Consider how garden fits into natural environment

Writing in the May-June issue of Fine Gardening, two gardeners from Texas describe some principles they follow in gardening.

Though many of the plants they chose for their gardens are unlikely to survive in Zone 5 or lower, what guides their actions is generally applicable to any gardener.

Donna Ohland Terry and Doyle Terry have lived in the “middle of a Texas Hill Country landscape” for 20 years. As they approached their tasks of establishing gardens on a small urban lot, they “learned to appreciate and cooperate with our ecosystem.”

Translated, this means they considered such factors as rainfall and its patterns over a year’s time, wind directions and intensity, soil type (acid/alkaline, sandy, loamy, clay), and the sun’s route around their land.

Also, they paid attention to specific property features, such as slopes, flat spaces, walkways, neighbors’ yards (fences, hedges, trees), relationship to curbs and streets, existing landscaping and leftover plants from previous owners.

All of these observations contributed to the ultimate goal of putting “right plants, right places,” which is the title of their article.

After this analysis, they were guided in their plant choices by the desire “to match the Texas Hill Country look” of their larger surroundings. Whatever they created, they did not want their gardens to look alien in that larger landscape.

Question for Spokane-area gardeners: What would a garden look like if it matched “the lay of the land of Spokane and the surrounding area”?

Perhaps our gardens would be a mix of Palouse-like grassland, ponderosa pine woodland, rock and gravel, and river-edge water features. What a challenge!

Open areas of their yard were planted with buffalo grass (Buchloe dactloides “609”) to resemble a prairie. For the sloping front yard that drained well, they dug in plants that do not like wet roots, such as varieties of daisy.

To enhance a natural appearance, they chose plants that self-seeded. This introduced softness to the yard and a natural permanence. These plants were also chosen for their abundance of flowers for seasons of bright colors.

Using the principle of the right plants in the right places, we become more aware of the misplacements in our gardens.

If, as we purchase plants, we educate ourselves on their natural growth patterns – mature height and spread, especially – we may make fewer errors. With fewer errors, we will do less transplanting, or discarding to the compost pile.

As we take heed of the warnings of severe drought this year, we should assess the moisture requirements of our yards and gardens. Perhaps some with extensive lawns demanding high water use will begin to find their way to create gardens with drought-tolerant plants.

In this month’s Smithsonian magazine, Wendy Mitman Clarke writes about the garden of Eudora Welty, the novelist and short-story writer. The garden is being restored in Jackson, Miss., and was opened to the public a year ago.

Mitman Clarke concludes that the garden is “… a place of bent backs and dirty knees, where what one is seeking is not perfection or distance, but an honest view of real life. …” Many of us know about the backs and knees, but have we thought of our gardens as rendering “an honest view of real life”?

This week in the garden

• Warm weather seems to have finally arrived. Keep the frost protection handy, though. May 15 is our official last frost date.

• Check newly planted plants for water and finish getting sprinkler systems tuned up.

• As the forsythias finish their explosion of color, remove a third of the oldest wood to stimulate new growth and new flowers next year.

• Continue to protect plants purchased directly out of greenhouses for a few days to acclimate them to outdoors.

• Leave the foliage of spring bulbs in place for at least six weeks after they finish blooming to build food reserves for next year.

• Be patient about assuming a plant is dead. Some plants take longer to come out of dormancy than others.