Growing Wild

I am renouncing my attempt at a cottage garden and starting anew. This time I am going au natural. Do not be alarmed, I do not mean to imply that I am going to garden in the nude, though that might be sort of freeing. I believe Ruth Stout, that indomitable Queen of Mulch, favoured gardening in the buff, but I digress.

What I have in mind is gardening with native plants instead. Some might argue that this is what is already happening to our yard, but what I mean to do is something that goes far beyond turning my back and walking away.

I will plant and sow and create with every bit as much vigour as I gave to my cottage garden, but this time I will toss the foreign paints and only select from a palette of what nature originally gave to Canada.

I am envisioning great sweeps of fireweed, purple asters, golden rods, yarrow and arnicas. Lots and lots of arnicas. I love the yellow daisy like blooms. I will plant bluebells, wild roses, and flax.

Of course I won’t forget the bones! That is where I stumbled badly in the past. Instead of planting trees and shrubs I went straight to beds of annuals tucked under the eaves of the house looking out over a boring expanse of green lawn. I didn’t have time for trees. What was I thinking? Clearly, I wasn’t. Instead I was so impatient, I couldn’t be bothered, only to turn around five years later, crushed to the quick of my soul when my yard didn’t look anything close to the pictures in the gardening magazines. A garden needs trees. Trees are the bones, the foundation, or at least that’s the way it seems to me. I am willing to bet that God created trees first and flowers second.

Now would be a good time to say I strongly believe that a garden should be as individual as the gardener. There should be no such burden of “You must do this” or “Never do that.”  Do you love gnomes? Fill your yard to the brim! Hate pink flamingos? Don’t allow one on the place! Love peonies but despise roses? Say no to every Theresa Bugnet and Hansa that tries to tell you otherwise. Love dry creek beds, hate ponds, love iron trellises, hate wooden lattice? Since you’re the one making the payments, you’re the one that gets to call the shots. That’s the glory of a garden. It’s your own private oasis and no one gets to tell you what to do with it.