This amazing book is written focused on natural gardening, and very specifically growing food in the garden without need for chemicals, neither insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, nor synthetic fertilizers. \u00a0The concept obviously appeals to me, not just from a \u201csave the earth\u201d standpoint, but the methods described seem to be much less labor intensive than the standard way of growing things.<\/p>\n The first idea that stretched my mind in this book was in a subchapter titled \u201cThe Natives versus Exotics Debate.\u201d\u00a0 Hemenway asks, \u201cDoes exotic mean a species that wasn\u2019t here before you got here, or before the first botanist did, before Columbus, the first human, or what?\u201d\u00a0 An excellent question.\u00a0 Hemenway prefers to call plants opportunistic, rather than invasive\u2014and he points out that in the most well-known cases of new plants taking over large areas (Purple loosestrife, European bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle, Kudzu, and Russian olive), the plants were \u201cinvited\u201d by the disturbed land and disrupted ecosystems.\u00a0 \u201cHumans create perfect conditions for exotics to thrive.\u201d\u00a0 He goes on to explain that Nature will fill in disturbed places with pioneer plants, and \u201cshe doesn\u2019t care if the plant arrived via continental drift or a bulldozer\u2019s treads, as long as it can quickly stitch a functioning ecosystem together.\u201d<\/p>\n These thoughts were meaningful to me because I\u2019ve seen so much effort being put towards eradicating so-called invasive plants, and very little of it seems successful. \u00a0It all feels like a case of \u201ctoo little, too late.\u201d \u00a0Certainly, this is a complex issue, and losing native species entirely due to invasive species doesn\u2019t feel right.\u00a0 Native animals are also affected greatly when native plants are no longer available to them.\u00a0 What I like most about this book is that it approaches gardening as a healthy mix of natives and exotics\u2026which certainly seems like a more realistic approach.<\/p>\n The second idea that completely spurred my imagination is the concept of plant \u201cguilds\u201d.\u00a0 This concept started with the Native American\u2019s plantings of corn, beans, and squash in the same hills\u2014called The Three Sisters.\u00a0 The idea of a guild is that all the plants support and benefit the others.\u00a0 The beans fix nitrogen in the soil, the corn stocks provide a trellis for the bean vines to climb, and the squash leaves densely cover the ground, keeping out competing weeds.\u00a0 Grown this way, a plot will produce 20% more food than if just one of these crops was grown.\u00a0 A fourth \u201cSister,\u201d is the bee plant, Cleome serrulata, that was also a food plant, but contributes by attracting pollinators for the beans and squash.<\/p>\n Hemenway describes how to plant fruit trees with plants underneath\/around them so that they are mostly self-sufficient.\u00a0 I took this idea and designed a front yard that meets my wants regarding providing food and my likes of having flowers and year-round garden interest.\u00a0 I\u2019m extremely excited about this plan and hope to implement it in the same timeframe as the parking strip\u2014so that the fruit tree guilds are planted by spring of 2018 and the rest of the garden will be completed by spring 2019.<\/p>\n The dogs need some lawn out front, so I\u2019ll measure off a fair amount devoted to them and then start the orchard beyond that.\u00a0 I plan to add another semi-dwarf cherry tree, a leaf-curl resistant peach tree, a multi-graft apple tree, along with mini dwarf pollinators for all of them.\u00a0 There is room for two more trees\/guilds in addition to these three; I thought about combining them into one, with an arbor for kiwis and a bench underneath.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure of the light in that area, so may have to adapt to the fact that there may be too much shade.\u00a0 If so, I\u2019ll utilize the sunnier space for one more fruit tree\u2014maybe a pear.\u00a0 And the final guild may just be an evergreen huckleberry surrounded by ornamental shade-tolerant plants.<\/p>\n There is much work to be done to have the ground ready, the plants ready and the time available to implement all of this, so I really need to plan far in advance.\u00a0 For example, I\u2019ll need to winter possibly hundreds of seedlings in the greenhouse next winter, so I need to clean up that entire area, especially under the benches, to allow for more \u201cstorage\u201d.\u00a0 This clean-up project has been on the \u201clist\u201d for years now, but if I want to move ahead with the planting strip and the orchard guilds, it will have to be done before November.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I brought \u201cThe Gardener\u2019s Essential\u201d by Gertrude Jekyll with me to the cabin to get a better feeling for one of the iconic gardeners of all time.\u00a0 Having read much of it, I can honestly say that Ms. Jekyll is not my favorite writer.\u00a0 Certainly, she shares one common trait with Christopher Lloyd, who I … Continue reading Garden Writers’ Strong Opinions–And a New Favorite!<\/span> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/DSC07164-1-e1491059320433-225x300.jpg?resize=225%2C300\")
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