Design

My gardening companion has been busy. The snow has melted and the temperatures moderated, so he's been busy rooting up English ivy (and removing it from a stone retaining wall on the edge of our landscape in the mountains).  It's not a bad stone wall at all, built with decent looking rocks, with just a bit of rubble and concrete supporting the parking lot for the adjacent apartment building.  I haven't been much help, with a troublesome finger making heavy pulling and clipping not such a great idea. The bags of leaves, saved this fall, proved useful for additional mulching down the slope. We're both envisioning woodland wildflowers to accompany the trees and shrubs already planted.  So the transformation from weedy forested ravine to native forested ravine continues...

I visited two great gardens this morning, one public and one private. This post is about the public one. I first visited North Carolina Botanical Garden about 25 years ago. It was fabulous then (and I've been a member ever since). Their mission, promoting native plants of the Southeast, and being a conservation garden, is essential to preserving and restoring our native plant communities. They provide a garden vision that I (and my gardening companion) have embraced: trying to create a sense of place in our garden that reflects our native plants and their habitats. It was wonderful to return and see the Coastal Plain Habitat Garden in its fall glory. Based on a plant rescue, this habitat garden has been burned periodically, and is a wonderful reflection of what our coastal plain habitats are like, when relatively undisturbed by human activity. The pitcher plant bog habitats, in new raised stone beds were spectacular. The borders were lovely, too.

Some time in the mountains this weekend, and a hike near Craggy Gardens, along the Blue Ridge Parkway today reminded me of the grounding of natural places and natural gardens. A lovely beech gap forest, just unfurling leaves, and sporting understory woodland wildflowers ( Trillium erectum , Mainthemum , Twisted leaf, with many more to come) was a delightful place to be on a sunny cool day after a long day of rain yesterday. It's a joy to walk in a place with its native vegetation intact, without the transgressions of many weedy and invasive species that dot our developed landscapes. A gift, to be sure.

I've been fortunate to have had many excellent (if not downright wonderful) visits to National Trust properties in Southern England (U.K.) during two recent trips. I visited many other places, too, mostly gardens and nurseries, but especially enjoyed the Trust properties. Preserving gardens, historic houses, natural areas, scenic coastlines, and other special places, The National Trust is a rough equivalent to the U.S. National Park Service, albeit with a different feel. Harting Down Receiving a member's magazine (as a Royal Oak member in the U.S.) a couple of days ago, I was reminded of what a very well-done publication it is, and the diversity of places that the Trust preserves. As a Royal Oak passholder on recent trips, I visited many smaller places that I probably wouldn't have visited otherwise, from Harting Down, Birling Gap and the Seven Sisters (wonderful) to Bateman's (Rudyard Kipling's home), and Petworth House (in beautiful countryside). Seven Sisters I...

My gardening companion reported that he saw woodchuck holes galore along the railroad tracks behind our eye doctor's office this afternoon. The kudzu is leafless, so the burrows are visible. He said it reminded him of Matera (and the cave dwellings) in southern Italy. Hmm, I'm sure that they're not that prominent, but I'll have to go look! He thinks they like the young kudzu shoots as they leaf out later in the spring. We'll see.

I love native plants and communities, but appreciate gardens, too, where we mix plants from all of the world (hopefully reasonably suited for the site). Some gardens are naturalistic; others are fantastical. I appreciate those that have a naturalistic inclination, to be sure. Receiving a catalog today from a well-respected purveyor of plants (because I'd recently joined a professional association), I flipped through the pages. It was full of the sort of plants I hate - strangely variegated cultivars, gaudy flower selections, and oddly dwarfed specimens. I DO know many gardeners enjoy such things, but I'm not one of them. This poor sweetgum, a wonderful fast-growing native tree here in the Eastern U.S. that some people fuss about because of its fruits (spiny, seed-rich fruits favored by American Goldfinches), has been turned into a rather dreadful pencil-shaped thing (I won't name the cultivar to protect the source). I'm quite fond of sweetgums myself, but this one -...

The mountains (0f the Southern Appalachians) are nearby, and that's a good thing. They're covered with lovely forests (post early-20th century logging), rich in species, and wonderful to visit. I needed to drive up to Asheville today, in the center of Western North Carolina, and even though I didn't have time to hike anywhere, appreciated the beauty of our weathered mountains.

I've been enjoying reading other people's posts on their nature and gardening blogs. We share a community that wouldn't have been possible in immediate time in a pre-internet age. I'm mindful, however, of the correspondence that keen naturalists and gardeners had via (very slow) posts that traveled by horseback, carriage, ship, and courier. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, William and John Bartram, Asa Gray, Andre Michaux, Mark Catesby, John Jame Audubon, Lewis and Clark, among many others on this continent (North America), corresponded widely with fellow observers throughout the world, not to mention the VERY many others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. And they all depended on much slower transmission of observations and thoughts. But I''m grateful for the ability of the internet to connect us (in a much humbler way) in real time, with our observations of nature and experiences in our gardens.

We're not far from the remarkable biodiversity in the Southern Appalachians. Supported by abundant moisture and an ancient mountain range, it's one of the most species-rich places in North America. A recent visit to a short stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which stretches from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park up to the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia yielded some great plants and 'natural gardens.' A favorite spot was a seepage slope, covered with sundews, Michaux's saxifrage, a mountain St. John's Wort, and a rare Krigia , among others.

A wonderful stretch of downland and chalk coastal bluffs is preserved by the National Trust between Seaford and Eastbourne, on the Sussex coast. It's surrounded by seaside sprawl (and heavy traffic) in the surrounding large towns (Newhaven, Hastings, Bexhill by the Sea, and Brighton). It reminded me of Pt. Reyes National Seashore, north of San Francisco, California, a place that I knew well years ago, with grazing land combined with spectacular coast scenery. Clearly, it was a favorite place for walkers, because of the views and open space. On a Saturday morning at 10am, people were streaming in, with knapsacks and walking sticks at hand. It certainly underscores to me the need for preserving natural places, whether natural gardens or spectacular scenery.

Wonderful areas rich in biodiversity are natural gardens, and great places to visit. We like to travel to interesting natural areas around the world, focusing on areas that are rich in natural history and culture. We're off for semester break in South India this year; look for travelblog posts (if I have the opportunity)!