Today in the Pollinator Garden


November 2018

April 30, 2020

What a long strange trip it's been, as Jerry Garcia once sang. The pollinator/wildflower garden was my first landscaping project after moving into my new home in Holiday in October 2018. I liked the opportunities this landscape gave me, because it was essentially a blank slate. The sunny front yard was most unencumbered by trees; a camphor just to the south of this border and some foundation plantings up next to the home. As a rental, I couldn't take down the camphor, but I limbed it up and this allowed even more sunlight to reach my planting bed. It also gave me a really sunny portion inside the frame and a part that is less sunny in the late afternoon. 
Some folks over the years have asked me what my neighbors think and if I've had issues with County Code Enforcement. The answer to the first question is that I have no idea and the answer to the second is no. My neighbors, except for those on my immediate south, rarely venture outside and I have not spoken to a single one of them in the 18 months since I've moved in. I expect that they see me as a bit of an eccentric, but if that is true, it suits me fine. I have never considered myself to be conventional. 
The answer to the second question lies partially in my neighbors' general disinterest, but also because of the way I've designed this space. It is a wild area, contained in normalcy......  The frame I've outlined this area with clearly delineates a "place" that is supposed to be there; a place that might look wild, but one that was purposely planted. I still mow and edge around the timbers and my turf surrounds the planting bed. 
If I had merely stopped mowing my yard, as I read how some do on social media sites, it would look unmanaged and I would look like a lazy bad neighbor. That's not the image we need to foster. Not only are the vast majority of plants that pop up lawn weeds, native or not, the wildness of an unmanaged yard is scary and off-putting to most people. One can either spend the time trying to argue against that with the Code Enforcement staff that will someday visit you and pull out ordinances that you are likely violating, or you can put the same people more at ease by showing them that it's a "garden".  
Over these past 18 months, my wildflowers and native grasses have filled in and reseeded into the bare patches that once existed between them. Although much of the beauty, in my opinion, lies with the fall blooms, there is now a never-ending procession of wildflowers to pollinate and nectar from.  This too was planned from the beginning. It was not serendipity.  Not every plant, and maybe not every species, returned this spring, but the vast majority did. I started with a planting plan, but that plan included general chaos once the plants matured and reseeded. What now looks rather natural was anything other than that when it was first planted. It may be true that nature hates a vacuum, but it also hates order... 
From this point on, I will have very little to do in this space except to weed a few of the unwanteds that still appear from time to time and the seedlings of a few of the wanteds that are just too happy. Most of the balance will find itself, as in nature, because in the long run, this is meant to be a part of nature and not a garden in the strict sense of the word. 




Same view, looking north from the south.

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