In travel and gardens alike, I live for the unexpected. That mysterious bend in the path leading to a whole other something you could never imagine in advance.
Like a portal to another world.
My latest trip to Europe was filled with twists and turns in a month-long journey that skipped through seven different countries.
Well, I was definitely out there.
It took me over half a lifetime to return to the supersized environs of British Columbia. And while off exploring the massive old growth coastal forests of Tofino surrounding the westernmost edge of Vancouver Island, I couldn’t help but wonder aloud to the sky-capped cedars… What took me so long?
I was lured out to the West Coast by an invite to speak in Victoria as part of The Hardy Plant Study Weekend – a grand annual convergence of hort societies in the Pacific Northwest. The event is truly pan-American, rotating between Portland, Seattle, and Victoria – routinely selling out to a crowd of over 400 serious gardeners and plantophiles.
If you’re curious to try out a more naturalistic approach to planting design, here are some practical hacks to help you get the root ball rolling
Since many gardeners are likely working with a current gardens vs. the freedom of a fresh canvas, these ideas can help you test out some smaller projects and experiments over time.
In Part One of this post, I talked about the concept of seeing plants differently: in terms of beauty and purpose, and the roles they can play within a biodiverse plant community.
It’s about setting aside our desire for control to instead work in partnership with nature. This is essentially the guiding principle behind the naturalistic garden, a plant-driven approach to landscape design that has been around in one form or another since Englishman William Robinson first published his first edition of The Wild Garden in 1870.
But now with signature projects like the High Line in New York City and Chicago’s Lurie Garden, a growing global movement in planting design has found a bolder, modernist expression of this ideal with a collective dream to re-wild our nature-deprived urban worlds.
It feels like forever since I’ve been able to post photos of an actual garden of my own.
There’s been ceaseless rain in a cool extended spring, helping my young woodland garden find its feet. I’ve been planting up adjoining areas and getting busy with my Dutch hoe while watching this section burst to life.
