Let Nature Be

I must confess I am a wild gardener. I don’t plant to form, in neat tidy rows or symmetrical arrangements. I love to fill spaces with plants I like, in no particular order, and let them go wild I love self-seeders, like foxglove and Spanish lavender, that spread wherever they want and reproduce themselves in abundance. I love the feel of moss in a lawn and the color mix of yellow and blue I got one year when I had loads of dandelions in bloom at the same time as my grape hyacinths

Growing up I loved our backyard full of blackberries, fruit trees, and our grape arbor. I detest hedges, especially those like in the picture above where loads of labor has been invested to make them match the line of the fence. And I do not like topiary, where trees and bushes are “sculpted” to appear like the picture in someone’s mind and not allowed to be what nature intended. In my opinion if you want to display a vision in your mind let it be in marble or on canvas, not in contorting living, growing plants.

I do not try to mandate – nor could I – what people do with their own property and what they find there. To each his own is a motto I agree with. As long as a person’s choice is not harming another they are free to do as they will. But I think we have too much of a tendency to try to shape nature into our image and not appreciate its innate beauty.

So enjoy plants as they spread out – like the raspberry canes I had in my backyard, the squash vines in the neighboring garden plot that decided to reach beyond the boundaries, or the sweet peas that showed up mysteriously in my patch of radishes. Let nature be wild – you can still enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of your labor. Don’t corral it in, let nature be.