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The Natural Garden That Isn't

© Carol Wallace

When you think about it, a "natural garden" is a contradiction. You might have a natural looking garden, but not a natural one. The existence of the word garden implies the existence of a gardener. And when a gardener does the work and chooses the plants - no matter how closely tied to nature and native plants that garden may be - it is no longer natural but a planned phenomenon.

A true natural garden is one where Mother Nature's is the only hand that guides things. We have one of those on our property - one that we simply neglected because we were too busy creating much less natural but nonetheless soul-satisfying gardens elsewhere. It started as an area down a steep slope from the main yard, with several large trees and some green growth beneath them.

A few years later there was a lot more green growth beneath those trees, cinquefoil and greater celandine, jewel weed, dames rocket, and bedstraw, with deadly nightshade vining its way through the rest. A few cosmos bloomed at the edge among a thick border of tawny orange daylilies that have been there since we moved in 20 years ago. The cosmos must have been contributed by birds. Then we blinked, and the area became woods. Tree seeds became saplings and even small trees when we glanced away. Next thing we knew we had a stand of staghorn sumacs dominating the area, and a thicket of baby maple trees choking the rest.

It's the way of nature, at least here in the northeastern US, where undisturbed land goes from herbaceous plants to woody vines to woody trees, until the woods blocks out the light and the green undergrowth dwindles away.

Just then, Mother Nature did a bit of editing, in the form of a tornado that blew across the yard and uprooted the ten large sumacs. This let in so much sunlight that the greater celandine and jewel weed came back in spades and drifts of dame's rocket sprang into bloom. That's when I started looking into creating a woodland garden that would look as natural as possible and yet still show signs of order and design that nature, left to her own devices, had overlooked.

That is not a natural garden, but my interpretation of nature - and of course I let in some inhabitants that Ma Nature might not have added on her own. Like the several hundred daffodil bulbs I planted under the canopies of the remaining trees. They don't mind summer shade as long as they get spring sunshine - which they do since the trees are quite bare when daffodil season arrives. I am leaving those to multiply at will, and - dare I say it? - in spring they look quite natural blooming away through the fallen leaves of autumn.

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