An editor of a gardening magazine recently questioned whether this kind of gardening, where ethics and aesthetic merge, using local natives and natural models, is truly representative of “the fine art of gardening.” “Some might consider such simplification the abandonment of gardens as art,” he says. Yet choices are made, plants arranged, an aesthetic developed. It embraces all I know, all I hope to know, and all I wish I knew but never will about this set of ancient processes and associations.
Is it the way of a lazy gardener, as this editor says? I find that horticultural challenges are infinite. I will never run out of species to attempt to bring into this space. For example, I want to establish a stand of Indian paintbrush in the scrub, a red, apricot, or yellow hemi-parasitic plant that probably grew here once but has not so far survived in my garden. Indian paintbrush hosts a particular kind of aphid-eating mite. This mite lives in the flower, where it eats nectar, till a hummingbird comes along to share the nectar. At this juncture, the mite runs up the hummingbird’s beak and into its nostril, where it sits tight while the hummingbird flies down to Baja California. As the hummingbird approaches a nectar-producing plant, the mite gets ready, rears up, and races down the nostril, down the beak, and into the flower. It must move so quickly that it may outrun the fleet cheetah. By establishing this flower in the garden, with its as yet elusive cultural requirements, we may be facilitating this mind-boggling nasal journey.
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Revised somewhat from Gardening with a Wild Heart (University of California Press). Reprinted by permission from the author.
Read more of this in Ensemble Anthology no. 1
