Contagious And Courageous: Woodland Gardening

When we bought this home 12ish years ago, there was very little going on, landscaping-wise. The home was only a year old, and the folks who built it had little, if any landscaping knowledge. They had tried to put grass seed down, but there was barely any grass growing in the rocky, dusty, lousy soil. They had purchased things like junipers and other evergreens, and planted them in odd- really odd- locations! As in, in a row across the small front yard, cutting it in half, so we'd have to step over them to play in the yard. Actually, had those been allowed to grow to full-size, where they were, instead of being relocated, some of them would be so huge that the roots might have broken through the tank in the leachfield.

We have worked for thousands of hours in the yard/on our property, over the years, with probably more than half of those years doing so organically. Amending the soil and babying it to attempt to get it to grow lawn. Planting trees; cutting down other trees; planting shrubs and flowers that attract butterflies, birds, and hummingbirds. Fertilizing organically. Watering. Weeding. Building rock wall borders. Building a front porch and a pretty walkway to showcase speciman landscaping plants. Wheelbarrowing and shoveling hundreds of yards of loam. Compost. Mulch. Stone for drainage, and stone as mulch.

For many years, though, I hated the property. I wanted what many friends have- a more manicured, flat, full-sun, subdivision-style, neat yard. The ferns, acorns, moss, and wildflowers, rocks and hills, that all encroach the yard on all sides, bugged me. I weeded ferns and spent countless hours trying to make things look more manicured. I finally realized, though, that just like my nails and hands, unmanicured yet strong, my yard had the same character- a little wild, a little carefree. Not cookie-cutter.

I stopped weeding the ferns and the wildflowers(most of them). I have grown fond of mosses and lichens. I have stopped using chemicals to get rid of weeds, and have allowed the varied ecoystems in the "yard" to do their thing. I recently started looking up the names to some of the native plants on our property, and it has made me appreciate them even more.

Bracken fern- I do have to weed these just a bit, but I now even allow some in my flower beds, in addition to their prominent locations along the side of the house, and in the woods.