(written May 2013)
Becoming a restorative home gardener was an accidental journey. I wanted to be on another, very different, journey: a return to my childhood Colorado mountains. I wanted to go back to the pine, fir and spruce-lined trails heading up to timberline and beyond. To be high up on the tundra. I longed for its grand, expansive views. Lichen-covered boulders. Dazzling blue alpine lakes at the base of summer snowfields. Glaciers to slide down. Elk and bighorn sheep and marmot sightings. Ptarmigans. Eating out of a Sierra cup. Crossing cold mountain streams in heavy hiking boots. Living out of a heavy external frame backpack.
I wanted what I called Big Nature. The Rocky Mountains.
What I got was a little front yard gardening project. Little Nature. Butterfly bushes. Ankle-brushing flowers. Butterflies and bees.
Instead of hiking up and up into blue skies, I ended up squatting and kneeling, looking down at the dry desert soil.
And it grew on me.
I didn’t learn until later that butterfly bushes are not native to the U.S. I didn’t learn until later the importance of planting native flowers and bushes and trees. I basically didn’t know much of anything. I loved columbine and Indian paintbrush and so I planted them, without a thought to whether they were suited to my region – to the sun, soil, rainfall, and temperatures. Later, in another yard, I anchored the habitat with many butterfly bushes. I wanted to attract butterflies (who doesn’t!). After spending a small fortune of my single-mother-on-a-teacher’s-salary, I learned about the problems with planting non-natives.
I have made every mistake.
I am still learning.
My dear friend, Margo Chávez, loaned me a stack of Plants of the Southwest catalogues. (I’m pretty sure I never gave them back.) I began learning. Then I discovered Judith Philips and her New Mexico gardening books for drought resistant plants. I studied like my life depended on it. I scraped together every penny to buy plants and more plants. I spent six years and untold time, energy and money on “flipping” my Albuquerque yard – scraggly and parched grass. I created my first, best effort of a biodiverse habitat for pollinators and other critters. Roadrunners were always welcome even though they sometimes ate the lovely insects I worked to attract.
Along the way I picked up a husband, and just as the front yard project was looking good, we moved. Back to the Midwest. Boy, do I have some stories about that – two books cooking on other burners, actually.
At some point in the transition from desert Southwest to the lush Midwest, I came upon the author Sara Stein. Lordy, lordy, what a find: Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards and later, her other books. I started in on another yard. In Madison, Wisconsin (Monona, specifically). And now again another yard in Galesburg, Illinois, when we boomeranged back to our childhood hometown.
(Said husband was my prom date from 23 years ago who I hadn’t seen since the summer of high school graduation. A story for another time….)
I am a lapsed Trekkie. Even so, I can’t resist saying (in the delectable voice of Patrick Stewart): Earth. The final frontier. These are the voyages of an Accidental Gardener. Her thirty-year mission: to explore sustainable ancient ways, to seek out native and natural habitats, to boldly go where so many have gone before.