Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” asked the poet, Mary Oliver in her 1990 poem “The Summer Day”

“Catastrophizing.” Says the Modern, looking up from desk or device, oblivious to the tangible, observable, intoxicating natural world that Oliver inhabited for 83 years as a student.  How could it be possible to consume just as voraciously as she did, and remain ever-hungry? Yet we do. And we are.

Each year, the fascinating, in-between month of March offers us hundreds of opportunities to stake claim to that precious life by first recognizing its worth – and this is only possible if we intentionally choose to be curious each time we are faced with both miracle, and misfortune.

Gardeners Have a Front Row Seat

While gardeners are positioned more advantageously than others to recognize and rejoice in the subtle signs of change that remind us of the cyclical nature of all things; we are not immune to the technological forces in other parts of our lives (social media, weather apps, 24-hour news, hyper-novel systems) that keep us in a heightened state of anxiety and imperceptibly separate us from each other and from the natural world. All for the purposes of commodifying our attention.

Dogs know how to immerse in the natural world.

We are also not immune to those forces making a profound impact on our capacity to be curious by cleverly providing a false sense of same.

We can believe ourselves to be curious even as we absorb and are satiated by performatively asked questions in echo chambers of algorithm. That isn’t the curiosity we must cultivate to move into a changing climate with positivity and resilience. 

Without curiosity we cannot contemplate adaptation.  We cannot view our challenges creatively. Or see beyond the boundaries of what we already know.  Not only is this not healthy, it’s not a happy way to live, and it certainly does not support the discovery of that one wild and precious life Mary Oliver entreats us to find before it is over.

One Flower, Two Journeys

This month for instance, the gardener may see a late-season daffodil like ‘Thalia’ emerge and bloom earlier than normal.  This is worth noting.  How to react?

Happy times with Thalia. But each year is different.

The non-curious gardener, however unintentionally, might smother the instinctive joy felt in that emergence, by focusing instead on the much larger and less resolvable issue of climate change.

Perhaps he snaps a picture and posts it online with a concerned caption “Beautiful, but…” Commenters seeking communion or approval are quick to reiterate the angst, and may invoke anger and divisiveness by adding a political slant, or questioning the moral implications of planting a non-native daffodil in the first place.   

There is no learning here. It is merely a space to reinforce one’s opinions, cultivate anxiety and bring everyone along for the ride.  

Meanwhile, the curious gardener next door recognizes the new timing even as he recognizes the miracle and beauty of a daffodil breaking through the frozen earth, unfurling its flower, and offering itself to the elements.  Perhaps it has altered a historically sound pairing in his garden which will mean a new bedfellow. Inconvenient, but not insurmountable. What else is blooming in tandem? Has it happened before?

Other factors will have contributed to this emergence. Can he mitigate for them in future springs?  He must ask himself questions, answer honestly, and take notes.  Memory is notoriously unreliable.

Is the daffodil newly planted?

How long has he gardened here?

Is this a wetter or a drier space? In winter? In summer?

How does the sun lie on this stretch of soil?

How is the same daffodil progressing in another area of the yard?

He may also see an insect responding in some way to this early flower he previously thought of little ecological value. Is the interaction significant or trivial? Finding the answer to that question may prompt him to look around at other similar species over the next few years.

To be curious in what one is seeing, and evaluate it in the pursuit of greater understanding, is the most logical step if the aim is to move forward, not backward.  It is not merely the observation of the emerging plant, but the why of it.  Why is it emerging in this spot, not that one?  Why is it stronger here, not there? Curiosity precedes action and experimentation, not inaction and immobilization.

Choosing to move forward

This March, it may be very warm, but it may also be very cold. Temperatures may fluctuate drastically. Again, that is inconvenient, but it is not insurmountable. What is consistently struggling in that new environment and what appears to take it on the chin?

March may bring ice. Where is it melting first in your garden?  Is that a place where early ephemerals like Erythronium and Sanguinaria might find an easier foothold?

March may bring heavy snow. Which early flowers spring back after a smothering blanket? Which bend and don’t get up again?

March may bring heavy rains. Where is your drainage plan weak?  Where is it effective?

Choosing light

Activating curiosity in ourselves switches on the light in a darkened maze. Certainly we can choose to sit uncomfortably in darkness, or decide that there is no way out; but reaching for that switch signals our intention to explore and to solve – even if we’re not quite sure which way to go.

“I do know how to pay attention…” says Oliver. “…Tell me, what else should I have done?”

March is full of miracles. I’m looking forward to finding them. – MW

Choosing To Be Curious in The Garden originally appeared on GardenRant on March 5, 2026.

The post Choosing To Be Curious in The Garden appeared first on GardenRant.

Screen shot from Rebecca McMackin’s Instagram feed.

Rebecca McMackin, (horticulturist/writer/eco-influencer) is getting a lot of attention – a much-watched Ted Talk, interviews on podcasts, etc. And her recent opinion piece in American Gardener magazine tackles a surprisingly controversial topic. It’s appropriately named “Rethinking Invasives: How can we protect biodiversity without feeding fear.”

McMackin has two objections to the word “invasive.” One, “It’s simply inaccurate…Garden mustard didn’t sneak in under cover of darkness; it was brought here, like most plants we call invasive.” And two, “The term ‘invasive’ deflects accountability for the plant doing what plants do while concealing the role of human choices.” She points out that nurseries still sell plants known to cause damage.

Xenophobia and other problems

Good points! She goes on. “We have to be careful not to fuel xenophobia…In a moment of rising nationalism, language about ‘invasion’ and ‘foreign threats’ can terrify and exclude people, positioning the gardening movement as aligned with authoritarianism.”

“I’m grateful for the guidance of researchers and BIPOC advocates who have called for these shifts for years. Also, we should avoid phrases like ‘destroying Japanese knotweed;’ some will respond to that with understandable aversion.” She suggests instead using its Japanese name. And “Oriental bittersweet” could instead be called “round-leaf bittersweet” to distinguish it from the native one. (BIPOC refers to Black, Indigenous and People of Color.)

In Defense of Plants

There’s no need to characterize these plants as evil. Many weeds are among the best medicines in the world.  We can pull garlic mustard to make pesto, bandage wounds with broad-leaved plantain, and collect dandelion green for salad, while removing them. This shifts the conversation away from evil invaders and towards keeping ecological communities intact – which is the goal…

Ecological gardening is about fostering the diversity within biodiversity. Sometimes that means removing introduced plants.  But let us do it without turning back the clock or shutting people out. Let our gardening cultivate a verdant, biodiverse and inclusive future.”

I love “biodiverse and inclusive future”!

Reader comments

When she posted about the article on her Instagram account and AHS posted it to theirs, almost everyone expressed gratitude, some saying they’d been bothered by the language for a long time.  One reported bringing this problem to a native plant group and getting trolled for it.

“For balance, we need to talk more about the introduced species that are beneficial – like everything on our plates! And in our gardens. We do all plants a disservice by using their passports and not their characters to judge them.”

One agrees that “Throwing all nonnatives – a word that represents a specific time in earth history – into the category of bad plants is not helpful or ecologically sound in every case. Most plants are better than no plants at all.”  Hear, hear! 

Naturally I love this comment: “Words matter. The evangelical missionary-like tendencies of some folks in the native plant community are truly harmful and ugly. Thanks for addressing this issue.”

The conversation became instantly more interesting when Canadian designer and writer Tony Spencer commented:

Great discussion. In terms of fueling xenophobia, why not also question the language of “native” vs. “exotic” or “alien” along with “invasive”?
All these terms carry heavy colonial baggage and yet, they are commonly accepted within the horticultural and ecological vernacular. They are nebulous ill-defined terms used to otherize one state from the other. I now use the term “indigenous” or “local” rather than “native,” and it’s respectful to First Nations as well (who tend to now use “aboriginal” or indigenous vs. native). The opposite term to indigenous might be “exogenous”, as in originating from outside and it does not carry the DHS connotations of “alien”. If anyone has a better suggestion, I’m all ears but I do wonder why such dated language gets a free pass, especially now.

Rebecca responded that she “couldn’t agree more about ‘alien.’ It’s made me cringe for decades. And while I’ve never heard it used in horticulture, it should absolutely be retired from ecology.”

The Search for Better Terms

McMackin writes that she’s started using these terms: “disruptive introduced plants” or “plants that cause ecological damage.” They focus the problem on their impact rather than their origin.

Terms suggested by commenters on social media include “ecologically harmful,” “ecologically disruptive” and “eco-disruptors.”

Instead of “native,” I’ve seen suggestions that we use “regional” and also “of the land.” (I’d be very surprised to see that last one take hold.)

“Endemic” is suggested but McMackin responds that in ecology that term refers to “species that ONLY exist in certain places. They’re restricted to mountain ranges or deserts or islands. And it’s an important word for that!” 

In Defense of Talking about Invasives

On Reddit I found commenters defending the potentially offensive terms: “We are just finally getting a foothold with educating the general public about the harm of invasive plants and I think the terminology needs to sound bold and aggressive, and be consistent, to get the job done. This mindset will confuse people further about an already complex problem.”

“We can’t allow racists to design our vocabulary. We need to be firm in definitions and meanings so that their twisting of them is not legitimized.”

In Defense of Talking Less about Invasives

This week the Virginia governor’s response to the recent State of the Union Address reminded me of a problem I see with focusing so much on the dangers of gardening, including the threat of “invasion”. When the governor says “Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent [solving crimes],” I think “…is a minute not inspiring people to grow plants, including exciting them with visions of beautiful gardens they can create, and of course teaching them how. 

I’ve heard far too many new or aspiring gardeners express anxiety about “doing the wrong things,” which is a shame.  Creating fear isn’t helping beginners get started toward making a garden they’ll love. I noticed in my years of garden-coaching that the best way to create eco-gardeners is to just create gardeners, period. The real ones, of course, not mowers-and-blowers. The type of gardening that’s taught today IS eco-gardening.    

Then there’s the issue of Colonialism. Or have I lost you yet?

Kitchen garden in Colonial Williamsburg, VA.

A few commenters took readers down a whole other rabbit hole, one, starting with this one: “Why can’t we call them colonialist plants decimating native plants?”

Just one more note about plants in American history, from someone you’re probably familiar with. Benjamin Vogt writes:

Those with privilege are threatened by decolonizing traditional horticulture, a horticulture which is grounded on new plant introductions, whether discoveries from around the world or new selections and crosses. Privilege is placing a plant in an ecoregion it did not evolve in, with fauna it did not evolve with, primarily because a human wants it there.

And I thought the debate couldn’t get any more contentious, or deep in the weeds! This is my cue to tune it all out, just like I do when my professors at the University of Maryland go on about arcane theories written by other academics in their nearly incomprehensible style. 

Albrecht Dürer Painted these Plants Before they were Brought to N. America

Speaking of my college professors, I’ve been attending UMD as a non-tuition-paying retiree for about 10 years and the best lecturer I’ve ever experienced is this brilliant woman seen this week telling the class about Dürer’s “Great Piece of Turf.” Odd title for a very odd subject choice in an era of floral paintings.

The Great Piece of Turf is a watercolor painting by Albrecht Dürer created at his Nuremberg workshop in 1503. It is a study of a seemingly unordered group of wild plants, including dandelion and greater plantain. The work is considered one of the masterpieces of Dürer’s realistic nature studies….The various plants can be identified as cock’s-foot, creeping bent, smooth meadow-grass, daisy, dandelion, germander speedwell, greater plantain, hound’s-tongue and yarrow.” Source – wiki.

Wiki goes on to describe what we might call these days a wild-type garden using wild plants:

The composition shows little order and arrangement, the various roots, stems and flowers seem to be in opposition to each other. The apparent chaos, combined with the attentive detail of each individual plant, lends the painting greater realism. Though the composition of vegetation in itself is continuous and seemingly disorganised, the blank background provides a contrast to the chaos, and imposes a sense of order. 

Is “invasive” an offensive term? Should we talk about “colonialism”? And a palate-cleansing watercolor by Dürer. originally appeared on GardenRant on March 1, 2026.

The post Is “invasive” an offensive term? Should we talk about “colonialism”? And a palate-cleansing watercolor by Dürer. appeared first on GardenRant.

L: a garden near Philadelphia. R: a side yard in the DC area, and a hydrangea-lined brick path in Buffalo.

My final bunch of photos of gardens tagged for prominent features shines the light on paths – the multi-purpose feature that’s sadly lacking in so many gardens. It makes access to other parts of the yard easy, beckons viewers into unseen parts, and like most “cues to care,” invites humans into the garden.

Above, some of the best-looking side yards I’ve ever seen, and two of them show groundcovers that successfully fill in between flagstones –  a near miracle! One is Acorus gramineus ‘Minimus Aureus’ (thanks to commenters, including the homeowner, for identifying it) and the other, Creeping Jenny or mazus.

L: Bartholdi Gardens at the U.S. Botanic Garden. R: Hillwood Museum and Garden in D.C.

These more expensive paths in public gardens have no need for groundcovers between the pieces, and presumably no weeds to contend with.

L: Private garden in Wash, DC. R: at Chanticleer Garden near Philadelphia.

Above, two paths I love even though they’re not as exactly easy to navigate, but they provide access for maintenance and lead your eyes down into the space. 

L: At the Sunset Magazine headquarters in the San Francisco area. R: the front garden of garden podcaster Leslie Harris in Charlottesville, VA.

The paths above get me thinking about walkability because boy, the one on the left signals to me that it’s NOT.  It’s so uneven, so haphazardly arranged. 

Whereas on the right, professional gardener (and now podcaster) Leslie Harris created this plenty-wide path that’s level, doesn’t get muddy and is good-looking. But I’ve had trouble with flagstone+pebble combinations in my lifetime and know that when you’re barefoot, you’d better not step on a pebble that’s ON a flagstone because it will hurt like holy hell!  I mean surprisingly painful.  So I avoid this combination but have recently learned that the pebbles can be basically cemented in place, preventing both foot pain and weeds. (Is that true?)

My Own Paths

Here’s my townhouse front yard, where I ripped out the lawn, then added a patio and paths for access.  I made the stepping stones with a cake pan, cement, and spray paint.  There’s woodchip mulch around them, which isn’t painful to my bare feet. Lower right, the paint in its faded condition, before I resprayed.

Here’s the flagstone path in my lawn-free back yard, where I needed something to grow between the flagstones that wouldn’t be washed away by rains on this gradual incline.  Creeping Jenny does the job and is short enough to step over or on without being damaged.

This one isn’t actually “my path” but a short walk from my house and on a much grander scale.  It’s the one-mile path around this lake made by a New Deal agency to put people to work; it’s now an important amenity for the community. 

I know some residents have asked for lighting and a paved surface (for better accessibility) but boy, that would sure change the experience.  Thankfully that won’t happen because most of us love it the way it is and there’s a lake with a paved path around it nearby.  And to the suggestion of lighting we’ll keep saying no – for the sake of wildlife, and our own enjoyment of nature.

Finally, the paths shown above are no longer mine, since I sold the property 14 years ago. In my last years there I removed all the lawn and on the left you see the plants I replaced it with – clover and sedum (until the clover overtook all the sedum).  The stepping stones across that open area are admittedly too small, which I suppose is why I later added a mulch path along the dry streambed, seen in the photo on the right. 

The path that mattered the most to me over my 26 years living there is the one extending down into the woods, following the dry streambed and then proceeding to the bottom of the wooded valley where it crosses the stream and then continues for about two blocks.  It was a rare “superblock” just outside D.C. in Takoma Park, Md.

So honestly, I miss the path into the wooded valley, where I started many of my walks, even more than the gardens I created around my house.

MORE Garden Features 

These photo collections started when I learned (from GardenRanter Ben) that I could search for tags just using Windows Explorer – no extra software! So began a fun winter project – scrolling through thousands of photos taken over at least 20 years, and tagging the hell out of them. For my enjoyment and yours. The others are:

• Chairs
• Benches
• Pools
• Ponds
• Art
• House colors

Paths! This garden feature may be the most important of all of them. originally appeared on GardenRant on February 22, 2026.

The post Paths! This garden feature may be the most important of all of them. appeared first on GardenRant.

This post is long. It is a culmination of growing concerns that voices gentler and more knowledgeable than mine have articulated for some time; but that nevertheless continue to be ignored or reframed.  The issue is complex, and it deserves meaningful discussion. I hope we can have it.  -MW

_____________________________________

On its face, ecological gardening is a marriage and a movement made in heaven – the joining together of ecology and horticulture to inform the creation of gardens bursting with life and beauty. But when one spouse is always the loudest at the dinner table, and aggressively subverts the aspirations and perspective of the other, a marriage suffers.  

While many gardeners, including myself, have been eager to embrace a deeper understanding of the complex systems that underpin our artistic endeavors in horticulture; we are deeply concerned that this sea change, for all of its positive overtones (or perhaps because of them), is having a net-negative effect on responsible gardeners and gardeners-to-be who increasingly view gardening not as a joyful pastime, but as a never-ending performance review — a moral obligation by which they will be judged and found wanting.  

We are slowly losing our voice at the table as gardener-artists. Do we have the courage to stand up and reclaim it?

The Bully Pulpit. 

If you’ve been to a horticultural conference or attended a webinar in North America in the last five years, picked up a magazine, sat quietly in the back during a Master Gardener meeting, or witnessed the social media evisceration of someone who dared challenge the new hive mind, you too may be:

• Feeling as if there are more rules than ever before in your gardening life;
• Self-censoring for fear of being judged;
• Puzzled by conflicting studies fueling viral memes;
• Exhausted by the buzzwords;
• Amused by the corporate opportunists using the exhausting buzzwords;
• Annoyed by experts redefining subjective concepts like ‘beauty’;
• Suspicious of exclusive biodiversity & dogmatic nativism in a post-Darwin world;
• Wondering why human beings are treated like alien visitors;
• Confused because you thought that uptight gardening and pearl clutching went out with the last millennia; and,
• Genuinely wondering if there’s space for you anymore…

If so, you are not definitely not alone – though it may seem like you are. Welcome to what fellow GardenRanter Susan Harris terms the “Just Stop Gardening” Movement.  A new space where the gardener’s perspective is subjugated to favor the ecologist’s perspective; and which saddles everyman gardeners (whether they wished to grow Hemerocallis or fill a raised bed with herbs) with the burdens of past and present ecological damage to our planet, the saving of species from extinction, and the reversal of climate change. 

That’s a heavy lift.

A BEAUTIFUL BEGINNING

Horticulture and Ecology

Let’s travel back a decade or two and define two related terms as we used to understand them: 

• A horticulturalist practices the art and science of gardening – cultivating and managing plants for ornamental, edible, or medicinal reasons.
• An ecologist is a scientist concerned with the complex web of relationships of organisms to their environment.

Leaving everyman gardeners out of the equation for a moment, formally trained horticulturists & ecologists are called to their disciplines for different reasons. And they see gardens differently.  

• Whereas an ecologist can find a garden beautiful, they are much more likely to find it fascinating – an object of deep study where the aesthetic desires and practical needs of the human gardener who tends it are secondary to the creatures that inhabit it.
• And whereas a horticulturist can find the complex systems of organisms within their garden fascinating and helpful, their interest is weighted more heavily toward the practical and aesthetic manifestation of the garden serving their lives and the lives of those in their families and community.

Gardening is fundamentally subjective just as ecology should be fundamentally objective.

You can visualize this as a Venn diagram of sorts.  Two sets of people drawn to Nature for different reasons. And where they overlap, characteristics that are common to both sets fueling a synergistic exchange of ideas.

Professor Nigel Dunnett of The University of Sheffield (of The Barbican and The Tower of London SuperBloom fame) beautifully expresses the synthesis of these two perspectives as an opportunity to “captur[e] people’s imagination” in a conversation with Gardens Illustrated editor Stephanie Mahon:

“…being in a natural place where you feel that you’re part of something bigger…to me, that’s the power of what a garden can be. It can create this world that’s separate from everyday life. And I think it liberates childlike feelings of joy and just kind of, well, ‘liberation’ is the word. It just takes away the constraints of everyday life.”

In the beginning, gardeners like myself recognized this exchange and welcomed more of it, naively confident that the priorities of each discipline would be respected – not redefined. 

Now it feels more like the diagram below – the gardener’s voice subsumed by the ecologist’s. Except the aggressively emotional portrayal of complex systems, anti-human rhetoric, and strident native plant dogma from dominant voices in the ecological gardening movement have sadly called into question the objectivity of the new “objective observer.”

The Before Times

Not too long ago we understood the difference between a gloriously wild or post-wild space – province of the ecologist and naturalist; and a cultivated garden – province of the gardener; and we loved both in equal measure — differently.

Smart gardeners who worked with the complex web of life in their gardens and who studied their plants’ ecotypes had a leg up in creating a breathtaking garden rich with life and energy – whether formal or wild.

Smart ecologists who opened the garden gate and studied the adaptations of native organisms to a gardener’s more exotic palette in a changing climate could similarly have their minds opened to research that mattered when dealing with public lands and restoration projects. 

Those of us who gardened, unapologetically gardened – especially as expectations of perfection, and pesticide-heavy guidelines relaxed as we neared the end of the 20^th century. And we had media heroes to guide us and commiserate with us – the Henry Mitchells and Allen Lacys, the Anna Pavords and Beth Chattos.

One of my beloved garden heroes — the late Pam Harper. (photo credit Daniel Weil)

A Welcome Synergy

Many engaged gardeners were fascinated by the organisms that inhabited our gardens, but we were not ruled by them.  We were allowed to dislike the sawfly larvae that defoliated our dogwoods; or delight in our mother’s joy at her Buddleia covered in swallowtails, as we walked barefoot on the mown grasses and weeds she happily called lawn. 

The more curious amongst us looked to the native lands of the plants we loved, studied their communities, and attempted to match them where we could. And at the same time, this was not a period without difficulty. We had little in common with consumer-gardeners who sprayed first and asked questions later; and the real effects of a changing climate on our gardens made our jobs more challenging.

But a lot of us put our heads down and navigated a new era with flexibility, adaptation, curiosity, commiseration, and a certain amount of positivity.

That was – wait for it – okay.

A SUBTLE SHIFT

Plus ça change

The mainstreaming of a more ecological approach to gardening accelerated around 2007 with Dr. Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home, which linked the use of native plants to the support of insect and bird populations.

Tallamy was a respected entomologist and professor at the University of Delaware, but his name quickly became shorthand for a massive gardening movement. The fact that I can mention him by last name only to a group of inexperienced gardeners, and see instant recognition in their eyes; but need to explain who Dan Hinkley or Fergus Garrett is, tells me a great deal. 

The fact that they can invoke his name to end a discussion tells me more. 

Tallamy had many good things to say that made a great deal of sense. Here’s one from his third book and New York Times bestseller, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard (2019):

“Gardening is like cooking. It is tempting to cook only with the goal of achieving great taste, with no thought of healthy eating, but that often results in tasty concoctions so full of fat, sugar, and salt that they are deadly in the long run. Similarly it is tempting to garden only for beauty, without regard to the many ecological roles our landscapes must perform.”

I’d swap out ‘could’ for ‘must,’ but the analogy was a good one, and the lesson, clear: Be responsible. Many gardeners shared his concern for the steep declines in bird and insect life — including me. I was a GenX kid who remembers windshields gruesomely splattered with bugs before the expansion of no-till herbicides and Roundup-ready corn in the 1990s transformed American agriculture.  

But although Tallamy lamented dead fields and development, the overall message of remediation and responsibility was instead directed at gardeners to use primarily native plants in their landscapes to “save Nature.” And “to set an example, maybe even proselytize a bit” to convince their neighbors to work within the concept that “life begins with natives (and ends with aliens).” (from Bringing Nature Home)

“What if each American landowner made it a goal to convert half of his or her lawn to productive native plant communities?” he proposed in Nature’s Best Hope.

Tallamy’s wish was beyond aspirational. Most engaged gardeners would be dancing in the streets if 20% of their neighbors stopped treating their lawns with chemicals and planted a small non-native tree — much less replaced the lawn with a native plant community that required skill to implement successfully.  

Some of us carefully read Tallamy’s imperative- and pejorative-laden books (curiously at odds with his gentle demeanor), and justifiably wondered what would happen if gardeners continued to be guided to use chemicals sparingly; and the indignation, research, and activism was instead directed at bigger fish.

Specifically — the corporate agricultural practices that chemically deaden tens of millions of acres of green, buzzing life in spring; genetically modify the subsequent crops and their pollen; and finish with yet more chemicals in autumn to desiccate cereal crops.  

That’s a lot of Dead. In May.

What if we stopped focusing on old Mrs. Taylor’s desire to plant an exquisite Wisteria floribunda ‘Alba’, or use a teaspoon of glyphosate to paint a resprouting stump because she couldn’t afford the help to dig it; and instead focused on the 200-gallon vats of glyphosate, Dicamba, and 2,4-D killing everything on the farm next door?

Tallamy assured us that, if the task of converting our gardens was beyond us, we could simply hire someone who was an expert.

“There is a multibillion-dollar landscaping industry ready to do whatever we ask to our properties if we are not interested in puttering ourselves.” he wrote.

Poor Mrs. Taylor. 

Who Would You Rather Persuade?

Compassionate gardeners are a much easier target than BigAg when building a big, new, movement.  (FYI Tallamy’s latest book is How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard.)

For one, there is that multibillion-dollar landscaping industry that Tallamy mentions and Mrs. Taylor can’t afford, just waiting to push the next trend on those who can afford it. And another multi-million-dollar herbicide industry is very happy to paradoxically pivot, and provide ecological gardeners and policy makers with righteous vats of the stuff for the invasives Tallamy confidently terms “ecological tumors.” 

That’s quite a price tag.

But it’s more than that. Not only are gardeners intrigued by the natural world and navigating a changing climate in real time, their individual voices are much smaller than Monsanto’s.

Old Mrs. Taylor is easier to influence; and probably content to do less gardening and more observing anyway. Her 35-year-old granddaughter who loves birds and butterflies and never liked topiary is excited to be part of a good cause. Gardeners in general are anxious to do the “right thing.”

And what is the “right thing?” Good question. In Nature’s Best Hope, we found out.  

New Math for Gardeners

Building on broader ideas generated from his work with graduate students in the Mid-Atlantic, Tallamy shared a study conducted by one of his students researching one species of chickadee in 159 nest boxes placed during the nesting season in the Washington DC metropolitan area. The three-year observational study utilized data collected by technicians and volunteers and concluded that the Carolina chickadee achieved replacement rate in yards with less than 30 percent introduced plants. 

The study hasn’t been replicated, and several confounding variables that could bias the results existed, but that did not prevent an energized audience specifically tasked with proselytizing from creating a new math assignment for gardeners.

From that point a 70/30 natives to non-natives guideline (Epic Gardening gushingly calls it a ‘rule’), began to surface at every Master Gardener meeting from Oakland to Philadelphia. Never mind the fact that, even at a broader Level II perspective, California gardened in four ecoregions as close to Washington DC’s Southeastern USA Plains, as Chile was to Belgium.

Gardeners were now tasked with creating a minimum of approximately 70% native plant biomass (by cover or composition) in their suburban, urban and rural landscapes to sustain breeding bird populations as a whole, prevent the sixth mass extinction, and prevent censure from their peers. 

Raise your hand and question the new math as an experienced gardener with a buzzing, but inclusively biodiverse landscape that featured many non-natives, and you were assured (often with a big smile), that it represented great compromise. After all, if life ended with aliens, you should be happy you had 30% to play with.

“I’ve heard somewhere that there’s a 70-30 rule. You know where that 70% figure came from? My lab. So yes, I agree, there’s room for compromise. No compromise on invasives, they’re ecological tumors. But you can have your ginkgo tree, just don’t let it dominate your landscape.” – Dr. Doug Tallamy in conversation with Zane Irwin of GRID.

How gracious. Later, in 2023, in the Growing Greener Podcast with author and Ranter Emeritus Thomas Christopher, Tallamy would back up a little, discuss keystone species research, and admit that it might not be as simple as a reductive ratio:

“…we have found that it’s not just native versus non-native, it’s particular natives versus everything else. I could build a 100% native landscape that supports very few insects because there are a lot of natives that just don’t support a lot…86% of our [native] plants are not driving that food web.”

But the horse was very much out of the barn by that point.

Plant This! Not That!

With the new 70/30 super formula, an onerous and moralistic goal was laid in front of any gardener who had the temerity to plant something non-native that excited them – only to find that, not only was it not recommended, it was frowned upon.  Gardening became a homework assignment, and there was no shortage of catastrophizing instructors with red pens in hand.

If you were determined to plant it, “you should consider” planting two times as much of something else that you had no interest in growing in order to offset the ecological harm you were obviously causing to the entire planet.

And again, ladies and gentlemen, please avert your eyes from the browning field across the road. 

Nothing to see here. Literally.

Garden columnist and podcaster Margaret Roach unintentionally illustrates the gardener’s new burden in her bio for the New York Times.

“As our climate evolves, and with it our environmental awareness, the art and practice of gardening are evolving, too. Once a subject that emphasized the ornamental, gardening now increasingly pursues ecological goals, requiring plant and management choices that are not merely aesthetic.”  

It should be noted that Roach does not specify “ecological gardening”, but “gardening.” That’s an important omission. And ‘requiring’ is a powerful word.

Wait….what just happened?

Then social media got involved, and nuance went out the window.

Further guidelines spread virally in easy-to-share memes from big organizations — messages such as ‘Leave the leaves!’ and ‘Leave the stems!’ And while both were compassionate ecological statements fully justified in post-wild spaces, and with merit in garden situations (particularly for those with bigger properties), they were not universally applicable.

They were also less workable than it first appeared.  Recent observational research has suggested that you may need to leave stems a lot longer than you thought, and that there is no magic moment when everything evacuates the leaves smothering your lavender. That’s not a problem for the ecologist, but another source of guilt for the gardener.

All of this of course makes it impossible for gardeners seeking a quiet life and a butterfly bush to argue against new rules for maintenance, new authoritative policies, new definitions of beauty, and new motivations for gardening that have ever-so-slowly edged the actual gardener/artist out of his or her own painting — even if that painting happily included native brushstrokes and organic methods.  

To garden for oneself and one’s family is to be obviously selfish, irresponsible, ignorant, uptight, out-of-touch, and, most recently, privileged – with all the subtle and not so subtle implications therein.  Who has the stomach to go toe to toe with that?

A TROUBLING NARRATIVE

Condemnation is good for clicks

Over-exaggeration? Here are just a few quotes from New York Times writer Margaret Renkl’s 2021 piece “What you may not know about those April flowers.”  

“The typical suburban yard is actually worse than a wasteland. It’s a deathtrap.”

“In the American South…any tree or shrub that is greening up or blooming [in March] almost certainly doesn’t belong.”

“It’s not too late for you to do the same [plant native trees/shrubs] in your yards and in your towns.”

Or Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, from his 2023 article “I’m no genius with genuses, but your garden is killing the Earth.” (No really, that’s the title.)

“I did almost everything wrong.”

“I am part of the problem.”

“I am sorry to say that if you have a typical urban or suburban landscape, your lawn and garden are also dooming the Earth.”

Renkl goes on in her piece to angst over all the plants given to her by her late mother that once gave her joy but which must now be destroyed when she can work up enough righteousness to overcome pointless sentimentality.

Milbank spends 1000+ words in a struggle session worthy of Mao, and follows up later with another extraordinary article “To save the birds, I’m killing my farm” where he directs a drone flying at 30 feet to deliver a dose of poison to those “ecological tumors” and every other living creature within range of the nozzle.

Including — amusingly — himself.

Now Milbank’s property can look like this too.

Mary McAllister documents the evolution of this political writer gone native plant ideologue and proselytist much better than I have done here on the website Conservation Sense and Nonsense.  I urge you to read her summation, his article(s), and more importantly, all the comments — many of which betray a deeply disturbing religiosity that I and others have commented on in the past.

But wait! There’s more…

That’s just legacy media.  In new media, we’re in for more focused self-flagellation (presumably using whips made of native species such as Salix nigra or Cornus sericea).

Author Benjamin Vogt from his piece “On Daffodils, Climate Change, and Colonization” on his former blog Monarch Gardens:

“We need a deep, deep rethink and daffodils, at least in the hort world, often become that flashpoint as we reckon with how hort is a part of our privilege, and how our identities are so wrapped up in it we feel we need to defend that privilege because we assume we’re being personally attacked when larger systems are being critiqued”

Question the new orthodoxy and it proves your complicity.  Guilt awaits no matter how you answer. Brilliant. Though Vogt’s piece assures us that the daffodil police aren’t coming to arrest us, he gives us the distinct impression that if it were up to him, they would.

Deeply disturbing. Or something.

Or writer and “ecologically obsessed horticulturist” Rebecca McMackin, who provides her readers with plenty of pejoratives and politics, right along with horticultural information, in her Grow Like Wild Substack newsletter; and adds a trigger warning for the Rutgers University link that helps gardeners find pollinator-attractive plants. “Be warned.” she tsks, “The database also contains exotic plants.”  

A need for transparency in research

Shockingly, Rutgers meant all of the pollinator-attractive plants, regardless of origin.

Or at least it does for now, until enough pressure is applied from loud, ‘concerned’ ecological gardening voices within and without academia.

Then it might go the way of Penn State’s “Center for Pollinator Research”, which has evidently scrubbed the idea of objectively studying non-native and native plants as part that research, or making it transparently clear that this is what they are doing.

Their extensive “What to Plant” materials for gardeners makes no mention of this fact, and provides only native plant species without divulging this key (and usually lucrative) variable.  Hmmmm. From the website:

“The Center for Pollinator Research has created taxa-specific plant guides for gardeners that want to support pollinators. Plants were selected for a high degree of attraction in most temperate North American landscapes, using data from entomologist Charles Robertson (1887-1916). Each guide includes herbaceous perennials, shrubs, and deciduous trees. Planting a variety of flowering plants will support a diversity of pollinators.”

What if you had a pollinator study and non-native plants weren’t studied?

Objectivity and trust goes out the window when you create and study a subset, then package data as if you aren’t.  They need a rebrand – may I suggest “The Center for Native Plant Pollinator Research?”

A JOYFUL REBALANCING

What does the responsible gardener/artist do?

If they’re not naturally cynical, gardeners subjected to this unrelenting message begin to feel that perhaps they should spend the rest of their gardening lives:

• • Eradicating non-natives and invasives;
  • Planting natives. Any natives;
  • Encouraging all wildlife (such as white deer, rabbits, gophers, tics, & sawfly);
  • Redefining their deeply flawed perception of beauty; and, most critically,
  • Making others around them do the same.

How’s that working for you?

And I suppose, if most were truly happy in this strident place, it might make sense to lose one’s voice, trade in one’s heroes, and join them. But it is patently obvious that this is not the case.

Instead there is a preponderance of negative emotion suffusing the literature, the memes, the forums, the newsletters, the comments, the lectures, the podcasts, the books, and the webinars – anxiety and unease draped in a thin veil of professed joy.  Much like a stressed employee smiles through clenched teeth.   

If you specifically question the joyful despair online or across a table as I have, you’ll likely encounter another circular argument –

“Of course I’m despairing, not enough people are following the rules…”

“Maybe you’ve made too many rules…?”

“Because our very existence is on the line, and people need to follow the rules!” etc. ad nauseam

Meanwhile, many of the laudable pioneers and often moderate, truly joyful, voices in the native plant, organic lawn, and ecological gardening movement lose out – because there’s no traction in moderation. Their important message of stewardship and synergy is tarnished by the bad data, bad journalism, and catastrophizing of others.

And it makes it that much harder for them to reach once-curious gardeners who feel as if they have been backed into a corner; and who have no desire to practice or preach the “existential multitasking” now required of them — regardless of the speaking fees it commands.

Stand up. Speak up.

There is another way.

When we choose to garden with optimism, curiosity, and resilience, we don’t have to pretend to be joyful. We just are. 

We can welcome the valuable perspective, observations, and research of an ecologist, and create something truly special in that synergistic space. But we can also reject absolutes and political labelling, study adaptation, call out bias, question inconsistencies, and refuse to engage with botanical xenophobia – moving toward a more balanced ecological gardening movement that many of us were happy to sign up for in the first place, and which still has gentle, knowledgeable, leaders.  

When you speak up, you’ll find that it breaks the internal, uncomfortable, tension between what you want to question and what you feel you cannot question – allowing you to find more nuanced answers, no matter where they lead. Don’t let others redefine that uncomfortable tension as evidence of your inherent selfishness. Or treat your questions with condescension or contempt. 

The gardener’s voice matters. It celebrates the artist, just as it champions the steward; and it deserves respect in a world that is increasingly artificial, anti-human, and littered with distractions. If we do not defend it, we will lose it. And we run a great risk of turning off gardeners who were once turned on. I entreat you to speak up with courage in your gardening circles – your voice empowers others who do not know how to reclaim their own. – MW

In Defense of The Gardener’s Voice originally appeared on GardenRant on February 5, 2026.

The post In Defense of The Gardener’s Voice appeared first on GardenRant.

“Nestled at the mid-point of the path, and accessed from the kitchen and living room, is a circular gravel courtyard allowing direct connection between the indoor and outdoor spaces. At the rear of the garden, there’s a timber screen concealing compost bays, with two raised vegetable beds adjacent. The gravel path passes through the veggies ….”

What happens when you read this?

Do you get a vivid picture of the garden described or do you just tune out?

I never expected to discover something entirely new about myself at my age, but I did, last week. As a tuner outer I’m an aphantasic.

Forgive the AI but it helps here:

“An aphantasic (or aphant for short) is someone who has aphantasia — a condition where a person cannot voluntarily form mental images. Here’s lots more detail about it.

In simple terms:

• If you ask most people to picture a red apple, they can “see” it in their mind.
• An aphantasic doesn’t see an image at all — just darkness or nothing visual.”

That’s me – I’m not down to total darkness. I’ve struggled since learning about this to discover just what I do actually ‘see’ in my mind. It’s like fishing amongst ghosts. Glimpses, vague and fleeting.

A rose, just to remind some of us what they look like.

 

I suddenly understand lots of things.

I understand why when people describe something as ‘beautiful writing’ it’s a cue for me to skip that text. It’s no good going on and on in absorbing detail about a garden or a landscape for someone who can’t picture it. About 90% of most articles about gardens are wasted on me, because I have no idea really what is being described. So, often, like a preliterate child, I just look at the pictures. I used to ask people if they really liked reading garden descriptions and truly, I didn’t really believe them when they said they did. It was bewildering.

And sometimes they look like this.

 

I think I’ve always known that if you asked me to describe the pictures on the wall of my bedroom, which I look at quite often, I’d be in difficulty. Just felt as if I was lazy, somehow, or not paying attention. (That sounds daft, now I’ve said it)

And now I wonder how on earth I managed to design and create the garden at Veddw without being able to picture anything I was intending to create. Especially in the days before photographs were easy and quick to take and look at.

I think I have some sense of form or space in my head. Somehow I was spot on, I believe, with scale and relationships between things. But I would often ‘imagine’ some part of the garden, then go out and look at it and find it wasn’t at all as I thought. It must have helped that I live in the garden I’m creating. I can repeatedly go and look. And these days I can take thousands of photographs to tell me what it looks like. I also depend on information. I look at a part of the garden, seeing what it lacks or needs, then research that plant or structure or whatever it may be. And use that information, which my brain is better at retaining. 

And another one. Remember?

 

I couldn’t design someone else’s garden very well, could I?

What do you think? It must be why I struggle with cognitive shuffling as a way to get to sleep, because I think it helps with that if you can imagine the things you’re naming to yourself. Same with counting sheep – no good if you can’t picture a sheep.

I’m still stuck trying to work out the implications of all this. Other people see pictures in their heads? Wow. Worse – some people are plagued by seeing images in their heads. It’s called hyperphantasia. Someone on Substack told me about that and said: “It’s basically like watching a TV, but whatever you want to see is shown…” He describes it as endlessly distracting and that I am the one who is best off in this. Who knew????

You may be amused to know that I couldn’t think of a way to illustrate this post.

What If You Can’t Picture a Garden? Gardening With Aphantasia. originally appeared on GardenRant on January 22, 2026.

The post What If You Can’t Picture a Garden? Gardening With Aphantasia. appeared first on GardenRant.

We rarely write about books on Rant – well, I have been barely writing at all – but it doesn’t mean we don’t love books on gardening and want them to flourish. These days, most beginning gardeners are bypassing books altogether, instead relying on YouTube tutorials and other digital means.

That’s not how I learned. Like many of you, I got help from more experienced gardeners, but I also read books. Those early lessons from authors like Tracey DiSabato-Aust, Barbara Damrosch, Allan Armitage, and others gave me a pretty decent foundation. There were also all those “50  best for shade” and plant-specific manuals to use for reference. And then there were the garden writers – Christopher Lloyd and Anna Pavord among others – who were fun to read, regardless of whether or not their specific information was relevant to my climate. 

Speaking of Allan Armitage, I hope he won’t be hurt that I’m calling his latest book cute. Sorry, Dr. A, but it is. It also, in an interesting way, seems targeted for beginning gardeners who get most of their information online. Importantly, it’s short, with each chapter attacking very specific, elemental  gardening issues. 

In the preface to The Common Sense Gardener, Armitage says he finally wrote a straight “how-to” book because he was struck by what the overall gardening discourse seemed to lack: common sense. I could get into a whole thing here about how common sense would be defined, but I get what Armitage means. Too many gardeners overthink the whole enterprise. 

In the book, Armitage makes use of a fictional beginning gardener named “Evan,” who journeys to a specific garden in each chapter, getting lessons along the way from a series of experienced  gardeners. These are also fictional, though one, “John,” is obviously Armitage. 

Evan describes many of his fellow beginning gardeners like this: “They were confused about basic things like sun and shade, unclear about terms like “invasive” and “aggressive,” puzzled about compost and mulch, and continually in doubt about when to prune a plant. What seemed like a pleasant way to spend an afternoon outside had become an exercise in indecision.”

These are exactly the kind of questions asked on our local Facebook gardening group, but the answers range wildly. Wrong? Right? Who knows? Sometimes it’s better to put down the phones and read a book like Armitage’s.

I’d especially like my gardening friends who simply assume everything must be cut back regularly to read this sentence in the chapter where Evan explores pruning: “Plants do not need to be cut back, shaped or pruned. It does not make the plants any more or less healthy.” The chapter that includes this sentence does share plenty of solid, basic advice on pruning and when to do it, but I love the “don’t make this into a thing” attitude. I can verify that most people around my neck of the woods prune way, way too much. Their poor, never-blooming hydrangeas can attest to that. 

Other chapters take on fertilizing, deer and squirrel control, soil maintenance, foodscaping, cut-flower gardening and basic design. I liked the design chapter, which describes how to create individual garden spaces without using the phrase “garden rooms.”

Finally, in the chapter on natives, gardener “John” tells you all you need to know about where Armitage stands on this when he starts out with: “Some of my best friends are native plant enthusiasts.” 

The book is well illustrated with images that look like they came from real gardens – none of the lush impossibility I often see in upscale garden books, as much as I enjoy them.

I would give this 120-page book to friends who are just starting their gardens in the hopes they might find time to read it. And as someone who’s been maintaining a garden for more than 25 years, I gleaned some very useful tips. I know I got more out of it than I would get watching 2 hours of annoying YouTube chatterboxes (not that I ever would watch 2 hours of YouTube tutorials if there was an opportunity to eat glass instead).

The book can be found on Armitage’s website, which headlines a Feb. 1 release – there might be opportunities to buy it before that.

It’s been fun finally writing a post.

What is ‘common sense’ gardening? Allan Armitage has a book for that. originally appeared on GardenRant on January 15, 2026.

The post What is ‘common sense’ gardening? Allan Armitage has a book for that. appeared first on GardenRant.

Mid-January is not a particularly good time for an angry, my David Austin roses died, “Give em’ hell” Garden Rant. Our fallen leaves in Indiana have barely begun to compost. The avalanche of seeds catalogs has predictably arrived, but it’s too early to do any serious ordering of seeds or plants. What to do with the three trowels and a chain saw Christmas gifts is not yet an issue.

So, OK, then, please consider this:  What’s wrong with a happy, up-beat, midwinter, fairy tale, and somewhat educational gardening rant? A positive, ice-coated, take-what-shows-up-and-like-it rant. Such as the recent arrival of colorful, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs mural spread 30 feet across our three-car-garage to welcome, well, snow. With a Snow White and Seven Dwarfs  ensemble added at the base. And painted flowers on that garden wall offering blooms 12 months a year – including January. Flowers that appear to be zinnias, daisies, lupines, morning glories and pink tropicals. Heck, yes, I’ll take it. Who needs Florida?

So, OK, most of you may not have a three-car garage sprawled out across your back yard. Not my problem. We didn’t have one either until a recent move to our new place. The house came with  a fine, old, fenced-in  garden gone to weeds and ruin. Both custodial and challenging. And way in the back, buried behind vitriolic vines, was an old three-car garage with dirty walls.

 A few months ago, after some needed clean up,  I was staring at our back yard desolation and dirty garage wall thinking … what a great place for a garden mural….Combined with that was the knowledge we had brought along from our old place our life-sized (dwarf-sized anyway)  statues of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

How about something new?

So why not give it all to new garden life by painting a fairy tale setting complete with thatched-roof dwelling, meadow, flowers and birds. Something happy  to look at every day of the year, as I am doing right now peering out our back window on a cold, sunny January day.

Serendipity, thy name is “Beige.” She is the artist recommended by a gardening  friend. As with her name, Beige was poetically ready. She showed up on a regular basis. She studied. She thought. She read the fairy tale. She went to work with, yes, cans of spray paint. Cans. No brush. She spray-created all the details, the zinnias, daisies, and lupines. Add in the blue river and stone bridge, the rabbit and chipmunk. She was careful, dedicated and cautious. Michelangelo could have finished the Sistine Chapel in at least half the time with spray paint.

Beige also touched up with paint all the fairy tale garden’s occupants, Ms. White and Dwarfs. Ms. White in bright yellow skirt and blue blouse with red bow in hair. More horticultural research indicated Ms. White’s name came with a very complicated tale, including a mother who wanted a daughter with skin as white as snow. And a jealous stepmother, the Evil Queen,  who wanted Snow White dead, causing her to flee to a thatched-roof home of the seven dwarfs.

These guys were different

The seven, Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy and Dopey, all miners, were painted in various colors. Each name reflecting a distinct personality. Most likely to garden being Doc, Happy and Bashful. I’m also thinking Grumpy hated gardening and Sneezy had allergy problems. The other Dwarfs  were only in the way when it came to gardening.

With her work ethic, kindness, optimism and gentle nature, Snow White ran the Dwarf House. She loved to garden, but was also naïve and overly trusting, which led to trouble. The Evil Queen showed up at the cottage in disguise, poison apple in hand. Snow White took a bite, fell into a coma. Then came a princely kiss and salvation.

 So along with having a cool story hanging on my garden wall, the mural lead me to some plant research. Beige had an artist’s right to pick any flowers she wanted on her mural, but I became curious about what flowers were in vogue in the early 1800s when Snow White headed off to the woods to live with a bunch of dwarfs.

Turns out the early 1800s German gardens were part of the Biedermeier era, when middle class sensibilities and artists took hold of the culture, with romantic designs. Popular perennials from the era include snowdrops, gentian, peonies, lambs ear, cornflowers, phlox, rudbeckia and aster. Modern gardeners tend to think we invented all that stuff. Not to forget edelweiss – feel free to hum along here – the last song created by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

This flower rant does have happy feet

With more history. The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story was based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale published in 1812. And who were the Brothers Grimm, you now ask? They were actual brothers and pioneering German linguists and folklorists who collected and published classic German fairy tales such as Cinderella and Hansel & Gretel. Thus, laying foundations for folklore studies and preserving German culture.

 Do you now see where an upbeat  January garden rant can lead?

The upbeat midwinter fairy tale writing is on the wall originally appeared on GardenRant on January 14, 2026.

The post The upbeat midwinter fairy tale writing is on the wall appeared first on GardenRant.

There were two grade school subjects in the late 1950s and early 1960s that I remember fondly—clouds and Lapland. There seems to be little association between the two, and it seems odd today that they were part of the curriculum at all. Yet they provided ample encouragement. I was a young cloudspotter, bored in school, but quickly able to grasp Cumulus (cotton candy clouds), my first Linnean Latin name, years before I learned Quercus(oak).

The “simple and picturesque culture” of snowy Lapland, with romanticized stories of “Northern Peoples,” was appealing, also. The nomadic Sámi people lived in parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia—home to reindeer and Santa Claus. That was a big deal. Naughty or nice was a dividing line between the Western World and Russia during the Cold War. (And it appears to be so again.) The fastest route between the U.S. and Russia was over the North Pole. 

Russia ran hot when I was a little boy. Each school day began with the Pledge of Allegiance. Staring out the window toward darkening Cumulonimbus thunderclouds kept my mind off nuclear annihilation.

“I have always loved looking at clouds. Nothing in nature rivals their variety and drama; nothing matches their sublime beauty.” These are Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s  first words in his introduction of his best-selling Cloudspotters’s Guide: The Science, History and Culture of Clouds.

Dog sleds, ICEHOTEL and Northern Lights

Fifteen years ago, in early February, I spent four mostly cloudy days in Jukkasjärvi Sweden, 125 miles inside the Arctic Circle, with friends Nick and Phil. Our goal was dogsledding and snowmobiling by day and the Northern Lights after dark. We were bundled up the entire time in multi-layers, even though temperatures were unseasonably warm, seldom going below 0 F (-18 C).

(L-R) Nick and Phil near the ICEHOTEL

We spent one night in the ICEHOTEL inside sleeping bags with four layers of clothing. No one would want to spend two nights on a huge slab of ice on top of a mattress covered in a reindeer skin. There were modern accommodations next door.

(L-R) Phil and Nick dogsledding inside the arctic circle in 2011

Sámi people hunted, fished, and foraged for lingonberries, cloudberries, and crowberries. The fruit of the versatile, circumboreal lingonberry (Vacciniun vitis-idaea) took us from moose to mousse. Days were short and nights were long.

We toughed it out on an arctic diet of warm lingonberry juice at breakfast that veered toward lingonberry-vodka cocktails in frozen tumblers made of “clear ice from the Torne River” in the evening. Grilled moose, followed for dinner, smothered in lingonberry preserves, and we finished with chocolate mousse topped with lingonberry compote.

We never saw the Northern lights. “You should have been here late last night,” was the refrain on the few nights that weren’t cloud covered.

Against the odds

On November 11th, I was in Louisville and a got a text from Salvisa. Mike Rogers, our friend and neighbor, texted and asked if I was watching the Northern Lights. I thought he was kidding. His photos were beautiful. I rushed outside, but the Louisville ambient light was too bright. Rose and I rushed out to the car and drove toward darkness across the Ohio River in rural Indiana. We were shut out.

Northern Lights in Salvisa, Kentucky on November 11, 2025. Mike Rogers photos

Northern Lights with Cumulus humulis cloudlets after dark

Growing lingonberries in Kentucky

While the odds of Northern lights in Kentucky anytime soon are slim, I am taking a longshot on trying to grow a lingonberry in Salvisa. I’ve just ordered seeds from the best seed company in the world (I’m a little biased)– Jelitto Perennial Seeds. Mike Rogers grows beautiful blueberries, a lingonberry cousin. Kentucky’s warm and humid summers don’t come close to Lapland’s cool summers or their nutrient poor acidic soils, and open conifer forests. We can fulfill cold winters but fall short in every other department.

Why bother?

Why not!

Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea)

Promoting lingonberry seeds in the ICEBAR

As remote as my chances are, I could be the first on the block to successfully grow lingonberries, and no one would care.

Days are growing longer and skies are spotted with clouds.

Clouds, Dreams, Lapland and Lingonberries originally appeared on GardenRant on January 7, 2026.

The post Clouds, Dreams, Lapland and Lingonberries appeared first on GardenRant.

What to make of our just-installed Christmas tree, and of memories carefully wrapped and stored away in cardboard boxes and plastic crates in a basement until dutifully hung on our tree.

There is a paper Santa Claus, arms spread wide, the word “Daddy” written on him more than 50 years ago.

“Daddy.” A word, a thought, a description that covers a lot of years, a lot of territory. Maybe some tears. Absolutely some tears.

Janet and Bob Hill—the love of Christmas trees past and present

It all comes with the image of my father in our musty, coal-soaked basement nailing a wooden stand on a newly felled red cedar.

We were five kids and two parents and our Collie, ” Lassie.” Once the tree got upstairs, we always decorated it on Christmas Eve, a quaint custom barely preceding the arrival of Santa Claus by a few hours. It worked. We never did see him.

Our modern tree is a clever invention; three parts metal shafts with wire limbs and green plastic leaves and bulbs attached. It offers nine separate light displays and adjustable metal stand.

My Daddy wouldn’t have believed it

Nor would Charlie Brown.

Our tree ornaments are a memory machine; the best are fragile glass bulbs from our first married Christmas together in Houston more than 60 years ago.

Attached to that is the memory of having purchased our first tree with my 6-foot 9-inch basketball buddy, a 14-foot tree taken home to our $75-a-month furnished apartment with a 12-foot ceiling. We just set it up sideways.

Our 2025 tree—not even seven feet tall—offers ornamental memories of trips to Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand. Add ornaments hand-stitched by an aunt, a mother-in-law, Janet Hill and our two children. Then the paw print in plaster of a favorite puppy, now gone.

We get to carefully pick the ornaments from the box, place them just so on the tree for the 30th, 40th and even 50th time. Family stuff. What other season allows that?

There is an abundance of Santa Clauses on our tree now, a couple reindeer, a few empty socks and a dangling snowman, each with a story.

Hanging before us is an ornament from our daughter’s first Christmas, a bell- shaped ornament our son made in first grade, many years of commemorative White House ornaments when it had an East Wing.

God knows whose face might be on it this year.

Yet with our Christmas Tree downsizing we still have four plastic crates filled with ornaments sitting before us, all sadly to be hauled back to the dark basement, their stories untold. Having to wait it out another year. Maybe we will get a bigger tree.

I’m tempted to go back down in the basement with the ornaments, open a crate and listen.

Surely my father will join me.

What a Christmas Tree Holds: Family, Memory and Time originally appeared on GardenRant on December 24, 2025.

The post What a Christmas Tree Holds: Family, Memory and Time appeared first on GardenRant.

It’s fantastic to see that the word “compost” is no longer a dirty one in modern American culture.  There are a few hold-outs here and there, but I have noticed that guests no longer look quizzically at the buckets on the edge of my sink, and instead ask me where I got them. 

I have two buckets. One that accepts everything from meat to oatmeal, and which gets thrown to the chickens; and another that takes coffee filters, tea bags, paper towels, banana and orange peels and which is thrown onto the compost pile. 

This old enameled bucket has been around for years — originally found in a thrift store.

The manure that the chickens create from the scraps is also dumped onto the main pile; so, directly or indirectly, the only kitchen material that doesn’t get composted around here is chicken itself. And that’s only because I’m uncomfortable with it – the chickens couldn’t care less. 

In years when the raccoons that circle the coop at two in the morning finally find a way in, and we lose our scrap-processing machines for a season, I find myself distinctly put out to have to dig the contents of those buckets into a pile – the way I did when chickens were ‘illegal’ in my town, (but barking dogs weren’t).

During that time (we’re in one now) the bucket makeup changes to a cleaner mix of veg peelings and scraps, lest we encourage generations of rats to make their home with us.

Chickens are the ultimate compost pile.

You’ve Got to Be Flexible When You Compost

No matter how gung-ho you are in the quest to compost everything from paper towels to dryer lint, there are moments in the composters’ life when things don’t tick along like clockwork.  These are problems you might not have read about when you originally began to treat household waste like gold dust, and followed the online ‘recipes’ for the perfect pile.

The people you live with aren’t as excited as you are.

It is hard for a rabid composter like me to watch someone flagrantly throw a banana peel in the trash – as if this act negates all my work for the previous twenty years.  Of course this is a ridiculous reaction. Composting is not a zero-sum game.  Anything that gets put in the compost pile is one less thing in the landfill. 

When my children were small and I caught them being thoughtless, I had the ability to make them fish it out of the trash and put it in the bucket. Which is a terrific way to ensure that they don’t do it again (or at least don’t get caught doing it again).

The learning curve proved to be a little steeper with my husband; but picked up sharply when we moved to a property where trash wasn’t collected weekly, and he had to visit the municipal dump every four weeks.  Smelly trash cans packed with organic waste are not fun after four weeks.

The bucket fills up too fast and needs to be dumped continually.

There are a couple solutions here.  Either get a bigger bucket (made-for-the-purpose buckets are almost always woefully undersized); and/or consider having an ‘interim bin’ right outside the back door for daily dumping which is then dumped once a week into the main bin. This is particularly helpful when there is snow on the ground and your daughter stole your boots again.

Snow doesn’t stop me from composting. It just makes it more challenging. My first compost pile at Oldmeadow on far right (long before there was a garden to surround it).

The bucket attracts fruit flies in the summer.

This is one of the toughest challenges for composters, but for most of the season, it is admirably solved with a fruit fly trap or old vinegar bottle with pour spout filled with red wine sitting nearby. In deepest August, the every other day dump schedule I use here turns into ‘every day’. 

Compostables “accidently” slip down the disposal.

Save your septic tank or waste treatment facility with a Dollar Store recessed sink strainer. Organic bits can then be dumped straight into the compost bucket, conveniently located next to the sink.  If you don’t have chickens and are trying to be careful with meat scraps, a few tiny remnants will not hurt your pile. You may have a garbage disposal, but it doesn’t mean you have to use it.

The bucket smells.

Assuming that you have a lid for your bucket, every time you dump it (which should be at least every two days), wash it out with soapy water. If you do this, you will not notice a smell.  Fail to rinse and you’ll knock yourself flat when you next open it.

Being Green Means Living Green

When it comes to green initiatives, walking the walk is always more effort than sharing the meme. And it feels better. Whatever you manage to compost is one less thing processed by landfills or waste-water treatment plants, and eventually one more bit of organically rich soil for your garden or that of your neighbors.

Rich, compost enriched soil means better nutrition for my heavy feeders (like turmeric or Brugmansia).

Composting makes sense on many levels, and although it requires effort, it’s a shame to see people stop because of a few solvable obstacles or a small lifestyle change. 

And, if your neighborhood still insists on restricting composting, it might be time to hop on the zeitgeist and use national awareness to marshal a group of supporters, stand in front of your HOA board and change their minds through the miraculous power of shame. -MW

The Dirty Secrets of Composting originally appeared on GardenRant on December 18, 2025.

The post The Dirty Secrets of Composting appeared first on GardenRant.

Anyone else press ever pause on shows or movies when a residential landscape is on the screen?  Well, I do it even when it interrupts the next plot reveal in “Pluribus” by the amazing Vince Gilligan, of “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” fame.

So while streaming “Pluribus” I was keenly observing the main character’s residence in an upscale community in Albuquerque – the city that hosted both “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” (Gilligan says he goes back there because he’s established rapport with local crew members.)

Here’s Rhea Seehorn as Carol in her back yard, which had me wondering what she supposedly planted there. I was admiring the long, full, mostly-perennial border in her back yard and loving that the team decided this successful writer would also be an avid gardener. 

But then I listened to the official Pluribus podcast and learned that Carol’s garden and her entire neighborhood are FAKE! Yes indeed, this cul-de-sac facing the mountains was created just for the show (except for the mountains, I guess).

If you’re wondering why Gilligan didn’t use a real neighborhood and a real home for the show, as he did with “Breaking Bad,” Gilligan said on the podcast that the fake neighborhood allowed better access for filming with less disruption of neighbors. But commenters on Reddit knew there’s more to the story: “Vince literally built a neighborhood to avoid another ‘Walt’s house’ incident.” What’s that, you may wonder, as I did?

Another commenter explained that “Fans of the show ruined it [the real home used in Breaking Bad] by trespassing in and disrespecting her privacy and giving her hell. The city helped pay for her fence bc it was so out of control and her and her family members she was taking care of inside were at risk.”

My own response was like this one: “Holy shit! If they can build a whole neighborhood! Apple IS a trillion dollar company, though.” 

Oh, and that’s not the only super-expensive sets I’ve noticed in “Pluribus,” and I’m only four episodes in!

So as I often do, I’m asking myself how on earth streamers can afford blockbuster-level productions, but I’m so glad they can.

And for the garden-nosy like me, it may not be a real person’s real garden but it’s still interesting to see the vision of the set design team (and surely Gilligan, too) brought to life, however briefly.

In “Pluribus,” what can we learn from Carol’s Albuquerque garden? originally appeared on GardenRant on December 14, 2025.

The post In “Pluribus,” what can we learn from Carol’s Albuquerque garden? appeared first on GardenRant.

This huge and arguably butt-ugly addition going up in Fairfax County, Virginia, a DC suburb, is all over the local media, including this story in the Washington Post (no gift link offered), which already has 4,300+ comments.

Some details: The owner of the addition says he wants more room for his elderly parents, who live with him and wife and their two small children, and he is listed as his own contractor. The addition is 30 feet high (less than the 35 feet allowed in Fairfax County) and 60 feet long (no limit on size imposed by the county).

As the owner told the media, “We did exactly what the county allowed us to do.”

Not quite. The county requires additions to be at least 8 feet from the property line, and this one is only 7.6, so the neighbor lodged a complaint and there’s a stop-work order on construction for now. The owner had used the fence line to measure from instead of the property line and if he hadn’t made that relatively small error, opponents of the addition wouldn’t stand a chance.

The owner will ask for a variance from the zoning board but with public sentiment so strongly against this addition, I can’t imagine that succeeding. Commenters refer to it having “ballooned into a public spectacle” and news sources are blaming a “blind spot in the building code.”

The unlucky next-door neighbor has been told by a realtor that the addition would cause a $300,000 reduction in her home’s value. Besides resale value, the effect on the neighbor’s quality of life can hardy be overstated. As she told the media, “You can’t really put a cost on how much sunlight we’ve lost now.” A neighbor also commented on Reddit that the addition “throws her home into shadows for half the day.”

What goes unmentioned in comments is the impact of the addition on the neighbor’s garden, I suppose because the neighbor’s yard has just a driveway and lawn. Still, one observant commenter wrote: “The extra shade will kill the neighbor’s grass and the snow next to the building won’t melt for months.”

Actual gardeners may respond more like I do when I see large additions going up, concerned that they shade their neighbor’s yard and potentially ruin the privacy enjoyed there. On my visits to Nashville I see back yards filled with additions almost to the rear plot line and wonder what they’ve done to the neighbor’s use of their yard.  Zoning there seems awfully developer-friendly.

But everyone thinks an HOA (homeowners association) would have prevented this

Only because there’s a chorus of HOA-bashing on this blog every time we report on local rules or laws that limit residents’ options as gardeners, here are some thoughts to chew over as you’re trying to get the image of this addition out of your brain for good. 

Comments on the r/nova subReddit, found after searching “ugly addition”

• Nobody wants to live in an HOA until they wish they lived in an HOA.
• All you anti-HOA people never lived next to someone who would do something like this.  HOA is just about the only preventative measure because zoning laws aren’t tight enough to cover all scenarios, such as this.
• This is why I will never live in an area without an HOA.  I’d rather deal with HOAs than a neighbor who’s going to destroy the whole look of the neighborhood.  He just tanked the property values of his neighbors’ homes.  It’s a very small market for people willing to live next to that monstrosity.
• Okay, I’m less annoyed with my HOA now.
• HOAs are normally despised but this is the perfect advertisement for them.
• I have never in my life said this before, but “Thank God for my HOA!
• Pretty much everything I dislike about living where I live could be solved rather easily with an HOA.
• Whenever someone asks me why I want to live in an HOA, imma show them this.
• This is a post worth saving for the next time someone whines about an HOA.
• Never buy a house with an HOA.

And my favorite:

• “I care more about not living next to this person than I am about being limited to only six colors to paint my shutters.” Followed immediately by: “You get to choose from six? There’s no need to brag about it.”

I know, I know there ARE terrible HOAs, and we’ve reported on several of them here. But is the answer to avoid them altogether or to make sure the one governing the house you buy isn’t anti-garden? Before buying my cooperatively owned townhouse I researched the rules (SO many of them!) to make sure that lawns aren’t required here, which they aren’t (lawns do have to be mowed) and the rest of the rules I can live with. Including the choices in house colors. 

New 3-story addition next door? If only you had an HOA! originally appeared on GardenRant on November 30, 2025.

The post New 3-story addition next door? If only you had an HOA! appeared first on GardenRant.