Wildscaping: A Post-Earth Day Dream

Our perennial challenge is how to design plant-driven garden landscapes to express a wilder beauty while fulfilling ecological imperatives to spark biodiversity and feed the soul.

We want to dream big and be practical all at the same time.

To this end, I’ve captured and pulled together some of the more glowing threads from the hyperactive global conversation on how to plan, realize, and sustain designed landscapes in the public and private realm.

My pet theory is we have entered a golden age for naturalistic planting design amplified by ecological awareness.

Yet these are still early days in the movement as we navigate the learning curve to revision gardens to the needs of humankind and the dynamics of nature.

A sea of troubles

With so much at risk, gardens have never been more needed.

Earth Day 2019 seems an auspicious time to reflect on the state of our untended and chaotic planetary garden. Before exploring the dream, let us revisit the nightmare.

This is the reality in the age of the Anthropocene, where the cumulative actions of humanity, our civilizations, technologies, and industrialization, are the single most powerful drivers of change on the entire planet.

Our rise as the dominant species has come at an unimaginably steep price to all other life forms – resulting in a precipitous decline in plant, animal, and invertebrate species and the ecosystems they inhabit.

Insect, bird, amphibian, and bat populations are now in free fall with biological conservationists estimating that over 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction. Although there is also equally serious questioning of insect estimates as per this recent report in American Scientist.

The key drivers of this massive decline are identified as intense agricultural practices fuelled by the heavy use of pesticides, followed by habitat loss, urbanization, and climate change.

While children take to the streets in mass global protest, the political class makes noises, shuffles the chess board, and sits on their hands.

Well, not quite. In my home province of Ontario, a new pro-business government is actively stripping away regulations that currently protect species at risk under the Endangered Species Act.

It’s not like we don’t know better.

Here in North America, the majority of the general public are now aware of the threat of climate change, but as a new study shows, only about 50 per cent of Americans believe it will affect them in their lifetime.

The same study also reveals that, while many of us are concerned about climate change, we tend not to share that concern with others and are thus unaware of just how pervasive our collective anxiety actually is.

In other words, it’s time to speak up.

Plant blindness

We can all see what’s happening. Or can we?

As we evolve into an increasingly urban species living through our digital devices, the more disconnected we become from nature.

It is, in fact, becoming a literal blind spot.

A new theoretical term “plant blindness” speaks to a disturbing symptom of mass urbanization and I quote its definition in full:

Plant blindness: The inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment—leading to: (a) the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere, and in human affairs; (b) the inability to appreciate the aesthetic and unique biological features of the life forms belonging to the Plant Kingdom; and (c) the misguided, anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals, leading to the erroneous conclusion that they are unworthy of human consideration (Wandersee & Schussler, 1998a).

This is a triple sucker punch to the gut of any self-respecting biophiliac or gardener.

Imagine the redemptive power of a forest, prairie, or garden reduced to an indistinct green blur. It’s a blindness we must challenge and fight.

Louder than words

With pretty much all creation in disarray, a garden is as good place as any to take action vs. waiting for Armageddon.

So much needs to happen on an industrial scale, and gardens are not a magic bullet, but there are rumblings of a not-so-quiet revolution in the works.

I spy with my little eye a renewed curiosity, compassion and desire to connect with the natural world:

Naturalistic garden design in the public realm, vertical and green roof gardens, neighbourhood efforts to create habitat for keystone species and native pollinators, the recent #superbloom mania in California, the western discovery of Japanese forest bathing, the urban farmer movement, outrage against neonic herbicides.

And it’s there in the next generation.

In the Annals of Obsession from The New Yorker, we see ‘How millennials use houseplants to connect with nature’. It’s a growing thing. And of course, the indoors are the gateway drug to the outdoors. I started with macrame plant hangers myself back in the day.

We’re trying to connect and do the right thing. Although what that right thing is, remains open to interpretation.

Gardeners and landscape professionals alike need better information, the resources to learn best practices, and to be inspired with examples of what is possible.

That said, we don’t particularly like to be told what to do.

A window to the world

For me, it’s essential to get out to see what’s going on.

Over the past several years, I’ve managed to visit a bucket list of seminal naturalistic gardens in the US, England, and Europe and it’s opened my eyes.

It started in Philadelphia last April with a chance to revisit Chanticleer and Mt. Cuba at their spring peak. This was all en route to joining up with a crew of garden friends to help plant a Piet Oudolf matrix meadow at the new botanical garden in Delaware.

The year was crowned with a September trip to England to attend The Beth Chatto Symposium: Ecological Planting in the 21st Century, held in Essex. This event attracted a who’s who of design luminaries from the UK, Europe, and a few enquiring souls from across the pond.

You can access the content of the entire symposium in their recorded archives here.

Beyond the bubble

Social media might still be the universal water cooler but it’s no substitute for meeting up in what I call “the reality”. Especially when accompanied by such perks as an invitation to experience a seminal garden like The Beth Chatto Gardens in the company of design heroes, peers, and friends.

One thing is for sure. I am far from alone in recognizing how this extraordinary convergence of minds continues to amplify the naturalistic, rewilding, ecological, or New Perennial movement in planting design.

For the moment, let’s simplify to call it Wildscaping.

Think of it as an intermingling of wildness and landscaping to make gardens with a sense of purpose. A dynamic process not a static state driven by  imagination, ecology, design and horticulture, all woven into one.

One thing it is not: Blandscaping.

Mindful that only nature can create true wilderness, let’s do what humans do best: emulate and build upon the original model to begin to solve our own conundrums. We can create complex communities of plants and organisms to nurture new life and biological complexity in the most unlikely of contexts. And yup, we can do it with grit, grace, style, and beauty.

Wildscaping can influence our approach to making green space in every conceivable niche – from urban parks to private gardens, green roofs, vertical, xeriscapes, highway medians, right down to window boxes.

And in these living sanctuaries, no matter how humble, may we rediscover our own humanity as guardians of the earth.

Next steps: Liftoff

Of course, there are others already farther down this road who can show us the way forward.

They’d be the first to tell you there is no one way. Each of us has the freedom to make it their own – in whatever we choose to call a garden.

My way is to take this idea of Wildscaping and run with it. I plan to write and do more talks, all the while making gardens of my own, in which to experiment.

I also plan to bring these ideas down to earth for new audiences.

I’ve recently been asked by a local group to create a symposium for fall 2020 on naturalistic planting design here in my hometown of Toronto for landscape, hort professionals, and keen gardeners. Together, they represent a pivotal coalition in taking things to the next level. Of course, the pandemic lockdown has put this idea on hold for the time being, but the virtual universe is opening up new possibilities.

After crowdsourcing ideas from my global community of garden friends on Dutch Dreams, I can see there’s a tremendous desire to gather at the communal well.  In true Dutch spirit, I plan to share anything of value that might arise.

The Dutch master himself, Piet Oudolf was profiled last week on PBS Newshour as the driving force for a movement that embodies the symbiotic essence of Wildscaping – connecting us back to the mystery of nature to connect us back to ourselves.

This one earth day dream is already coming true.

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Note: Special thanks for permission to share images from Anthropocene by photographer © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto. His upcoming exhibition, which debuted here in Canada at the AGO and National Gallery of Canada last September, is now touring to Fondazione MAST in Bologna, Italy, open May 16 – September 22.