A woman called the other day about some "wild land"
she and her husband had
bought. They would be moving there from their house on a
microscopic lot in Athens.
I could sense her uneasiness. "Should we just take it
all out, all at once?"
she asked. ("It" meant the wild vegetation, I
concluded.)
She had another worry: a spring. "We don’t let our
daughter go near it," she
assured me. She talked at length about this spring.
Gradually I got her drift. They had bought a one-acre wooded
lot in a subdivision. How
should one go about building a house in the woods? And more
important, how should one go
about living in such a place?
These are reasonable questions. More and more people are
"going natural" in
their landscaping.
What not to do — if you want to preserve your piece of the
wild — is the ordinary
thing.
The ordinary house has a view of the road — as if the road
were the premium view. Then
landowners declare war on all vegetation except large trees.
They cut, hack, scrape, rake
and till until naked earth shows everywhere.
They plant grass in some places. The rest they bury under
pine straw or other imported
mulch. They bring in store-bought plants to restore what nature
once provided. Then they
start watering: regular watering, sprinkle watering, drip
irrigation, watering during
droughts.
What was wrong with the native vegetation? Nobody ever
watered that. It was perfectly
adapted.
Why do people do "landscaping" in this way?
Because that’s the way it’s always been done. We absorb taste
and artistic sense — or
the lack of it — from our childhood neighborhood. Pictures in
magazines, too, tell us
what our aspirations should be.
Break the mold and think creatively when it comes to
landscaping in harmony with
nature. Here are some saving-a-wild-garden ideas that cost
little or nothing.
First, a spring or a swampy place is not a hazard. Unless you
abhor the risk of
stepping in ooze or water, leave a little swampy place as it
is.
Such places are magnets for frogs, birds, salamanders,
dragonflies and, of course,
little humans. Mud can beat most items at "Toys-R-Us"
when it comes to
entertaining small people.
How about snakes? They’re a very small risk to humans, well
below lightning strikes and
dog attacks. There are bees, wasps, a couple of spiders with
nasty bites and a few
irritating caterpillars. But these creatures can also exist in
many manicured gardens. You
might want to spray out poison ivy, however.
Where to put your house is a key decision.
Some people want a house on a hill with a detached view of
nature from a safe distance.
I prefer a house with a close-up view of undisturbed nature.
Consider nestling the house near a beauty spot with a window
view of your natural area.
Focus on getting your house in place with the least damage to
the natural vegetation. Rope
off favorite places to protect them from heavy equipment.
If you can get a house in the woods, you’re well ahead of the
average aspiring nature
lover. Now maybe you want to make some strategic modifications.
Add a patch of lawn or a
butterfly bush. Perhaps put in some trilliums or mayapples under
the oaks.
Bit by bit you can also make strategic removals. Remove an
eleagnus here, or prune a
branch there. Careful, though! When you take out plants and
branches from under a full
forest canopy, they may never grow back.
The Southeast produces lovely forests without any help from
man. The woods aren’t the
enemy but a friend to live with in joy and harmony.
