Ecological Gardening

Lesson 4: Completing the Design

Plant Communities

Right plant, right place

Plant selection and placement are critical decision that you must make when seeking to create an ecological garden. Companion planting and plant guilds provide us with information that will help us to create an ecological garden.

Understanding how companion planting works gives us a place to begin our awareness of the connections and relationships between plants and plants, and plants and insects, both prey and predator. In fact, as we experiment with our research into plants families and what benefits what, we begin to see the diversity that is evolving. We then realize the interconnections and interactions, between bird, bee, butterfly and tomatoe.

I have had considerable experience with container gardening. Beans, squash, basil, chamomile, tomatoes thrive on my est facing balcony. and so on.

One of the reasons for this success is creating plant communities within and between containers. This gives the conatner garden a vibrant, exicint look and generates food and visual delight right outside the kitchen door.

What is a plant community?

A plant community is a combination of different plants growing together. Each plant community has a unique structure and appearance, which is determined by the proportions of the species growing in it. The composition of a plant community type, such as a northern mesic forest, changes from place to place due to the physical environment. This is because each species has certain limits to where it will grow and survive. Those species that have similar limits often are found growing together, hence they become a loosely assembled plant community.

There are two phrases that I use in workshop settings or whenever I am talking about gardening. They are:

1- everything eats

1- the gardener's footprint.

What do they say to you?

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