On Gardening

My perspective and philosophy on making gardens has evolved quite a bit over the past decades. There were times when I coveted every new rose released by my favorite growers, David Austin and Sons, and filled my garden with heirloom and popular hybrid roses. I also collected heirloom fruit trees, grew my own vegetables in various plots and even plastic baskets on a condo deck, and experimented with fruit bearing shrubs.

Those passions met hard reality once we moved to our Forest Garden here along College Creek in Williamsburg. Gardening as entertainment has by necessity evolved to something else in this wild space. Oh yes, I still collect favorite genera; they just have to be plants that deer won’t graze.

These essays about gardening, written between 2013 and 2020, reflect the changes to my own philosophy of gardens and gardening. We had already been on this property long enough, when I began A Forest Garden in June of 2013, for me to realize that what I had always done before in other gardens wasn’t working in this one. I had already been networking with neighbors and keeping notes on what did an didn’t work. My first posts were a summary of what I had learned in our first four years here.

Since then, I’ve kept up with the work of many different naturalists and landscape designers: Rick Darke, Piet Ouldolf, Dr. Doug Tallamy, Ken Druse, Thomas Rainer, Dr. Larry Mellichamp, Dr. Michael Dirr, and so many more. I’ve networked with local gardeners and naturalists to learn all I can from them. I look at a garden now more as a web of life, and less as a space to satisfy my very human needs for beauty, food, and expression. Magic happens when our human efforts assist in re-weaving the web of life, so often left broken by modern development.

You may or may not agree with the opinions expressed in these essays, but my hope is that they will inspire your own ruminations about how we interact with our personal landscapes. And I hope you find a few useful ideas that you can apply in your own gardening.

WG 2021

A New Vocabulary for Gardening: The Natural Habitat Garden February 2016

Six on Saturday: When Wood Breaks Into Bloom April 2020

Six on Saturday: Rain Gardens August 2020

Six on Saturday: ‘Garden Bathing’ July 2020

Six on Saturday: A Gracious Plenty June 2020

Six on Saturday: Always Another Surprise May 2020

Six on Saturday: Meeting the Challenge April 2020

Where in the World? May 2018

Continuous Effort August 2019

Time Marching On May 2019

Plants Want to Live May 2019