Whether you have bought a new home or are struggling with how to design a new landscape for your property, you need only to look at the elements nature has provided. Consider the patterns in our local ecosystems in planning your landscape that will provide beauty, food and shelter, as well as protection from extreme weather-related events which now occur regularly. By duplicating patterns in fields and forests, we can simultaneously regenerate soil health, promote biodiversity and ensure a lasting environment for generations to come. Observation of the succession of plants that appear in abandoned fields such as wild grass, flowers, shrubs and tree seedlings provides a basis of designing border gardens along paths and drives, as well as food gardens, orchards or low-maintenance forest gardens.
Landscape ideas often start with trying to decide the final aesthetics of the design. Yet aesthetics are the easiest elements to change, while land elevation and the aspect of which direction the property faces, either north, south, east or west, are impossible to change. Selections of correct plant materials may be made by simply looking at what is growing nearby on the same side of the road as our country home. As we look around us in the Upper Delaware River region, we see species of trees, wild fruits, shrubs and herbaceous plants growing everywhere. Plants grow in valleys, on steep slopes and even in floodplains, growing randomly, between and attached to rock outcroppings, climbing living and dead trees and manmade abandoned artifacts like old barns and even antique farm equipment. Our plants, both wild and cultivated, continue to grow with determination to connect with the earth or whatever substrate will support them.
Traditional garden designs of the 20th century presented cookie-cutter ideas which could be easily translated to a home landscape, often by merely copying a design from a magazine. Usually, both woody and herbaceous plant species were placed in groups of three to five, starting with the woody plants referred to as the bones of the landscape. The trees, shrubs and perennial herbaceous plants were often interspersed with annuals which provided a full season of color. In addition, the entire garden was carefully mulched to keep the variety of plants well segregated from their neighbors. Today, landscape architects and homeowners are choosing a permaculture approach, not only to reduce costs of replacing plant materials, but also to develop a sustainable landscape in keeping with the surrounding environment.
The term permaculture design is new, coined in the 1970s by Bill Mollison in Australia. Mollison developed a schematic plan using elements of design based on zones of use combined with an ethical approach to address the degradation of the environment in Australia from mining. The ethical principles of permaculture have their origins in the practices of indigenous people and cultures in every hemisphere in siting their dwellings, gathering and growing food, sharing abundance and returning any surplus back to the earth. It is only since the industrial revolution that western civilization has moved away from these principles to the degradation of the global environment.
Transitioning away from a well-manicured garden, often surrounded by neatly maintained and mowed lawns with crisp well-defined edges, has now become a necessity.
Walking along our country’s roads, one can enjoy the sight of wildflowers along the way, growing at the edge of the woods, planted by birds, deer, wind or water movement. They are the beginnings of nature’s landscape design. They recall to mind the biblical quote from Luke 12:27, “Consider the lilies how they grow. They do not labor or spin…”
Keeping this in mind, we may take clues from nature to allow ourselves a more gracious interaction with our environment, inviting other wild creatures into our living landscape. As the forest garden starts to develop on its own, surprises find their way in, through the mulch of undisturbed leaves which remain as ground covers. Forget-me-nots, hardy geraniums, violets and jewelweed (wild impatiens) appear mysteriously and grow with abandon, attracting hundreds of birds, butterflies, bees and other insects, which help pollinate and propagate existing plants. As in the forest, you will find living in undisturbed soil worms, snails, small toads, frogs and salamanders who are creating an entire ecosystem in your back or front yard, providing you and your guests hours of enjoyment that change daily as our seasons progress.
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