Design

I was totally bemused this morning listening to an episode (via podcast) of Ken Druse Real Dirt . Druse is a fabulous garden writer, photographer, and excellent plant person. His books about natural habitat gardening were some of the early celebratory books about the beauty found in native plants. But he's never been a vegetable gardener to any great degree, nor had his guest on this podcast, Susan Harris , one of the bloggers on Garden Rant , a gardening coach, and a sustainable gardener. Their conversation was excellent, touting the pluses of Michelle Obama's White House vegetable garden , and the People's Garden (a new, and expansive vegetable garden) next to the USDA building in Washington, DC, followed by a discussion about the extensive native and sustainable gardens planned to surround the USDA building. (I was an intern at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum almost thirty years ago and remember it then, as it has appeared on all my subsequent visits as a dread...

My morning walk takes an occasional loop through a new neighborhood, not far from our established one. Developed on the site of a series of old horse pastures, it supported grasses and forbs with large trees on the perimeter. Currently, there are 4 completed houses with inhabitants, two houses for sale, and one in the final stages of construction. All quite large, of course, with expansive space around them. This is not remarkable, unfortunately, but what is fascinating (and scary) is how uncreative the landscapes are. This is not for lack of spending money on the landscape, mind you. The rows of leyland cypresses, ornamental shrub beds, and heavily watered turf sodded in great expanses strikes me as unmodern and not forward-thinking at all. The water is streaming from overhead irrigation in the morning. Why not add a diversity of interesting (and fast-growing) native trees to create shade instead of crepe-myrtles? Or native conifers and pine? And where are the vegetables? On...