Original landscaping shown in this 1938 photo. 

Since moving to Historic Greenbelt, Maryland, where evergreen hedges are ubiquitous – and usually in the way – I’ve become almost obsessed with how awful they are and begun collecting photos of prime examples of their awfulness.

Why do we have so many hedges? They’re part of a 1939 utopian plan that kept yards open to the community in the front and back, with only short hedges allowed around or between them.  The intent was that residents would garden and gather communally, rather than in private yards.

(Other attempts at social engineering, like quotas by religion and rules for marital and employment status, not to mention racial exclusion, are long gone. The city may be a New Deal project but it’s still a product of its time, and not always in a good way.)

So the original hedges are now too large, and more hedges have been planted because our co-op allow only a tiny amount of the 6′ tall fencing typical in  the back yards of townhouses. 

It’s frustrating to see my neighbors forced to use plants where there’s not enough room or sun, only to be overwhelmed by pruning regimens they can’t keep up with or even know how to implement.

So over on my local blog I wrote this hedge rant, which I’ve edited slightly for a broader audience and copied here. I know from following gardening subs on Reddit that screening is a widespread problem and hedge plants like Arborvitaes are openly hated, so I suspect that my local situation with resonate with many of you.

Problems Caused by Hedges Today

Hedges are high-maintenance and the maintenance required is high-skill 

Pruning expert demonstrates technique for overgrown euonymus.

Pruning hedges, especially in tight spaces like ours, is an advanced horticultural skill. Proper pruning technique for health and reduced maintenance over time isn’t intuitive at all and requires experience. So I hired a professional, highly skilled pruner to come show us how to do it. Here’s her advice, with photos and video.

But pruning requires more than skill – it steals your time! One resident told me it takes four full weekends to trim their hedge, twice yearly.

The expense of hiring pruners

That same member told me they’ve paid between $600 and $1,500 for someone else to prune their hedge, depending on their skill level.

The species used are poorly suited to the job

Euonymus hedges left and upper right. Lower right is privet.

Almost all our old hedges are privet or euonymous – nonnatives that aren’t even well-adapted ones. One is listed as an invasive plant in our region.

About privet, according to UMD, “All species of privet present in Maryland are invasive and spread into natural areas by seed. Birds eat the berries and aid in seed dispersal. Border privet and European privet in particular can form dense thickets in natural areas and impede the growth of native plants, such as spicebush in the forest understory.”

Many hedges simply don’t get enough sun to fill out and be healthy – see the example in the collage above. Awfully leggy.

About euonymus, Greenbelt historian Stephen Oetken tells me that the ones planted here were “varieties of the plain green Euonymus (typically Euonymus japonicus), praised for its dense, glossy foliage. It doesn’t seem to be on the market anymore; the closest I can find is the narrower version – ‘Green Spire’ is a narrow, columnar evergreen reaching 6 to 8 feet tall and 1 to 2 feet wide, perfect for tight spaces. Needs at least 3 hours of direct sunlight to maintain its dense vertical form. There are lots of diseases and pests known to affect euonymus.”

Many evergreen species chosen by members eventually become far too large for the site. Above left and right are two conifer examples; in the center is a photinia, which is far too large and very prone to leaf blight.

The expense of buying new or replacement shrubs 

My front hedge in 2019.

I started an arborvitae hedge in 2015 and four years later it looked like this, which shouldn’t have surprised me, given that they’re not particularly drought-tolerant. But I had no irrigation system and I didn’t do as much hand-watering as I should have, so I wasted about $900 on Arborvitaes. With hindsight, even if they’d survived the drought, Arborvitaes were the wrong shape to block my view of the parking lot – their primary purpose.

I wasted another $450 on five evergreen Cryptomeria trees to block the view of garages beyond my back garden. It also proved to be too large and the wrong shape for screening where I needed it.

Monocultures of single species are especially vulnerable to disease, and all it takes to spoil that perfect hedge is one plant’s demise. Instead, experts recommend hedges with a mixture of species.

Waiting years for the desired screening, if ever

For new hedges to create adequate screening is at least a five-year wait, and there’s no guarantee that the new hedge will ever create the evergreen screen where it’s needed.

Problems for the community

Branches hitting humans, even cars

This is a common complaint heard among residents – hedges impinging on inner walkways and sidewalks along the street, as shown here.

Reducing safety and/or the feeling of safety from harm-doers

The original 42-inch hedges allowed pedestrians to see people coming from every direction. Now, tall hedges like these can harbor criminals, or at least create the feeling of danger for pedestrians, especially when walking alone at night.

Contrary to the intended openness, hedges have walled off parts of our community

Coming next week: “Alternatives to Hedges for Screening”

The many reasons to hate hedges, especially in small spaces originally appeared on GardenRant on October 4, 2026.

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Am I the only one on the planet who was truly gobsmacked this week when Monty Don admitted to TWO full-time gardeners beetling away behind the scenes at his beautifully maintained two-acre garden in Herefordshire?

The crazy comment pile-on on an Instagram reel posted this past Sunday by @thisgardenwanderer (who filmed Mr. Sexy Knickers at RHS Malvern discussing his retirement from BBC Gardener’s World) would suggest that thankfully I do have a few, equally naïve, companions out there collectively having a Eureka moment;

“I KNEW it! He has 2 fulltime gardeners! This makes me feel much better about the chaos in my garden.” @macfunky

“Shame he never acknowledges the fact that he has full time gardeners whilst on GW..” @richard.izzy

But if the defensive flame war waged by adoring fans was anything to go by, my companions and I just haven’t been picking up on the signals.

“He had acknowledged it, many of us have known for years. Not Monty’s fault if you didn’t know” @suechristianweaver

“I’m dumbfounded that anyone believed that he could single handedly manage a garden of that size single handed! Get real people.” @lazeelady

“Do you watch with the sound off or something?” @gallopchristopher

As it happens, I don’t watch with the sound off. And I wonder if someone who rejoices in the Instagram handle @lazeelady is fully qualified to judge what a determined workaholic gardener and writer is capable of achieving in their garden. But I admit, I don’t watch every week.  In fact, I don’t even watch every month. 

Nevertheless, I still feel my naivety has been passively – maybe actively – encouraged over the years. I first came to Monty Don as a reader of his columns and many of his books, and I’ve watched enough episodes of Gardener’s World to know that even as Don introduces the next segment or other gardeners and their plots on Gardener’s World, he completely neglects to introduce his own. 

And that matters – because without that constant visual acknowledgement of something as significant as 70-80 hours of professional gardening help a week, the BBC is peddling fantasy. And it is a fantasy against which a good number of gardeners have judged their own puny efforts, and found them wanting – if they hadn’t felt that way already after scrolling Instagram. (#blessed anyone?)

Putting Two and Two Together

Two. Full-time. Gardeners.  Oh sure, I knew he must have some help.  And I knew that from my own desperation as a garden writer/speaker/podcaster/founder of a tour company juggling a Triple A personality and an 11-acre plot with a yearly average of 2 hours of help a week that sometimes decides not to show up.   

I’m currently writing this at 12:15 in the early morning hours before my deadline, having not touched my garden for three full days during a remarkably insane work week.  (And then it was only to race down in slippers looking like a crazy woman with a knife to grab some squash before a dinner party.)

So yes, I knew he had to have some help.

But when the birds sing and the camera pans to a solitary, attractively grubby Don walking through Longmeadow’s two acres of well-tended raised beds, and carefully trimmed topiary and deadheaded dahlia, and talking about the work ‘I’ and ‘we’ have done this week, idiots like myself assumed he meant his gardening wife Sarah, and perhaps a four-hour-a-week gardener that filled in the gaps.

After all, Longmeadow may be shared each week with the world, but it is an intensely personal garden loved by both of them, and Don has always said as much. The truth was more than a little shocking, and once again brought to mind annoyances I’ve wrestled with over the last few years: Why aren’t gardeners (and more importantly, garden writers) more transparent about help in their gardens? And at the same time, realistic about what everyday gardeners should be expected to do without it?

Well of course you have help, don’t you?

I remember a discussion I had recently with a very posh gardener who had taken on the renovation of an old garden as an amateur in her thirties. When I asked her if she had a gardener from the very beginning, she replied, “Well of course I had a gardener! I had small children!”

It was all I could do not to reply “Oh, THAT’S why my thirties were a blur, I forgot to hire a gardener!”  Silly me, I was wasting that money on food and clothing.

Or another discussion with a garden writer who was condemning a fellow gardener for his use of glyphosate to paint the stems of cut Ailanthus. “Just dig them out!” she protested indignantly.  Further strategic questioning uncovered that it was not, in fact, her doing the digging of the offensive root and stump, but one of two regular gardeners with machines for that sort of thing.  Was she really begrudging a gardener with fewer resources the strategic assist of a tablespoon of glyphosate? Yep.

I’m not the only one who has such thoughts – two weeks ago on the podcast I co-host with Leslie Harris, The Garden Mixer, I mentioned the fact that I had two hours of help weeding, and the ears of a listener and fellow garden writer Kathy Purdy pricked up.  She brought the discussion over to our Substack chat community to ask other listeners what kind of help they might be paying for – as she wasn’t.

Hearing about those two hours made her feel better about the state of her own garden.  The result was a non-judgmental discussion between listeners about where help makes sense, where it doesn’t, and when not to beat yourself up.  

If only…

A close relationship with a well-trained professional gardener on even a part-time basis is a thing I think many of us long for and wish we could afford, but even then, the word ‘afford’ is a tricky one.  No matter how shamefully little a professional gardener might make, one man may see the expense as a luxury, whilst another views it as a non-negotiable necessity. Our own Ben Probert discussed the difficulties of life as a professional UK gardener in a recent post, and I know it resonated with professionals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps I feel quite comfortable discussing the issue because I reside in another shamefully underpaid profession: writing. I pay my untrained gardening help more than I make an hour, and spend a fair amount of time helping her learn the job as she goes.

Keeping Up Appearances

For all of us naïve gardeners shocked by how much help Don actually has at Longmeadow, that’s not where most of the outrage lay last Sunday. 

A few moments into the conversation, Don confessed that for all these years, the BBC was contracted to contribute to the wages of these two full-time gardeners (a professional gardener in the UK averages £25-30K /$34-40K annually); and that without that subsidy, Don could not afford their salaries and would have to think of ways to make money from the garden or the government to keep the team together next year.  “How dare he!” many cried, as if his fame translated into a magical and inexhaustible supply of cash, after the Beeb’s fees dry up.

There’s that word ‘afford’ again. We’re so good at using it to tell others what we think they should do. At the end of the day, he’s a writer with an old house, a big garden, familial responsibilities, and retirement looming. He’s also a man who lost his first dream garden to bankruptcy, and lived hand-to-mouth for years with a wife and small children. He probably has a damn good idea of what he can afford and what he can’t. I respect the acknowledgement that his garden’s needs will change once the cameras leave – and that he will have to find new ways to make it pay for itself when help is required. 

To Monty Don, I am grateful for last week’s honesty. But he could have propelled the careers of his beloved “Caroline” and “James” by showing their faces on camera a few times over the last ten years — and helped gardeners in the process to manage their expectations.

We need more reality these days, not less. —MW

Monty Don Needs Help. Don’t We All? originally appeared on GardenRant on October 1, 2026.

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I bet you all share my appreciation for gardeners willing to put their garden – no matter how new or still developing – on tour.  For free or for a good cause.

So I thank the gardeners near me who recently opened their front yards – all with at least 50% native plants – for visitors.  I was eager to see if any could be added to these mostly native front yards with no lawn. As for this first one – definitely! 

No lawn, all beds, with a wide woodchip path across the space. And as seen on August 30, sun-loving native perennials were still at their peak here in suburban Maryland, Zone 7B.

Here’s one of the owners speaking to the visitors.  Note the sidewalk is pretty clear – the most obvious sign that the native-plant or even “wild” gardener is considerate of neighbors. In our town clear sidewalks mandated, though not well enforced.

Monarch caterpillar spotted on their milkweed.

This is the first “dog stick library” I’ve ever seen! I’d love to see dogs responding to it. (Do they?) 

On my walks around the nearby lake, I often take a detour just to check out this garden. This was my first chance to meet the gardeners, a friendly young couple.

A block away is a larger, corner yard that’s very much in transition. (I sympathize with people who’d SO love to go lawn-free but their large lots make it a monumental endeavor.)

This is the view from their front door, where I appreciate a nice brick walkway and potted zinnias! (Btw, I have a zinnia report coming soon.)

And another large corner lot demonstrates a good way to start – by creating islands, and expanding existing ones.

And what NOT to do

This last garden, about 30 minutes away by Beltway, is a year-old, lawn-free, all-native-plant front garden that I was invited to visit. The owner had seen an article I wrote for Wild Ones Magazine, along with my location, and wanted to show me the results. 

Now it isn’t easy to give private gardens bad reviews, especially knowing the gardener might see the review. But in this case if they do, they’ll see exactly what I said in person. Yeah, I was honest.  You might say blunt, even.First, the sidewalk is obstructed, the tip-off to either not caring about the neighbors or having moved away. In the background, you see pristine yards and unobstructed sidewalks typical in the neighborhood.

Notice that the next-door neighbor cleanly mowed right up to the property line.A view of the lawn-free, all-native front yard from the sidewalk. 

Approaching the front door, I couldn’t take my eyes off the hellstrip of unmowed turfgrass.

What to say? I just couldn’t lie. As I told the gardener, this is a perfect example of what the native plant movement is encouraging gardeners NOT to do – because it presents native-plant gardens as messy, and the gardener/activist as thumbing their noses at the neighborhood.  Instead, enlightened nativists are promoting front yards that employ “cues to care” so that the neighbors aren’t put off and may even try a native plant or two. (See the various cues to care used in these 270+ well-designed front yards with no lawn.)

Speaking of cues to care, I just found “cues to care” advice from no less than the National Wildlife Federation, and here are the cues relevant to this example:

Keep plants from obstructing sidewalks.
Make sure any tall plants, shrubs, or overhanging tree branches are cut back to keep sidewalks usable by your neighbors. Using fences or borders can also help to keep plants from spilling into pathways.

Maintain any turfgrass.
If you have turfgrass in your landscape, it is important to maintain it with regular mowing. We recommend using an electric or hand-powered mower set to a height of three inches.

Maintain neighborhood aesthetics.
Design your landscape to mesh with the style of other gardens in your area, especially your front yard. If you plant native species, you’ll provide wildlife with great habitat even if it doesn’t have a “wild” look.

(Kudos to the NWF for this, which I hope they promote widely because I see so many online native-plant activists seemingly bragging about giving the middle finger to neighbors with more traditional gardens. It’s disheartening.)

Tips from local native-plant gardens originally appeared on GardenRant on September 20, 2026.

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We’ve all got plants we really love. Probably hundeds of them. And maybe some we hate and banish as soon as spotted. But what about the inbetween ones, which we have but are not sure about? 

I’m noticing several. One is a British native, which is no doubt how it found its way to me. The Royal Horticultural Society describe it thus:

“Robust, attractive and easy to grow, this native perennial is ideal for mixed planting schemes. The red-flushed stems of hemp agrimony support handsome, lobed foliage, and they’re crowned in summer, with large, flat-topped clusters of pink, purple or white flowers, which are a magnet for butterflies.

Eupatorium cannabinum is a native wildflower commonly found in damp meadows, stream edges and woodland margins across the UK and Europe, where it is valued for attracting bees, butterflies and other pollinators.”

What’s not to love?

Bit wishy washy?

Well, it’s putting itself rather randomly in places I don’t much want it. And in it’s early stages in spring I don’t feel confident that it’s not one of its near relations which I have bought, planted and love. I could be ruthless in the places I just don’t want it and know what it is, but I find myself hesitating and doing that for too long. Until it’s suddenly in flower and I’m thinking it maybe looks quite nice. Or does it?

Not by now it doesn’t. That’s today. Next year I will be ruthless and heave out every one of these plants and point the pollinators elsewhere. There is plenty for them. So there.

At Veddw, next to the plant everyone wants to know about : it’s on here

What about evening primrose? Our version appears to be Oenothera glazioviana (Oenothera erythrosepala, Oenothera lamarckiana). When we visited Great Dixter you couldn’t move for it.

So here’s a warning – it was everywhere. You got to love it to let it do that. Well, the flower is quite pretty:

But there always seems to be a lot of gone over flowers on a stem. It looks kind of scrappy. I’m not sure why I haven’t done some yanking, but it may be because it is adding some refreshing colour? Is that enough, when it does have an intrinsically weedy look?

I think part of the problem is the way these blighters sneak up on you, so you don’t notice till too late. 

Then there’s your bloke liking it when you don’t:

This is Nemesia ‘Nesia Tutti Frutti’ and I think it’s rather a mess, that flower. I was going to stick it in the compost bin, this being the only use I have for a compost bin, so it’s good to avail myself of it. But no, Charles likes it! But it is an annual and I don’t suppose he’ll notice if it just doesn’t reappear next year. 

And there’s this, which looks really pretty:

Looks great, doesn’t it? I don’t know what it is apart from it looks like that which used to be called an aster. However – it comes with an enormous amount of foliage which looks like nothing but a bitty mess all summer. And the flowers are actually tiny (Don’t photos lie?!) 

But there are loads of little buds……

But look at it in context:

Yes, it looks a mess. Too much straggly foliage. Do I keep it? And the others???  Nah. Time to be ruthless, next spring!

(And if you’re wondering why it’s me today instead of Award Winning Marianne – she’s clearly still slowly recovering from that Award Winning….)

Do I want this plant? originally appeared on GardenRant on September 17, 2026.

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Fellow Ranter, Anne Wareham, has this to say about dahlias:

“Sigh. I gave up on dahlias when I got fed up of deadheading them. And constantly forgetting which was bud and which was defunct flower. (please don’t tell me) Never mind trying to keep them warm in winter. And you have one in a pot, then next year it wants five pots! They get huge.

This is all, of course, true.  And I still love dahlias. I am enchanted by fat, touchable blooms that fill your wide-open hand, and gradually reveal gradations of color as the growing season winds down. I am energized by the late summer energy they miraculously bring to a garden, and intrigued by the extraordinary range of flower and foliage available to the modern gardener.

And I find I also love them in other people’s gardens much better than my own. 

Beautiful Tabasco…

To me, the most sumptuous and sexy of dahlias are much like Newfoundland dogs – gorgeous, extraordinary beasts I admire, but never wish to groom, feed, or protect from my Mid-Atlantic summers.   I am clear and honest in my assessment of these creatures – why can’t I be honest about dahlias?

The Temptation

Instead, I lie to myself that I am going to try this one, or that one, as I walk through other people’s gardens in late summer and autumn and find myself charmed by a perfectly placed ‘Café Au Lait’ or an aptly named ‘Tabasco’. I search for a tag, or inquire of the resident gardener, and then scribble the name down hopefully and performatively — even as I note their large heavy heads, and the practically invisible staking holding them back from the disgrace of those heads face down in the mud.

David Howard embarrassing himself at the party, as usual.

Instagram doesn’t help gardeners like me struggling with Dahlia Cognitive Disconnect. In fact, it is more than partially responsible.  In recent years, dahlias have become the poster child for social media bouquets. They fill a vase like nothing else, and if a gardener has been even slightly particular in choosing color tones and varying size and shape, he or she can put together a perfect arrangement with little effort.

Or at least that’s what I tell myself. But those vase-fodder dahlias are much better suited for a cutting garden with grid support than in a display garden that simply needs support. Any. Support.

The Technique

In my heart I know that I haven’t the patience for dinner-plate or even dessert-plate dahlias. I am selfishly happy to admire the efforts of others — particularly in gardens that are well-suited to the conditions they love: evenly moist, organically rich soils blessed with abundant sunlight.  I have the soil, but not the sun – and I don’t have the minions to manicure them.  

If you are a gardener with such a garden — and such minions — how can you say no to that late season color?  I’ve just been visiting gardens in Normandy after a very difficult season of drought, and precious water that was strategically spared for dahlias in flower borders and containers more than paid for the investment of time and energy needed to tend them.

Cafe Au Lait at Giverny in August

If you live a zone warmer than my valley (Z6b), and don’t have ravenous voles in the winter, there is even more reason to love them, as you will probably avoid the task of lifting the tubers after the first frost definitively ends the magnificent autumn display.  A nice top dressing of mulch or compost will give them extra protection – just mark where they lie so spring shovels don’t create mayhem.

In colder climes, a few plunges with a garden fork should reveal the treasure of a tuber clump – and if your soil was good and the weather was generous, you may have quite a few more than you started with. 

My method for storing these clumps is easy — and lazy — but it works for me. First, removal of last year’s foliage; next, a wrap with an old towel (as humidity regulator); and finally, into a plastic garbage or Ziploc bag depending on size.  Those will overwinter in my frost-free garage with almost no care until they are ready to be potted up again in spring.

Dahlias that I grow in pots simply come into the garage and I take care that the soil does not become desiccated – a little water every four weeks or so seems to do the trick. No rough division or sharp knives at this point in the process – now is simply the time to sleep.

The Truce

If you are confused by my admission of care, considering my earlier protestations, I can explain. Though I have given up on classic Instagram beauties, I’ll never stop growing single dahlias – or more specifically, single dahlias that sport bronze foliage, such as Mystic® ‘Illusion’ or ‘Magenta Star’.  They are nearly as lovely out of bloom as in bloom, and skipping the deadheading won’t betray me as the lazy gardener I am.

Mystic® ‘Illusion’ — now out of patent and harder to find, but an absolute joy in the garden.

As I wrote in Tropical Plants and How to Love Them,  “Nearing the end of the seasonal party, Dahlia pour another drink and settle in.” That’s what they feel like — comfortable friends making life richer. Yes, one must choose one’s friends wisely, lest they fall over the couch, or wreck the carpet; but I have found over the years that dahlias with single blooms never outstay their welcome. -MW

The Trouble with Dahlias originally appeared on GardenRant on September 3, 2026.

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Some time ago Charles wrote this piece for thinkingardens.  I think it’s worth revisiting.

Charles:

I can’t imagine how people who write about gardens keep going , when it is so clear that their words are really just padding to fill the gaps between the photographs.

Charles Hawes, working at Moor Wood.

 

The garden “stories” we read are utterly formulaic and bland, finishing invariably with some cliché about the gardens’ loveliness. We (the writers and the photographers) try and persuade ourselves that at least we are giving those creators of the gardens a warm glow of satisfaction for seeing their garden in print, looking, of course at its best (well, to be truthful, far better than its best). And of course we get a fee for our labours. We all have a living to make.

But I believe we are short changing the garden owners. No it’s worse than this, I think this universal approach to gardens by the media insults the gardeners and devalues their gardens, because we are totally failing to take them seriously.

One of his photographs out of thousands! Sissinghurst White Garden

 

As a photographer of a garden I probably spend about ten times the amount of time looking at a garden than the average visitor. A proper “shoot” will usually involve a lengthy walk around with the owner. Then I will photograph from late in the afternoon until dusk and then rise before dawn to get the first light. And then there could be several more hours walking round and photographing in the morning. And if the light is not satisfactory, a return visit may be called for.

I then spend hours looking at every picture on my computer (and I do think that this is, in some sense at least, a further study of the garden), making selections and adjustments, sometimes removing minor imperfections in a scene. (Some of my colleagues will remove TV aerials or telephone wires from a scene but I do not go this far for my own, nevertheless idealised, images).

I cannot speak for my colleagues, but I for one believe that I have a really good eye and I believe that over the years I have developed a real ability to see some gardens’ failures to make the most of their situation, or where a view might be improved by changes to existing hedges or additions of new ones. Or where a planting scheme can be improved. Or where the garden is getting over-full of ornament. Most people making a garden would, I believe, both be interested in and could well find that they would benefit from my feedback.

He doesn’t always flatter…. (Troy Scott-Smith. Head gardener, Sissinghurst, weeding)

 

But I would never volunteer this perspective and I am never asked for it. I don’t volunteer my opinions for fear of offending my host who may have provided me with a bed and a meal. I might also risk prejudicing their cooperation in the essential task that follows my visit of identifying the names of plants for my captions. And actually by the time I have completed the photographic task I am usually exhausted and ready to go and have a rest.

But why do garden owners never ask what writers or photographers think about what they have been looking at? I believe that anxiety is at the heart of it. There is the classic “you should have been here last week” syndrome. Garden owners want their gardens to be seen at their best and are hungry for praise. Indeed I don’t think that I am totally off the wall if I suggest that this need for praise is almost addictive. Because the garden can never be praised enough and yet such praise never satisfies the owner. Why? Because they know it is meaningless, empty, without sustenance. It is like feeding someone pure sugar.

Wyndcliffe Court, Monmouthshire, flattered by snow.

 

Taking a garden seriously and really discussing a garden with its creator is completely counter cultural. Doing so raises the anxiety of both the person sharing their views and that of the person hearing them. It is totally fraught. But such a process of taking a garden seriously also offers the possibility of the creators of gardens receiving a far more satisfying experience from garden writers and photographers. They could see their garden with fresh eyes. It offers, too, the possibility of entering into a “grown up” relationship between the makers of gardens and the garden media. At the moment it feels to me that all the garden media are doing is handing out sweeties.

Trying not to fall into the Wye.

 

How could we break this unsatisfying and pointless process? It could start by magazines commissioning proper garden reviews, with the commissioning editor asking their writer and the photographer to work together in presenting a more real view of the garden with a rather more analytic than descriptive approach. Analytic does not mean academic – think of book and theatre reviews. There is one journal which I think ought to take this on – the journal of the RHS, “The Garden”. This should be a serious journal; it is surely time it took its writing about gardens more seriously. If they were to lead I think perhaps others would follow.

But I also think that there is scope here for the book publishing industry to break the mould and offer us a book that takes gardens seriously by adopting such an approach.

That would truly be ground breaking.

Charles Hawes – Photographs with GAP

A Photographer has his say. originally appeared on GardenRant on August 27, 2026.

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In 1995, after 15 years, I closed Holbrook Farm and Nursery in North Carolina and moved back to Louisville, Kentucky. What was I going to do next? A cockamamie idea about making a documentary called the Four Seasons in Three Gardens came to mind. Funding would help. I figured I might have a little cachet in American horticulture, and I imagined Home and Garden Television (HGTV) would give me 15 minutes in person to make my pitch. I wanted to feature Clarence E. “Buddy Hubbuch,” a hero of mine. He worked at Bernheim Forest & Arboretum for 34 years. They didn’t take the bait.

Buddy Hubbuch and Mike Dirr, University of Georgia. Mike Hayman photo.

A fax arrived from HGTV, a few months later, stating clearly, “I urge you to stop calling and sending us new material.” I was one or two calls short of a cease-and-desist letter regarding a film proposal. Being cut down to size is humbling but not always shameful.

Plow on

In the 1970s I visited my father in an office he shared with his business partner. They had desks facing one another. Mr. Miller had framed diplomas from the Ivy League on his back wall. Dad had a framed penmanship award from Louisville Junior High School on his. He never lacked humility.

My father was a serial entrepreneur. He made and lost money but kept moving along. He sank the eight ball to win the game near the end of his career.

Dad faithfully encouraged me, without judgement, about various career ideas that started with saving the world, then to farming, and finally digging into horticulture.  The three have a lot in common. None of these are easy or lucrative career paths. He always knew someone I could talk to who might be helpful—from a Catholic priest, to a farmer, to a nurseryman. He rolled his eyes on the documentary idea. I don’t think he had been to a movie since the “Guns of Navarone” played at the Penthouse Theatre on 4^thStreet in 1961.

A lot has changed over the last year

I am 75 now and garden in the Salvisa like there is no tomorrow. Well, I am a little slower but feel okay and don’t want my age to feel like presentiment for cease and decease.

There was a lot to sort through during the move last fall. Unfortunately, one large box of correspondence full of 50 years of precious memories got tossed by mistake. Who writes letters anymore? By hand. Preserved were more than a dozen unedited Beta film tapes from 31 years ago. The Four Seasons in Three Gardens, my short-lived, ill-fated documentary filmmaker phase, sat on shelf and haunted me for years.

Happy endings

That same 1995, late in the year, Klaus Jelitto, founder of Jelitto Perennial Seeds, came to Louisville to court me. I was flattered and needed a job. A real job. What a blessing. I happily stuck around with Jelitto for 22 years.

The film project was abandoned. Most of it was dull as dirt. Years passed. I kept thinking I might find something worthwhile, if not cinematic, in these tapes. A moment of clarity jumped in front of me in late July.

Filmmaker Morgan Atkinson, who led the filming, converted one small portion to digital—Buddy Hubbuch’s 1995 retirement party. It was wonderful to watch again, though I didn’t walk away thinking that Morgan should add this to his impressive film oeuvre.

Filmmaker Morgan Atkinson

I emailed the raw digital segment to Chuck Hubbuch, Buddy’s son, who a few weeks ago shared it with his sisters. Chuck had a successful career in horticulture, also. He was not at his dad’s retirement party. Chuck was collecting plants in Thailand for the Fairchild Botanic Gardens.

A bit of background about Buddy

A year-long internship at Kew Gardens awaited me at summer’s end in 1978. I spent the months before at Bernheim. Buddy was not impressed. I was the arboretum’s weed guy. A low rung on Bernheim’s ladder. Show me what you got. I worked alone, kept my head down, my mouth shut, took notes, pressed leaves, and soaked up as much of Buddy’s wisdom as I could.

One rainy day, two months into a particularly muggy summer, I realized I had begun to gain trust. Instead of sending me home for the rest of the day, Buddy invited me to his office and let me look through his garden library. We talked. A little. Our brief conversation felt like a commencement graduation. We kept in touch for years afterward.

Buddy Hubbuch had many friends and admirers

The gifted and generous horticulturist gave 34 years to Bernheim Forest & Arboretum. Buddy was free with advice or opinions for anyone who showed curiosity about plants or nature. He was an amateur naturalist, interested  in native plants, animals and geology. His son, Chuck, said, “When I was young, he brought home all sorts of insects, reptiles, birds, small mammals, interesting rocks and fossils.”

Few could match Buddy’s  infectious laugh or his handsome thick mane of silver hair.

Buddy never blew his horn.

Buddy and J.C. Raulston from North Carolina State University. Mike Hayman photo.

Early in one film segment, when I asked what his favorite tree was, Buddy responded, simply. “I love them all.” The answer was followed by a long pause. Brevity and humility, on camera, didn’t translate to an overwhelming enthusiasm for trees and shrubs. If you dug a little deeper, you’d find out he was obsessed with  hollies. He could go on for days.

“The holly collection became one of the country’s largest with over 400 hollies, including over two hundred different species and cultivars. It has deservedly attained a national and even international reputation for excellence. Buddy developed a new holly, Ilex x attenuata, ‘Marilyn’ a fine-textured evergreen holly with striking red-orange fruit that he named in honor of his wife.” Mathew London photo; bernheim.org

Plow on.

HGTV blew me off, and I am good with that. I suspect only insiders would understand Buddy’s quiet and significant historic significance anyway.

A sense of completion, relief, and joy finally settled over me when I emailed the short film piece a few days ago to a group of friends who knew Buddy. Some worked with him before launching their own careers.

I have watched the unedited, sometimes tedious, hour-long clip of Buddy Hubbuch’s retirement party a half-dozen times, and it has never failed to trigger nostalgic feelings and smiles.

What a wonderful man.

Plow on.

Here’s a YouTube link to the retirement party.

https://youtu.be/srRa3Zap_B8

When you get there, press CC for closed captions.

Humbled, but Plowing On originally appeared on GardenRant on August 26, 2026.

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The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s famous Meadow when I visited in July, past its spring flowering. 

In this third and last post from my recent trip to California, I cover the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, the mind-blowing challenges of fire-safe landscaping, and some favorite images of Santa Barbara’s architecture and beach. (I covered Lotusland here, and residential gardens in a Los Angeles suburb here.) 

Santa Barbara, about 95 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Botanic Garden, which happens to be the first in the U.S. to use native plants exclusively.

I’m inspired by the garden’s mission – by aesthetic, educational and scientific means, to conserve native plants and habitats and showcase the state’s diversity on its 78 acres.  The garden’s 1,000+ species represent all 11 ecoregions of, to my surprise, not the State of California but the California Floristic Province, which stretches from southern Oregon to Baja California in Mexico. Areas of the garden are laid out by habitat.  (Kudos for avoiding the problematic practice of grouping plants solely by political boundaries.)

Its Iconic Entry Meadow

The Meadow in spring. Photo credit: Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

I learned that one of its co-designers was the famous landscape architect Beatrix Farrand and it seems pretty prescient of them to recommend this plan for the large entry meadow, in 1939: “Eliminate bermuda grass meadow.  Replace temporarily with annual and perennial wildflowers. Should this experiment prove successful, it might be successful to turn it into a permanent feature.  Otherwise, the area could be planted with native strawberries.” Indeed it was covered in strawberries at some point in its history.

Then in the early 2000s the 1.5-acres were planted in large perennials like sages and grasses, with California poppies creating a superbloom. Here’s lots more about the Meadow – its history, plants and maintenance challenges.

More than a plant collection

The garden has a bigger mission than even the website touts. It’s working to “shape the region into a biodiversity hot spot by encouraging residents to plant native plants and working with local communities and governments to spread the gospel.”  Source. 

The garden includes its own nursery, where hundreds of species of California natives (especially those most threatened with extinction) are grown, then sold to visitors.

Research is conducted in the garden’s genetics lab to understand what plants need protection, and a vital research focus is studying fire-combustion to find the best California natives for fire defense.  

My Tour

My guide at the garden was an old friend from garden-writer meet-ups – Billy Goodnick, the landscape architect,  author, television garden educator and drummer in a rock ‘n roll band. 

In this photo he’s showing me a stunning patch of Matilaja Poppy (Romneya coulteri), an aggressive perennial.

I’m a sucker for cool benches like this one.

Real California redwoods. 

One of the garden’s  educational goals is pursued through its demonstration Water Wise Home Garden.

(But first, readers may know a pet peeve of mine is over-generalization in garden-writing, and this sign is a good example of correct and incorrect descriptions of native plants.  In the lower left it says “The beautiful, easy to grow and water thrifty native plants selected for this garden….”  On the right it omits any qualifier and simply declares that “Native plants need less water, have fewer pests, and require less upkeep.” Even in California, not all native plants need less water – it’s a myth debunked here.  You know who’s hurt by this kind of misinformation? Customers and people trying to make a living growing and selling natives. Okay, end of rant.)

Now about this demonstration garden, honestly as an Easterner it’s hard for me to imagine using plants with such a muted color palette. I assume I’d adjust if I actually lived and gardened there for a while, and maybe even learn to love it.

The region has always been fire-prone. It’s just getting worse.

Santa Barbara sits on a coastal shelf below the Santa Ynez Mountain range, which is dominated by a chaparral plant community that has evolved to burn naturally, so fires have occurred there basically forever.  It only became the catastrophic challenge it is today since humans started building homes there, especially using such flammable materials, right in the path of the inevitable wildfires.

Billy Goodnick has seen up-close 6 to 8 major wildfires since he moved there 40 years ago, and there have been hundreds more. 

The risk of wildfires is old news to Californians but last year’s horrific fires in the Los Angeles area brought 24-hour coverage of fires and the need for fire-safe homes and landscapes. It’s no surprise that insurance companies are working on adding fire-safe design requirements to their coverage.

(Some members of my family were evacuated for months; others came very close to being evacuated. So I can’t even imagine living there, even for low humidity and all-year gardening.)

What IS fire-safe landscaping (a/k/a firescaping) 

Like the life-long learner that he is (and keeping up his landscape architect certification), Billy has enrolled in classes about the latest in fire-safe landscaping, where he learned that the most effective fire-safety measures that homeowners can take are improving the home – it’s called home hardening.

But there’s lots to do in the garden to make it safer from wildfires. The basics of fire-safe landscaping are:

• Create a defensible space near the house by keeping trees, shrubs and other sources of biofuel and garden furniture away from the house.  That includes wood mulch. (Use stone or gravel instead.) Taller plants should be installed farther from structures.  
• Spacing matters. Stop fire in its tracks by creating spaces between plants and breaking up large swaths of plantings.
• Manage the landscape – with adequate irrigation to keep plants hydrated, and keeping the garden free of dead plant material, weeds, etc. 

Images from UC Marin Master Gardeners video of traditional foundation plantings (top) and fire-safe gardens (below).

Big change for home garden design! Rethinking lawns, irrigation, tidiness and plant choices, too. 

I find this challenge SO fascinating, and found this video illustrating with images like the ones above how different fire-safe landscapes are from traditional gardens. What got my attention is the mention of a likely new requirement that only “fire-safe” plants be installed within five feet of the home or other structure and nothing at all within one foot. Though that’s not required yet, designers are smart to be learning alternative designs to traditional foundation plantings, as seen in the top image above.  

And I learned from the botanic garden’s website of another problem they’re facing: “Misperceptions of California’s native plants as fire-hazardous lead some gardeners to resist using native plants in defensible-space landscaping.” The garden’s classes for home gardeners are offered to dispel that notion and help residents be safer, and the research into fire combustibility of native plants should help steer gardeners’ choices.

I asked Billy if fire-safe and water-wise landscaping are compatible, and his response was ” In some ways, yes. Plants with long tap roots are both water-wise and fire-wise, but they may call for different design techniques.” It’s complicated!

I found a perfect example of how complicated it is in a video by WaterWise Santa Barbara about Fire-Wise Landscaping and Maintenance. It follows the narrator as she walks through the Botanic Garden’s demonstration Water Wise Home Garden, pointing out all the things that need to be fixed! Wrong plants in the wrong places, especially.

And just this week I saw a new story about a Sacramento resident getting a grant from the city to plant a native garden, then receiving a $900 fine from the very same city for creating a fire hazard by growing those plants. (It was mainly Stipa pulchra, the “official state grass.”)  

Not exactly wildlife gardening, is it?

Fire-safe practices, like having a “well-irrigated lawn,” sure clash with the wildlife-friendly practices we’re being taught.  But a green lawn IS an excellent buffer zone for fire. Brown lawns, not so much. 

(Billy’s a big proponent of having only the lawn you really need and instead of typical turfgrasses, using a low-water groundcover that can take some getting stepped on. His favorites are native grasses or sedges, which – fair warning – won’t look good in hot weather.  But hey, our Eastern turfgrasses don’t, either.)

Blue gramma grass in the demonstration Water Wise home at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

More fire-safe practices that conflict with gardening for wildlife? Removing all plant debris and weeds, pruning regularly, creating spaces between plants, and keeping the garden tidy. Meadows, prairies and  savannahs are off the table.

Billy reminds me that fire-wise gardening advice is relevant well beyond Santa Barbara, to other fire-prone areas and those that may be fire-prone sooner than you think. 

A bit more Santa Barbara – architecture and the beach!

Santa Barbara’s most popular historic landmark is its County Courthouse. Completed in 1929, the Spanish-Moorish masterpiece features hand-painted ceilings, grand murals, and an 80-foot clock tower with panoramic city and ocean views. 

It’s worth listening to a docent inside. The murals depict the history of Santa Barbara.

From the Courthouse Tower there are great views in every direction. From these two you can see the dominance of Spanish Colonial architecture.

 

Not JUST Spanish Colonial

 

I walked to the Courthouse from my hotel in the heart of the old downtown, which is restored and super-lively. I skipped the nightlife but followed Billy’s recommendation to find examples of the work of architect Jeff Shelton, called the city’s “architectural wizard.”  Instead of taking the Walking Tour of his works, I hunted them down on a one-gear, foot-brake-only bike I borrowed from my hotel.

Above are two examples of Shelton’s work in downtown Santa Barbara. On the left is one that I couldn’t find – Cota Street Studios.  The Ablitt Tower on the right is his most famous work, but hard to photograph from the street. So here’s the photo credit for both of these. 

And here’s my photo of an amazing residence by Shelton, named Vera Cruz.

And finally, did I make it to the Pacific Ocean during my whirlwind trip to SoCal? Just barely, thanks to that clunker of a hotel bicycle, which took me down to the beach and along its wonderful pedestrian/bike paths. They reminded me of Santa Monica’s iconic path along the ocean. Both offer great beach access and views thanks to their prohibitions against building anything between the ocean and the highway. 

View of Santa Barbara’s beach from a pier.

Thank, Billy!

I’m afraid if I rave too much about what a great guide Billy was for my first visit to his fair city, readers will be hitting him up for similar help. But seriously, he went all out – helping me plan my visit, guiding me through two major gardens, treating me to breakfast (with wife Lin!), and arranging for a private tour of Lotusland.  

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and is fire-wise gardening compatible with wildlife-friendly, water-wise gardening? originally appeared on GardenRant on August 23, 2026.

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Lucy Allen comes to GardenRant this week from Substack, and from a sweltering and very dry United Kingdom. –MW

I know. We are all far too hot. But I am going to talk about it, all the same.

During this latest heatwave – flipping through magazines; trying to sit indoors instead of going into the garden – I found I couldn’t ignore a little voice that’s been in the back of my head for a while.

I’m really really bored of Piet Oudolf. There, I said it. It’s a terrible thing to admit. And I live within a stone’s thrown of Scampston, too, which is widely hailed as one of his triumphs.

It may be I’m being unfair. Perhaps what I really mean is, I’m bored of people who imitate Oudolf without his talent. And I do think the heat has shaped my reaction. When it’s as hot as this, grass bleaches out. Its movement mimics the optical effects of the heat shimmer you get over concrete or tarmac in the baking sun. Where grasses are over-used, or used with too many similarly vertical, floaty growers – Verbena bonariensis comes to mind, or Persicaria – the whole impression is of scribbled uprights, like a child’s drawing.

A brilliant, polemical and persuasive Substack post by Ben Probert discusses the implications of gardening in the heat; his dissection of the ‘macho’ culture of professional horticulture rang absolutely true for me (I am undendingly glad that I didn’t have to navigate the last few weeks of pregnancy working in 40°C/104°F heat in a polytunnel, which I’m fairly sure I would have been doing in my previous job).

He points out that many ‘so-called climate change gardens’ are devoid of trees, which I think is a particular weakness of the school of Oudolf rip-off designs (not Oudolf himself!). Dan Pearson, a year or so ago, discussed how he deals with the very un-Mediterranean challenges of UK gardens that are both wet in winter and hot in summer. But a lot of gardens I’ve seen in magazines recently have been heavy on perennials, billows of grasses, and very minimal amounts of anything else.

Heat flattens everything, visually ironing out the dappling of shade and the lushness of water caught in leaves and buds. When much of your planting is all happening at the same height, it can add to this deadening effect, giving you nowhere to relax and rest your eyes, nowhere to escape the feeling of relentless heat.

In my garden, I’ve realised that the space that is making me happiest in this heatwave is influenced by gardens much, much older than any modern ideas about climate-adapted ways of planting. The place where I sit in the garden is underneath a fig tree, which I pruned so that its branches make a shade canopy over my chair and little table.

A grape vine tangles into the branches on one side, and romps across the wall behind, until it makes common cause with a honeysuckle. I didn’t plant them together with any thought for it, but in the Old Testament, the epitome of peace and security is a garden where “every man shall sit under his vine and his fig tree.”

Not pristine or trendy, but it is very, very shady and cool.

The other planting is less Biblical, more medieval. There’s a wall-trained pear tree, and underneath it a green mass of lemon balm, which I just hack back with shears a few times a year to keep it in order. There is flowering lavender spilling over the stones that separate the border from this seating space, but there’s no formal hardstanding [hard surface]: just stony soil, punctuated with bits of creeping trefoil, purple thyme and self-seeding mint.

It’s not at all a ‘smart’ seating area – which, according to the magazines, requires an expanse of beautifully even, blindingly bright stone paving in a crisp geometric shape – but it does have the advantage of not looking weirdly sterile.

In this haphazard carpet of herbs, the runaway success has been chamomile ‘Trenague’. This very simple little plant has surprising tenacity in drought. When almost everything else goes crispy or thin, it stays green and soft, and when you tread on it, you get a waft of delicious apple scent.

It mixes with the herbal smell of the golden oregano that runs through the borders nearby, which produces a great sweep of fresh colour and keeps the roots of plants around it cool and damp. I especially like it swirling underneath my rose ‘Darcey Bussell,’ which is a dark cerise pink, and setting off the iridescent blues of Pentstemon ‘sour grapes’.

‘The Garden of Paradise,’ Frankfurt: Städel Museum, c. 1410-1420

 

The idea of planting scented herbs underfoot is very medieval; likewise the idea of a garden that is not open, flat grasses and perennials, but an enclosure with green walls and overhanging trees.

The dominant colour is green – green fig-leaves; green vines. I think we’ve been persuaded, by the current fashion, to assume green gardens cannot thrive in the heat. But all those green leaves covering the wall help to cool it, preventing it from reflecting back the baking sun. All those soft green herbs on the ground hold the moisture in the soil. And those varied leaf shapes and heights – the flat fig leaves curling out almost horizontally; the vines racing upwards; the chamomile spreading cool on the ground – are not just visually soothing in their variation. As each leaf transpires, sending out water vapour, it adds complexity to the interplay of air currents that move and cool the spaces between the plants – the way a uniform planting of grasses and prairie plants cannot.

There’s something deeply appealing about a green garden that resembles the cool, shady spaces of a medieval illumination. I’m beginning to wonder whether, in fact, it might carry more potential for the future than the fashion that has come to dominate modern garden spaces. What do you think?

Do We Really Want More Prairie Gardens in a Heatwave? originally appeared on GardenRant on August 14, 2026.

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It’s not always delightful, being in the garden at the moment here in Wales.  We have severe drought. You may find plants in sudden collapse, certainly not happy, and the heat and humidity are horrid. But at night it cools and there is pleasure to be had. 

I’ve been experimenting with taking photographs – on my phone – at night. Or in the gloaming, when suddenly things can get wonderfully atmospheric. (A bit like our otherwise rather uneventful eclipse was)

That wasn’t taken on any special setting, though my phone makes decisions all of its own. But there may have been light coming from the house. The interesting bit that I want to share is that I take a photograph without the least idea what I’m doing or how it will turn out. And I haven’t edited any of these except sometimes to chop a bit out. So, presumably, you could have fun too, finding out what you get, and that it can sometimes be quite magical.

Skies can be good:

Then there’s the strange things that happen to colour:

Almost like daylight, but mysteriously not quite.

White is suddenly important.

 

But may go pink.

Any available light suddenly becomes important

And sometimes I get something wrong and still love the result.

But sharp is good too.

And then it gets truly dark

 

You may need a torch by now, and that adds to the fun. Though the torchlight is  likely to be very random, given you’re taking pics too. It gets a bit of a handful and something may get dropped. On my phone you can make a setting in photos so that saying ‘cheese’ (or whatever else you fancy) will trigger a pic. That helps!

 

House lights can look good.

And we mustn’t forget the recently abused moon: (someone ploughed into it)

or, indeed, the friends you may meet outdoors at night. There seems to be always one there to greet me!

Take your Camera out at Night originally appeared on GardenRant on August 13, 2026.

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GardenRant welcomes back garden ecologist Nathan Lambstrom, in Part III of a three-part series discussing invasive species rhetoric, and the negative effects powerful war metaphors have had on the perception and management of exotic and invasive plant species in our gardens and greater ecoregions.  The first installment explored the roots of this language; the second examined the tangible harm it can cause, and the last considers a more helpful way to think about, talk about, and interact with these species going forward. – MW

Over the last half century, the field of invasion biology acquired a vocabulary of war metaphors which inspired passionate action and were easy to communicate. The field grew as the message was spread; but as our understanding of how invasive species interact with novel ecosystems has grown, the hyperbole has become increasingly harmful.

Many ecologists, conservationists, and gardeners are advocating a shift in both the language we use about these species and the attempts to eradicate them at all costs. It is high time we move past the war on invasive species, abandon a militaristic vocabulary of pre-judgment, and embrace curiosity about these plants, even as we attempt to manage the changes associated with them.

If we dispense with the neat and tidy language of invasiveness, what are we left with? We still need to communicate about species that spread rapidly and exhibit competitive behavior; and it is still instructive to distinguish between species that evolved here and species that were recently introduced from somewhere else.

Passengers, Not Drivers of Change

One of the root problems of invasive rhetoric is that it gives too much agency to plants, framing them as insidious villains on the attack. To talk about them in this way ignores the conditions that led directly to their thriving: colonization and plant introductions; industrial agriculture; habitat fragmentation; ecological degradation; fire suppression; etc.

What we need is language that reflects the reality that these species are symptoms of a disturbed ecosystem, not monsters causing harm.

We have short memories. For instance, we see a forest with a thick understory of buckthorn and imagine that the forest was in a high-quality condition with diverse native flora in the not-too-distant past until the buckthorn came in, relatively recently, and took it over.

What we don’t see is millennia of careful management by Indigenous people that created many of those high-quality landscapes we imagine as natural (Rice 2025), and we don’t see the European colonization that put a stop to those practices.

Consider Land-Use History

Centuries of fire suppression, logging, grazing, plowing, and habitat lost to development (all major forms of disturbance) combined with the plant introductions created the perfect conditions for plants like buckthorn to thrive.

In most cases the native plant communities were lost long before the invasive species established a presence. When we blame the buckthorn directly, we are confusing correlation for causation.

The buckthorn didn’t create the damaged landscape or wipe out the native flora; it is an indicator of previously wrought damage. And if we do nothing to address the underlying conditions that allowed it to thrive or to reintroduce the plant community that was lost, removal alone is unlikely to do much in the way of restoration (Lambstrom et al. 2022).

An oak woodland with a rich understory of herbaceous native plants; an oak woodland with a dense shrub layer of buckthorn after centuries of agricultural land use and suburban development (author photo).

Remember Root Causes

Far better to refer to these plants with language that reminds us of their root causes and accurately describes their behaviors. When we call a plant “introduced” instead of non-native or the more troubling “alien” or “exotic”, we stress that the plant did not come here of its own volition. It was introduced to this environment as a direct consequence of colonization, and we would do well to remember the ecological impacts of colonization that have allowed that plant to thrive.

Learn Plant Life Strategies

To stress a plant’s behavior, we can return to our friends the ruderals (described in Part I). Ruderals, if you remember, thrive on disturbance, have a short lifespan, and produce copious seed. Most of the plants we traditionally think of as weeds can also be described as ruderals. It is one of three life strategies proposed by J. Philip Grime to describe plant behavior in his seminal book, “Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes” (Grime 1979).

A modified version of J. Philip Grime’s life strategy triangle.

Plants are categorized based on how they respond to stress (e.g. lack of nutrients or water) and disturbance (plowing, grazing, fire, etc.). A plant that thrives on low stress and high disturbance is ruderal, like garlic mustard or the biennial black-eyed Susan. One that thrives on low stress (fertile habitats) and low disturbance is competitive, like mugwort or Canada goldenrod.

Competitors tend to be longer-lived and spread clonally to form large patches. Plants that thrive on high stress and low disturbance are stress tolerant (long-lived plants like saguaro cacti), biding their time in extreme environments until they’ve accumulated enough resources to reproduce. Most of the plants we think of as invasive fall on the ruderal-competitor spectrum.

Viola pedata, a native stress tolerator, establishes healthy populations under high stress, low disturbance conditions (author photo).

What Can We Say Instead?

My preference lately is to refer to these plants as “competitive introduced” species. I have colleagues who prefer “disruptive introduced” or “harmful introduced.” Some Indigenous conservation leaders prefer the term “displaced plant relatives,” as a way to honor the inherent value that these plants have as living beings that are sharing our home (Hernandez 2022, Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi 2021).

What all of these terms do better than “invasive” is more accurately describe both origin and behavior. Perhaps when we call a plant a “competitive introduced” species, as opposed to a competitive native one, it also reminds us that competitiveness or ruderalness are traits not restricted to introduced species.

A competitive patch of Canada goldenrod in a meadow should be managed much as a patch of introduced mugwort would be. Remembering that their behavior is linked to the land use context in which they live can help remind us that these are not evil monsters, they are competitive plants thriving in an abused landscape, regardless of origin.

Greenbriar, a competitive native plant that has filled this woodland understory following centuries of agriculture and grazing (author photo).

Looking Forward

None of this means that wild native plants in North America could all be replaced with “invasive” plants without consequence, nor is there any realistic likelihood of that happening. Native plants are extremely important and are the foundation of wild terrestrial food webs. I say that as often as I can and will continue to plant, promote, study, and enjoy native plants. I will also continue to advocate for a shift in perspective, away from pre-judgment of introduced competitive plants, and towards curiosity and thoughtful stewardship.

When I see an area with abundant knotweed, buckthorn, bittersweet, or garlic mustard (or any number of native competitive plants like grapes or smilax) I no longer see a landscape ruined by an aggressive interloper. I see a neglected ecosystem in need of care and careful stewardship.

The landscapes closest to us and most affected by us thrive when we develop a close, intimate relationship with them. That means taking a step back and answering clearly: What is the right goal for this place? What is feasible? What is the long-term plan? And sometimes: would I react differently to this plant if it were native?

Sometimes the answers to those questions will lead us to remove introduced plants and establish a new plant community. Sometimes simple observation will be the right course of action, watching to see how new ecological connections unfold. Sometimes the right way forward will be a more selective tending, a careful and loving gardening of wild spaces.

We are a gardening species. We have been moving plants around and tending them for as long as we’ve been human. That tendency has certainly created some challenges, but it’s also created a lot of beauty and ecological value, both of which are ignored or dismissed as unnatural by invasive species rhetoric.

I believe that we’re at the threshold of a major shift in the way we think about, speak about, and manage these species, but to paraphrase the plant ecologist Michael Yadrick, “we do not need a kinder way to talk about a harmful system; we need a new system.”

The way we’ve been taught to view invasive plants is unscientific and harmful, both rhetorically and in terms of real consequences for wild plants and animals. We ought to approach them with curiosity, as a unique opportunity to witness firsthand how new species integrate into ecosystems. If we look closely, we can develop a more nuanced view of plant ecology and see the chaotically beautiful ecosystems around us not as battlegrounds, but as opportunities to develop deep relationships with our neighbors in the plant world, no matter where they’re from.

Nathan Lambstrom, MS
www.gardenecology.us

Introduced rugosa rose and native Eastern redcedar forming a novel plant community in southern Rhode Island (author photo)..

References

Grime, J. Philip. Plant strategies and vegetation processes, and ecosystem properties. John Wiley & Sons, 1979.

Hernandez, Jessica. “Invasive Species as a Metaphor for Colonization.” Rewilding Magazine, 16 June 2022, www.rewildingmag.com/invasive-species-as-a-metaphor-for-colonization/. Accessed 10 Apr. 2026.

Lambstrom, Nathan, et al. “Low passive restoration potential following invasive woody species removal in oak woodlands.” Restoration ecology 30.4 (2022): e13568.

Rice, Stanley A. Forgotten Landscapes: How Native Americans Created Pre-Columbian North America and what We Can Learn from it. Simon and Schuster, 2025.

Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi. “Planting Moon in a Warming Climate.” Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi, 11 May 2021, www.wakantipi.org/wta-blog/2021/5/7/planting-moon-in-a-warming-climate-pzhkr-cfs8j-yeyez. Accessed 10 Apr. 2026.

The War on Invasive Species. Part III: Embrace Curiosity originally appeared on GardenRant on August 7, 2026.

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The title of this post tells you it won’t be a happy one. It might even make you angry. I wrote it just for blog readers – gardeners! Not to rally locals to take sides. I’ve waited a few weeks to calm down and get some perspective, but I’m not totally there yet and I hope that sharing the story will help. 

The background

As last reported in this post I worked for over 2 years to clear the jungle that a prominent city garden had become. It’s shown above in the condition it was when I got to work – not terrible from this view, but lots of blank spaces close to the sidewalk.

But these other views of the garden reveal the invasive vines and other nuisance plants that got my attention (though clearly not the attention of the city’s landscape crew). I couldn’t resist taking on the job of clearing the English ivy from trees – it’s SO gratifying!

The garden is dominated by over 50 old oakleaf hydrangeas, all of which miraculously survived our worst droughts (so far), despite the lack of irrigation or supplemental watering of any kind. The sight of them in this condition is cringe-worthy, but I sure couldn’t carry enough water to make a difference. 

Packera aurea donated by the garden club – just planted, and as they appear blooming in my garden. They bloomed their very first spring.

With most of the vines and other weeds gone, I and other volunteers planted Packera aurea donated by the local garden club – planted with the permission of the city staffer in charge.   

Recent destruction and dismissal

Since our planting day last fall, the new plants survived our bad winter and were just starting to bloom when one morning I found them all gone! Also gone were the volunteer redbuds I’d grouped into a small grove. 

So what happened? Long, awful story short, the person who gave us permission was gone and the landscape crew, believing the new plants to be weeds, removed them all (despite the blooms).

Well, we reported it and after several months we have the outcome – which is NOT that the club is being reimbursed for the plants, or that the mistake is forgiven because now we’re collaborating with the landscape crew to make this important garden even better. 

Nope! We were told by email that we had permission to keep removing invasives but that “Moving forward, new plantings will be the horticulture crew’s responsibility.”  

Maybe I too emotionally invested

This is a garden I’d checked on almost daily, imagining improvements like using hosta and Solomon’s seal divisions to fill in the empty spaces – at no cost, just volunteer labor. And adding some donated black-eyed Susans (our state flower) for long-lasting summer color.

But my reaction to that (imho, disrespectful) email has surprised me. I was SO hurt and angry I told the others to respond because I needed to step back from volunteering for the city, for my peace of mind.

I even stopped walking by the garden! I dread seeing the remaining bits of grape vine (that grows a foot a day, or seems to) smothering the hydrangeas again, and covering the old viburnum I’ve been lovingly renewal-pruning, a years-long process. I’m not sure I’m a big enough person to continue that work now.

So I’m wondering how to care less? I’d lost a garden before (by moving away after 26 years), but this loss comes with a complicated mix of hurt and anger. 

What’s in store for that garden now?

The black-eyed susans we offered for the site were rejected with no explanation, except that they would be appropriate in the large (and largely unmanaged) pollinator garden in a city park.

So with the Packera aurea destroyed and the black-eyed susans rejected, what plants DID the city have in mind for this very prominent garden? A quick look at what they’re planting in other city gardens gives us a big clue. Sorry if these examples hurt your eyes. They do mine. And I didn’t even show you the photos with irrigation tubing as the most prominent feature.

Mid-summer in the city’s gardens.

So I’m wondering if the horticulture crew’s preference for outdated plants and design styles is behind their refusal of volunteer help, donated plants and garden-club expertise. Surely they’ve heard criticism.   

I found some older photos of the garden from when its irrigation system was functioning and the crew planted annuals there. We’re told they intend to “increase horticultural activity” there, so we can expect to see the return of these pitiful annuals. We would have filled in the blank spaces with perennials, mostly divisions from on-site.

How to improve city plantings?

I’ve long hoped to see change come to our outdated, high-maintenance, wasteful public gardens. Does anyone have examples of civic gardens that would save the city money on plants, water and labor? I suspect that arguments over design or even environmental concerns might not carry the day, but cost savings might. Help! 

Does it make sense to keep buying annuals every year that need this amount of fussing over? And resources? I see this water truck and crew frequently, about a block from my house, keeping a few annuals alive.

Banished from the Garden I Cleared and Maybe Loved too Much originally appeared on GardenRant on August 2, 2026.

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This spring I was needing plants. Never, I hear you cry! Well, huh, I did. And I looked online for what I needed and was horrified at the cost of them. And while I quite understand the challenges nurseries are up against, they were quite out of my reach.

Except – there were lots for sale at good (comparatively) prices bare rooted. Well, it felt like a no brainer – it was that or nothing. So I succumbed. And ordered some, somewhat tentatively. If giving my card details is a tentative thing.

When I started gardening, a long time ago, bare root plants were sent out wrapped in newspaper – remember that rather useful stuff? Fish and chips in Britain have never recovered since they stopped wrapping them in something which absorbed the steam. And (bare root plants) were an ordinary way of obtaining plants, mostly shrubs, trees and roses – and that is still often the case now, I understand. But that would be in the autumn. This was mid April. And I had not come across bare root perennials in spring before.

They looked rather hopeless when they arrived.

Like this!

 

Some came in a plastic bag with a generous sprinkling of dry compost. Which was a nice free gift, but I’m not sure what it offered the plants.

I potted my first few up, feeling very apologetic to them, and rather disbelieving as I bent the roots round to squish them into pots which were round rather than suitably long and thin. I put lids over them, feeling that keeping them warm and moist might help.

And I waited. On the first of May I had hope :

and

Then I kept getting emails telling me I could have more and more, at err.. sale prices. So I kept at it.

I even grew on some geraniums until they were big enough to plant out, though it has to be said that this is basically a slow growing method. Anyway, would you believe, these precious, sweated over darlings got instantly devoured by some foul creature, chomp chomp – and no, it was not slugs or snails. Vole?? Mice! (err, traps proved it)

Big Swearing Word!

One other plant, a thalictrum, got chomped at about a foot high. What on earth? Flying mice?

Back to the bare rooted. I’ve got used, now, to the rather weird beginnings. This is not how a normal seedling emerges, is it? (Long time since I sowed seeds.)

 

 

This one totally refused to fit in the pot.

 

I think I am winning. It works. It could be the future.

One sad point, though. I ordered Persicaria microcephala ‘ ‘Red Dragon’ and it eventually became this: (whatever this is)

 

I waited a long time, in order to be sure. The seller has acknowledged that it’s the wrong plant. But they have no replacements, so I get a refund. Buy cheap, get cheap refund…… Sigh….

However, other things came on well.

 

And now, we have a heatwave. For the third time. So all those plants are now confined to the nursery because I can’t plant them out. Do I go on potting up?? My greed has come back to bite me. What a chore.

A bit of a burden now? This is just a sample…..

 

It’s going to be a very planting autumn.

Bare Root Plants originally appeared on GardenRant on July 23, 2026.

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Sometimes by the time midsummer arrives in my garden I can take a breath. Other times that breath is more of an exasperated sigh. It’s a rhythm that’s as regular as rain in my garden. Although, rain is far from regular in a Pacific Northwest summer which leaves me hours at the end of hose to critique the state of affairs in my garden.

Especially so this year.

Last spring,  Debra Prinzing and I co-hosted a tour/workshop in Amsterdam and Belgium. Deb is a dear forever friend and oh how we love a road trip adventure and this was a chance to take our typical MO to a delightful river boat cruising canals and waterways through the extraordinarily beautiful, flat (so flat!) landscape. Back here at home, most of spring was spent prepping for the trip followed by two weeks of travel and another month trying to catch up on what I didn’t get to before I left. Which is all to say, much of the garden never got dealt with: planting, pruning, soil improvement. *big exasperated sigh*

It’s not pretty. Pouting in this season of my discontent, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what went wrong. And then it hit me — my garden has grown beyond my reach. An untenable — and more importantly, un-tendable — situation. Having a garden that’s difficult to wrangle is a time-honored recipe for unleashing a feral garden.

At this point I should mention, those parts of the garden that tootle along independent of me are fine, maybe a little weedier and yes some plants need to be divided, but these are things only visible to a disgruntled gardener (me). Everyone else sees bobbing blooms on the angel’s fishing wand plants that have seeded themselves about; the oak leaf hydrangea is in full flower (discreetly obscuring the faded blooms from last season that never got removed); the PCH iris (that need to be divided) bloomed their fool heads off, and dozens of skinny stems of carefree Verbena bonariensis, my favorite self sower, punctuate the ornamental grasses.

What does it say about me when the garden does better without my input?

Last week, perched at the top of the back steps where all garden decisions and deeds are plotted, I think I came up with a strategy for restoring order. There will be ladders and saws, loppers and pruners. Let me explain.

I love the contrast of clipped garden forms alongside unfettered growth. Several boxwood orbs and a 4-foot cone indulge my love of snip, snip, snip when I get around to it but suffer a year of shagginess just fine. The “pleached” hedge of crabapples, not so much.

My semi-pleached crabapple hedge on a very brief moment in spring.

My semi-pleached crabapple hedge in winter is lovely – provided it get’s proper shaping.

One of my favorite parts of touring Amsterdam and Belgium in spring was seeing pollarded trees in spring nakedness with knobby knuckled limbs a result of years of strict management. Formally clipped trees and shrubs are a Dutch tradition, sometimes due to lack of space, sometimes strictly for the architectural structure.

I mean, come on! Look at that brilliant work in the garden of Martje van den Bosch

Visiting the garden of Martje van den Bosch in Demen and seeing a remarkable display of brilliantly curated plantings of tulips and early season perennials put me in my color-loving happy place, but the masterfully pruned shrubs and trees dividing the sixteen garden rooms were what really blew my mind. Look at how those scallops in the beech hedge cradle the hornbeam in the distance. Those trees on the right look like the bristly little Christmas trees I put out during the holidays. I mean — come on!

Wherever we went, tiny street side gardens with barely a meter of planting space made room for pruned plane trees, a pleached hedge or an espaliered vine.

Pollarded plane trees in Haarlem.

Pleaching on the streets of Haarlem (left) and in the remarkable Keukenhof Gardens.

This is what a pleached hedge is supposed to look like.

A far more realistic depiction of my semi-pleached crabapple hedge

This is what my pleached crabapple hedge looks like for most of the year. And I’m not thrilled with the flopping germander either.

So here’s my plan. In a month or so I will be cutting my unsuccessfully pleached crabapples back to a skeleton scaffold. Sure, I’ll miss the seasonal flowers and fruit for a year or two but I’m hoping this admittedly drastic approach will restore control and teach me something about maintaining a garden within my grasp.

I know some gardeners disparage this heavy-handed approach to growing woody plants in a confined space. But isn’t this what gardening is all about – the hand of the gardener in concert with a growing space and within the governing rules of nature?

I believe the relationship between those who tend and the environment under their care is paramount. I’ve always loved an ambitious (sometimes hare-brained) garden project and clearly have shown I’m willing to fail in the process.

Meanwhile, you should see my draft bulb order!!! 

Flower market in Haarlem. The sign for those gigantic sleeves of blue hyacinths said two bunches for five Euros.

My garden has grown beyond my reach — now what? originally appeared on GardenRant on July 20, 2026.

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In Susan’s back yard, the comfrey is abuzz with bees.

My friend Kathy Jentz (writer/editor/podcaster) told me not to miss her podcast interview with landscape architect Thomas Rainer, the highly regarded landscape architect and author. I’ve listened and I was intrigued by his big-picture and forward-looking perspective. (And Kathy’s a very good interviewer.)

After her interview with Thomas, Kathy read an except from her book Groundcover Revolution. – the part about comfrey, one of my favorite groundcovers.  As a lawn-free gardener, I’ve learned to count on plants that DO THE JOB – cover the ground quickly and thickly enough to prevent new weeds, and require no inputs.

If only this groundcover were native to somewhere in North America, I think it would be wildly popular as a lawn replacement. But for anyone who IS open to a tough, near-evergreen, pollinator magnet that’s from Europe, I recommend they see what Kathy has to say about it, illustrated with photos from three of my gardens. Susan  

Plant Profile: Dwarf Comfrey, aka Iberian comfrey, Comphrey

Dwarf Comfrey (Symphytum ibericum) makes an impenetrable groundcover that is wonderful for swallowing leaves and blocking out weeds. It spreads by underground roots and forms mounds of dark-green leaves. The flowers are clusters of peachy-yellow bells on the end of tall, nodding stocks. 

It can grow from full sun to part shade, with reports that it even thrives in full shade. It is not picky about soil types and is drought-tolerant once established. It is in the Borage family and has many similarities to that perennial herb.

Comfrey is an efficient soil nutrient accumulator. After the first flush of flowers, chop the plants down and spread the pieces around for an excellent garden mulch. Comfrey “manure” is a rich source of calcium and manganese. Add it to your compost pile as well as the comfrey leaves act as a bio-activator. The plants will regrow quickly.

It can quickly cover an open area and does well on slopes and hillsides for erosion control.

In Susan’s front yard, blooming with azaleas.

It is easily propagated by root cuttings or division. It is difficult to remove all the roots when transplanting it and it will return, so plant it in a spot where you intend to keep it.

Dwarf Comfrey is a pollinator powerhouse plant. Adding it near your vegetable garden encourages bees to visit your nearby tomatoes and other plants to pollinate them as well. Beekeepers will especially want to cultivate this groundcover near their hives.

In Susan’s back garden.

It is a desirable groundcover for use under fruit trees and berry bushes. The comfrey’s root systems don’t compete with that of the trees and shrubs. A solid groundcover of Dwarf Comfrey eliminates the need to weed-whack and mow around the fruit-bearing plants, which protects them from possible mechanical injury.

Deer do not find it palatable and it is free of serious disease and pest issues.

In the entrance garden to a commercial building that Susan adopted, it filled in quickly and is admired by passers-by.

According to plant expert Barbara Melera, “Comfrey’s most-significant qualities are related to what the plant does for garden soil. The fat roots aerate heavy clay soils, breaking them up into much more-amenable loam.”

Kathy Jentz is editor of Washington Gardener Magazine, author of three books, and host of the award-winning podcast Garden DC. 

Kathy Jentz on Dwarf Comfrey, with photos from Susan’s gardens originally appeared on GardenRant on July 19, 2026.

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