. Douglas spiraeas love it in the septic drain field. The Indian plums mostly sulk but a few have thrived, however, not out in the open where I wanted them. Even though sarvisberry inhabits a few niches on our property, it wouldn’t grow in my chosen spots. Another picky native to my property is Holodiscus. You can laugh, but only a few of the frothy ocean sprays I planted have survived. I do have the wonderful tassels of Garrya greeting me along the driveway from January through March in a very successful planting on the rocky dry slope. Evergreen huckleberries, however, hate it here, even in the shadier spots, but not as much as my favorite, the red huck (Vaccinium parviflorum) hates it. These, like our native large leaved rhododendron and the ledum varieties, belong in much damper habitats--but they would have been so pretty all over my hill... and the tea I’ll never get to enjoy it.
Like all intransigent gardeners, I had to learn the old fashioned way, knowledge revealed through many shriveled specimens: Plant what’s native to your little piece of heaven, in its favorite niche, and enjoy the beauty of “Right Plant, Right Place,” especially if it’s to naturalize.