Converting the heathens (with an attempt at civilized manners)
The last speaker at the Lahr Symposium (Thomas Rainer of Grounded Design) had an interesting talk about the disconnect between lawn service people and native plant people, and ways in which to try to bridge it. I am terrible about this sort of thing; I completely fail at contagious enthusiasm, to the extent of just not talking about things I might have to explain to "normal people." This goes for plants, environmental stuff, fencing, the SCA, dolls, sewing, knitting, writing fantasy... pretty much anything interesting I do I'm unlikely to bring up in conversation with strangers because I hate that blank look and the need for a two-sentence explanation on the fly. Generally I regard this as a Bad Thing, but I haven't worked out much of how to get over it, and it leaves me doing things like blinking bemusedly at people who say, "oh, I don't like native plants!" (er, how can you just say that categorically?) and completely failing to give what might be good gardening advice to people who express a desire to *have* gardening advice, but are thinking in a tidy-little-neighborhood HOA context.
I've added a "garden" tag, and am attempting to resolve to do a little more talking about these things I think are important, and make them a little more accessible. We'll see how that bit goes, but at very least it'll be good as a spiritual exercise on my part.
According to Mr Rainer, the lawn-service public sees native plant people as weed-growing hippies, and therefore all "their" plants as only suitable for weedy-looking unplanned gardens. This rather ties in with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's experience; they began with meadows and natural habitats, but eventually had to put in formal garden designs as well (not that this is a bad thing...) to keep visitors from being upset by the lack of "gardens." (Incidentally, I recommend visiting there if you're ever in the Austen, TX area; they're pretty cool.) Now, after spending a few months flipping through library garden books, I can tell you that I'm a fan of the semi-untidy English Garden look, with riots of color and odd bits of statuary buried in it, so I am perhaps not the best person to present alternate garden ideas to people who like a tidy landscape. But sometimes it takes another voice at the right moment, and on the whole even if I'm one of those voices that came before so that someone is ready to hear the right voice, that's ok by me.
In any case, there's a lot of good stuff on the grounded design blog: a series on unhelpful myths about native plants (ie, "you can't use them in formal arrangements" or "they don't need watering"-- great until you put a wetland species in the middle of your dry border); another series about landscaping with perennials, including how you actually get them to the point of looking good; for the gawker, there's also a gallery of stupid landscaper tricks. I suspect I'll be poking around at the backlog of this for a while, because I keep turning up things I'm finding interesting and potentially useful.
My main take-away from the talk, though, was the idea of design principles that take a space from scanning as "forest floor, unplanned" to "somebody put this here." Admittedly, I didn't greatly care for most of his examples, but the ideas are fairly sound. Pick a "look" and then, instead of trying to slide in everything in the plant community you're being inspired by, pick two or three main plants to work with, and then plant masses of them. Make it look like you meant it, not just like you're collecting a plant here and another one there. This, of course, could apply to any planting design, but I'm presently using it in my maze design, and trying to curb my meadow-ish border plans so I don't end up with more swamp milkweed squashed between the giant aster of giantness and the mad beebalm, as the front garden seems to have this year. (In fact, the swamp milkweed hasn't even come up yet, poor thing.)
Xposty from dreamwidth.
I've added a "garden" tag, and am attempting to resolve to do a little more talking about these things I think are important, and make them a little more accessible. We'll see how that bit goes, but at very least it'll be good as a spiritual exercise on my part.
According to Mr Rainer, the lawn-service public sees native plant people as weed-growing hippies, and therefore all "their" plants as only suitable for weedy-looking unplanned gardens. This rather ties in with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's experience; they began with meadows and natural habitats, but eventually had to put in formal garden designs as well (not that this is a bad thing...) to keep visitors from being upset by the lack of "gardens." (Incidentally, I recommend visiting there if you're ever in the Austen, TX area; they're pretty cool.) Now, after spending a few months flipping through library garden books, I can tell you that I'm a fan of the semi-untidy English Garden look, with riots of color and odd bits of statuary buried in it, so I am perhaps not the best person to present alternate garden ideas to people who like a tidy landscape. But sometimes it takes another voice at the right moment, and on the whole even if I'm one of those voices that came before so that someone is ready to hear the right voice, that's ok by me.
In any case, there's a lot of good stuff on the grounded design blog: a series on unhelpful myths about native plants (ie, "you can't use them in formal arrangements" or "they don't need watering"-- great until you put a wetland species in the middle of your dry border); another series about landscaping with perennials, including how you actually get them to the point of looking good; for the gawker, there's also a gallery of stupid landscaper tricks. I suspect I'll be poking around at the backlog of this for a while, because I keep turning up things I'm finding interesting and potentially useful.
My main take-away from the talk, though, was the idea of design principles that take a space from scanning as "forest floor, unplanned" to "somebody put this here." Admittedly, I didn't greatly care for most of his examples, but the ideas are fairly sound. Pick a "look" and then, instead of trying to slide in everything in the plant community you're being inspired by, pick two or three main plants to work with, and then plant masses of them. Make it look like you meant it, not just like you're collecting a plant here and another one there. This, of course, could apply to any planting design, but I'm presently using it in my maze design, and trying to curb my meadow-ish border plans so I don't end up with more swamp milkweed squashed between the giant aster of giantness and the mad beebalm, as the front garden seems to have this year. (In fact, the swamp milkweed hasn't even come up yet, poor thing.)
Xposty from dreamwidth.