I was getting ready for a party recently when I decided it would be a good idea to clean out a random cabinet in the kitchen. I found these old plant tags from the early years of gardening our current house and couldn’t throw them away without snapping a picture. Some of these plants are still thriving, some have spread themselves around the garden, and many have died.
The COVID years of my gardening hobby feel a bit manic to me at the moment. I remember going to plant nurseries when we first moved in like I NEEDED to fill a garden while I was still overwhelmed with the idea of mowing the yard. It is also sweet to remember purchasing and planting each of these. It’s all part of the process – planting, growing, harvest, renewal. I’m still in the phase of winter (and parenthood) where the thought of plants and gardens is exhausting to me, but this little memory moment is giving me a glimmer of hope for bluer skies, buzzing bees, and the delightful surprises of a garden brought back to life.
The other day I walked by this little island of English Ivy in the James River Parks System and dreamed about filling it with native plants.
Considering the size of the JRPS and the extent of the invasive species domain, these little slivers are exciting to me as a manageable place to start restoring the native undergrowth. I could easily dig up and replace this ivy in a weekend. It also feels strategic to start with these small protected areas deep in the forest – each established native plant will begin producing seeds and spores that will start to spread by the thousands.
These seeds and spores will build up in the forest seed bank so that any time the soil is disturbed (including when native plants are removed) the seeds will already be in the soil, ready for the chance to take over. It’s ultimately much cheaper than purchasing the seeds themselves and the sooner we get those plants in the ground the sooner they start to do that work.
I’ve already written some thoughts on this idea of rewilding the JRPS so I do have a grand vision for the area, but in general I am a piecemeal gardener. I usually prefer to work slowly, one section at at time, and whenever I see these little moments I can’t help but connect the dots and see the vision coming to life.
A little over three years ago, in the early days of fall, I noticed myself looking forward to the first frost. It had been a season of upheaval in my life and I was tired. Everything in the garden felt like too much: the tomato plants were enormous, mosquitoes continued to test my sanity, and even trees seemed tired from the growth.
I was excited for the cold-weather months. It can be a relief when everything outside looks like death and the work (for a time) is done. I looked forward to hikes and runs when you can see straight through the faded underbrush. What I did not know at that time, when the sunlight cuts across the landscape and flies and dust dance in the cool, dry air of harvest, is that in a couple of months I would lose one of my closest friends forever.
Unable to control the weather, I started to cut back in my own ways. I aggressively unsubscribed myself from email lists. My inbox had become overrun just like everything else. I also decided to stop drinking coffee. I noticed it was making me more anxious than focused, my mind a glutton for information, too busy with ideas and making connections to focus on tasks at work. With less caffeine I found myself breathing more deeply, crying more easily.
As time wound into winter, the landscape began to feel more manageable and muted. There were few weeds to pull, nothing to prune or harvest. During winter we find comfort knowing that nature is just resting, that everything is gone for a time, that there will be flowers and fruit again.
On the night of Christmas Eve, just past the darkest night of the year, I got a text from a friend asking me to call. I immediately felt that someone had died. When I finally reached her, she told me something unimaginable. After I got off the phone, I called another of my closest friends and shared what I couldn’t even fully believe myself.
Then all of the sudden, in my grief and loss, I wanted every bit of the chaos to come back. I wanted to get caught up in the weeds, the insects, the relentless advance of kudzu. The land, now bare and clear, felt more acute, more permanent, more extreme, life cleared out and put away. I wanted the change of seasons that felt familiar, the loss that turns back into life.
At the same time, I was grateful that I had been listening to my sadness over the previous months. I felt like my emotions were very accessible to me in the early days of grief and acceptance. Many times I wondered if leaving religion had also prepared me to grieve.
Sometimes I feel like religions treat death like it’s perennial or cyclical rather than permanent. They believe (and maybe I still believe on some level) that the person has been reborn instead of accepting that they are gone forever. This is just my personal experience, but it has always felt too soon, like a silver lining, to say that someone is in a better place before someone else has let them go.
I want to tie this up with some kind of “and yet” sentence where I channel my inner Margaret Renkl and talk about being grateful for the things that are going well, but it feels more appropriate to just accept and metabolize the loss.
Nature is full of metaphors of rebirth and renewal, but sometimes things do just die. Sometimes species go extinct. Climate change is looking very one-directional these days. So when spring came, and warmer temperatures brought ephemerals, buds, and other signs of life, he was still gone.
Summer followed and my friend was not here to enjoy the cool river on a hot, humid day, or whatever beach trip he had been planning with his family. Fall came around before too long and he wasn’t trick-or-treating or getting cozy on a couch. Then winter again and we all relived in our own way the experience of losing him that cold night. That is cyclical, I suppose. I am always grateful for the chance to remember him, see mutual friends, and let him go all over again.
Over the past couple of months I’ve rediscovered the loop walk around Belle Isle. I’ve been spending time in more secluded areas of the river lately and had forgotten how beautiful it is with sweeping views, changing topography, and people everywhere enjoying the water and trails.
One morning in September, I also noticed something else: I hadn’t seen a single bumblebee on the entire walk. I started to look more closely and in two months I’ve only seen bumblebees two times, a total of four, all on bluestem goldenrod. Otherwise, the forests and fields of the island seem sort of oddly quiet.
Not only have I not seen many bumblebees, but I also haven’t other bees, wasps, butterflies, bugs, or birds like goldfinches, hummingbirds, and cardinals.
I think the reason I’m noticing this absence now is that I’ve been gardening for a decade or so and I love to see plants as a part of the whole ecosystem. Over the past six years especially my current garden has come alive in a way that gives me a lot of joy. I see more bumblebees on a single anise hyssop at the same time than I have on Belle Isle recently. For the past week, panicled aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum) has been in full bloom around my house and there are more bees and bumblebees than I could ever count. I see goldfinches eating coneflower seeds, hummingbirds on the cardinal flower, and monarchs on the milkweed.
And my garden is definitely not the only one. Richmond is full of gardeners who are planting native or “nearly native” plants and attracting all kinds of birds and the bees. Which got me thinking: What if we could somehow organize everyone to invest their energy into the JRPS?
I’ve been toying with this idea for a little while now and I see it working something like this:
Starting with Belle Isle, a list of 30 or so first-round parcels are identified. These should be small, edges, islands, and otherwise manageable, well-defined parcels. These kinds of spaces would be really easy to manage and would have a lot of nice visibility:
These plots are designated as full sun, part sun, part shade, and full shade with a list of plants that are approved to be planted in the area. They could also be designated for tall, medium, and short-growing plants depending on the location.
A call is put out into the community for interested gardeners to join the program
Selected participants are placed in an orientation and trained on the process of invasive species removal, which plants that are pre-approved for planting, and the general overview of the program
Approved gardeners then “claim” plots on the map and the first thing they would do is string a simple string and stick barrier around their plot with a sign that explains the program and the project – they would take a photo of this and post it to a google doc or app as a record of their project for someone to verify compliance and serve as a “before” photo for the plot
The gardeners would work at their own pace to fully remove the invasives and replace them with the native plants appropriate for the amount of sunlight and location of that plot. A photo would be uploaded for every day of work on the plot and for all subsequent maintenance visits.
Gardeners would be expected to maintain their plot for as long as they are in the program including weeding invasives and tending to the plot for other needs.
If they have capacity (looking at you, retired gardeners!), they could select multiple plots depending on availability
Gardeners would also be asked to provide seeds and seedlings to a community crowdsourced greenhouse. Gardeners who don’t have time to garden their own plot could opt to only participate in this donation program for their seeds and volunteer seedlings to be used by other gardeners around the project site
Once the initial phase is complete, a detailed GIS map of the landscape is drawn to divide the entire island into small, garden-sized parcels, maybe 400 sqft each
The plots would then be organized in order of priority
Areas around all entrances/exits to the island
Areas along high-traffic pathways
Areas along low-traffic pathways
Areas in the interior of the woods and fields of the island
These plots would be assigned to more trained volunteers as the program continued to grow. If possible, a landscape team could be hired to plan the overall layout of the island and select a smaller number of plants for each location to provide a little more guidance on the final product
I know this is a little far-fetched and that there are already organizations doing a lot of this work. But this does feel on some level possible. The local knowledge, technology, and tools are all available.
I also think the sooner we start the better. Plants are basically seed factories. Once we start to establish a wider diversity of plants they will start to continue the work for us in spreading throughout the area.
In a very non-scientific search, there are 129 plants listed as native to Virginia on the Prairie Moon Nursery website which seems like a good place to start. With some professional consultation, we could finalize a list of plants, divide them up by their planting guides, and start some test gardens around the island. With so many deer living in the JRPS, it will be important to prioritize aromatic, deer-resistant plants like Purple giant hyssop (Agastache scrophulariifolia) and Yellow giant hyssop (Agastache nepetoides). These will have a better chance of becoming established over time. I have gardened with Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) for years and love the way that it spreads, attracts bumblebees, and blooms successively throughout the summer, but it doesn’t appear to be native to this region. Another deer-resistant perennial that I would like to see is Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium). It is very hardy, spreads generously, and attracts wasps, bees, beetles, and other small flying insects.
The middle of the island contains an open prairie that could be restored in the same way as the forests and trails. It seems to have full and partial sun exposure which would create an opportunity for many sun-loving perennials and grasses. More deep-rooted grasses would also provide an amazing opportunity for carbon sequestration. It seems like switchgrass and big bluestem are valuable in this way, but I’m sure there is an argument for most native grasses.
If there is a concern with the JRPS looking too manicured, I would support limiting the list of plants and also planning large colonies of a single flowering plant along with native ferns and grasses rather than a high diversity of plants in a single plot. It could look more natural for the species to be grouped like they have spread over time.
I think this project would work well on a stand-alone website with a front end that promoted the program and receives donations and a member login portal where members can manage their plots, post photos, and record donations.
The program could be funded in part through sales of excess seeds and plants grown in the shared greenhouse. It might even be possible to apply for carbon credits if the restoration were successful and extensive to warrant that. Of course, there are also grants and billionaires.
Once the program is functional, it could be expanded to include the entire JRPS. I can imagine there are many gardeners who would prefer to work in their neighborhood parks for convenience and sense of personal ownership. Every year there could be an outdoor awards ceremony on the island, etc. To scale this, we could sell licenses to other municipalities who could buy into the program and use the training materials, website design, etc. to manage their own crowdsourced rewilding programs. Training materials would be adapted to the native plants of that area, but otherwise could be fairly interchangeable.
I’ve really enjoyed imagining a Belle Isle that is buzzing with life, an oasis in the middle of a manicured/ruined landscape, and a pocket of life to inspire more and more people to garden with nature in mind. I don’t know exactly how, but I do believe it should happen. There is no way any of us would regret it.
During a recent visit to Maymont I noticed a small island of grass that I can’t stop thinking about. It feels like the perfect opportunity for a small meadow of perennials at the intersection of the more formal Maymont Mansion and more “natural” Robins Nature Center and Maymont Farm sections of the property.
The long, tear-drop shaped island of grass is in the middle of the photo below, but of course I already have ideas for the area along the creek as well.
Compared to the yucca project, this feels somewhat realistic. I would need to borrow black tarps to kill the grass, enlist some volunteers to clear the area a month or so later, install plants collected from my garden, and spread leaf mulch in between. It would be nice to put a small stick and twine “fence” along the edge while it’s getting established as well as a “Prairie in Progress” sign and some educational materials about the benefits of these types of gardens.
The cost of this could be essentially free. Here is a list of plants I can think of off the top of my head that I would be able to contribute:
Anise hyssop
Echinacea / coneflower
Mountain mint
Showy goldenrod
Milkweed (1 or more varieties depending on how they spread)
Coreopsis
Panicled aster
Rudbeckia / black-eyed Susan
Rattlesnake master
Spiderwort
Wild garlic
Aromatic aster
Bee balm
Foxglove beardtongue
Groundcovers including violet and wild strawberry
While doable, it would still require a lot of work obviously. I would need them to commit to watering for the first couple of months after install and provide ongoing support like cutting it all down to about a foot off the ground in the fall, weeding, and continuing to add more plants. Still too much for me right now, but a really fun thought.
One Saturday in early January, in the middle of cleaning and entertaining my kids, I got an idea for an art project and sketched the notes below.
I’ve been really interested in the life and death of Nicholas West for a little over a year now and continue to feel a strong connection to his story.
The basic idea is…
A collection of pots thrown from red clay harvested in and around Noonday, TX where Nicholas was tortured and killed
The pots are different sizes with different biographical information about Nicholas like his birth and death years, text from obituaries, anything significant from his story
Each pot would have a drop or two of my own blood. I want to make people a little uncomfortable when they pick up the pot and read the description. I want to make his death more tangible and remind people that all soil has seen bloodshed of one kind or another. (On a more cosmic level, I also love the connection between the iron in our blood and the iron in the soil which was all stardust flung across the universe from dying supernovae.) I’ve noticed that men are pretty squeamish about the idea of the blood, and women I’ve told are much more supportive which makes me want to do it even more.
In the pot will be planted a Yucca filamentosa, native to the southeastern US (from Tyler to Richmond), very hardy, tropical, and structural. The yucca will grow to fit the size of the container that it is in, the yucca is resilient, and in the spring it has a bloom several feet above most other plants.
Yucca is also the first plant that I really noticed and developed a connection to. It is the first plant I remember finding and foraging and I’ve planted and potted at least five in the last two houses where we’ve lived. I was in a dark place in my life and my interest in plants, yucca specifically, was an encouragement that has continued to center me and excite me while also driving me a little crazy with more ideas than I’ll ever have time for.
While I still love the idea of Yucca, more recently I’ve considered Hesperaloe parviflora, also known as “red yucca” or “false yucca.” I noticed it in Texas at some point and planted it in my garden 3-4 years ago. I had a naturalist walk around with me and he commented that he liked seeing it growing in Richmond because he didn’t know that it could. I love the idea of a Texas transplant thriving in Richmond and the idea of it being a “false” yucca feels appropriate for the Southern culture of repression and how much of myself I held back from others for so long. Of course I love the red bloom, the color of blood and nectar for hummingbirds stopping for a moment on their impossible migration.
On the surface of the dirt in the pot I want to scatter bits of ironstone found at Bergfeld Park, the place where Nicholas was picked up, the last place he was free. On my most recent visit to Tyler I pocketed some pieces of the stone and brought them back to a potted yucca I have by our back porch. It has been special to me to have them there as a connection to home
I’d love to sell replicas of the different styles of pots and give a portion of the proceeds to local LGBT community organizations in the Tyler area.
It would take months or years to really do this as well as I would want to – I haven’t even fired a clay pot since high school. I’d need time to harvest the clay, prototype different styles, and learn how to make them consistently well, etc. So with all that considered in addition to the constraints of full-time employment/parenting life, I’ve accepted that I’m probably not going to attempt it, as much as I want to. It felt better to share the idea here and let it go rather than hold it too tightly.
4.22.25 – Since writing this post I’ve thought more about the possibility of partnering with an artist to make the pots that I could use to plant and we could market the project together. Even still I don’t think I have the time to do it well, but the partnership would be really rewarding and it’s much more realistic to lean on someone’s existing expertise rather than try and develop it myself. It also got me thinking outside the box even more. Maybe this idea should actually be an assignment for a class where everyone chooses an event that deserves more recognition and designs an installation to share the story. Maybe it should just be an online project that collects memories and details from his story. Or maybe this just needs to be a section of my own garden: a shrine to his life and a broader connection to my own story, my hometown, and the resilience, growth, and occasional moments of flourish.
4.24.25 – While reading about “The Burying Grounds Memorial” at the University of Richmond I learned that Yucca, “is often found in the cemeteries of enslaved people, serving as living grave markers.” I have only just gone a few steps down this rabbit hole, but I’ve already found some interesting articles and anecdotes that support using it for the project. It seems the plant has long served to mark the memory of people who might have otherwise been forgotten, to bind their restless spirits after life, and to provide permanent protection to their physical remains.
“Fieldstones. Yucca plants. Seashells. The last object a loved one touched. For centuries, these items, cultivated from lives and landscapes, marked many graves at burial places for Black people in America.” National Grographic
“Some of the plots were marked with pieces of quartz or with yucca plants, which were used by many Southern Black families who could not afford stones.” ProPublica
“The phrase “pushing up yucca” has been coined to describe these graveyards, and there was a Gullah belief that spiny plants restricted the movement of the spirits of the dead.” Society of Ethnobiology
“Spiky clumps of yucca dot Odd Fellows cemetery as further reminders that this patch of woods was once a curated (if not manicured) space. Though widely found in cemeteries across the country, in African-American tradition specifically, yucca binds restless spirits to their graves. Easily transplanted and nearly ever-lasting, yucca was sometimes planted near the head of a grave in lieu of an expensive stone marker.” Black Wide-Awake
“Yucca is another plant that marks many early graves even today. It can live hundreds of years and represents eternity. In many African American communities it was also traditionally thought that yucca kept restless spirits in the grave.” City of Birmingham
“Due to their association with cemeteries, the yucca plant has also taken on an association with the supernatural, as a way to ward off evil spirits.” Lumpkin County Historical Society
3.31.26 – It would be very interesting to also shoot the clay several times (perhaps even the number of times Nicholas was shot if that is published information) when it is still wet and let it harden in whatever shape it takes with the bullets. The violence of guns is something we are too numb to in the US and we need to be forced to think more clearly about how terrible they really are.
If I make multiple pots in a series, the one with bullet holes could be separate from the one with the printed information and others.
Welcome to the world, little seed. We’ve been waiting for you.
Every rain, every flower, every bee, every beautiful dappled moment of summer were for you. Every leaf now dry and cracked on the ground was an engine of energy for your growth.
And now you’re here, ready with the fuel and protection you need to start the next chapter.
May you fly to the place where you were meant to land. May you dig down deep and find it within yourself to transform in the way that you know you know how.
May the deep, ancient memory guide you in the months to come. While most of us rest, you will be cracking, freezing, opening up the most sensitive parts of yourself to the world.
You will put down roots, once you have exhausted the fuel you were given, you will start to draw nutrients from the world and find your own sources of strength and sustenance.
May you grow, may you bloom with radiance, may you be visited by insects – your connections to the world beyond.
And when you have finished your work, may you produce seeds of your own, a part of yourself that will live on through the dark nights ahead.
When my dad was growing up in Dallas, he remembers a truck fogging his entire neighborhood with DDT. One time, he was killing hornets with a tennis racquet in his front yard when the truck drove by and most fell to the ground before he could kill any more.
After nearly a century of ruthlessly effective pesticides and the steady march of habitat loss, many insect populations have been devastated, a fraction of what they once were. I have heard stories of fireflies numbering in the thousands on a summer night while now there are maybe a dozen if any at all. When I search online for a blog post like this, I frequently get websites for exterminating the insects that I’m trying to learn about. Of course, there are insects I don’t like. I started an organic mosquito control program this year and I spread carpenter ant bait around my deck every once in a while. I’ve never had a roach problem, but if I did I’m sure I’d call someone. I like to think the active centipede population in the basement keeps them all in check.
I was raised to appreciate insects and in recent years I’ve started to care even more. I do what I can to help out by plating beneficial plants and offering decomposing waste in the compost. For the most part, I just enjoy these creatures and appreciate all the crazy shapes and personalities that insects bring.
***
May 2 – This was the first time I’ve ever seen an eastern eyed click beetle. The false eyes as a defense mechanism definitely made me look twice and feel like it was watching me as much as I was watching it.
June 1 – The earliest major pollinator show of spring around here is watching honey bees and bumblebees swarm a pair of Verbascum chaixii ‘Wedding Candles’ (aka Mullein). I first noticed this burst of activity last year and was very much looking forward to it this spring.
June 10 – It’s been a long time since I was this excited about an insect. When I first saw this hummingbird moth on some English lavender I was confused in the way that whomever named it obviously was as well. It hovers and flits just like a hummingbird and has what looks like the beak of a hummingbird, but it is actually a moth with a long tongue for drawing nectar.
June 11 – I let some parsley flower this spring. It’s the first time I’ve seen a parsley flower before and it was interesting to notice which insects were attracted by it. I’m hoping it goes to seed and brings back a whole flower bed of parsley next year. Below is a cool, black and blue false wasp.
Here are two Margined Leatherwing beetles ensuring future generations.
June 15 – In the next two photos, a metallic green sweat bee and a bumblebee forage on the earliest Echinacea blooms of the season. The sweat bees are especially beautiful to watch in the sun.
June 20 – Catnip is actually a great pollinator. I planted this last year and it really took off this spring. I’ve been watching all kinds of bees and hover flies swarm around.
June 24 – This next one might gross some people out – feel free to skip
I was recently cutting back suckers on a Crape Myrtle when I found a whole civilization of millipedes (Apheloria virginiensis, I believe) living in a crease in the stump underneath. I took a photo then also a video because the way they were all moving at the same time was completely mesmerizing.
June 27 – This is Euthyrhynchus floridanus, the Florida predatory stink bug, holding its prey. It’s a native stink bug that sometimes travels in packs to hunt other insects.
June 27 – A false wasp on English lavender. I think false wasps are some of the coolest looking flying insects in the garden.
Compared to other varieties, I have not been very impressed with yarrow (Achillea millefolium) as a plant for attracting pollinators. That changed this weekend when I looked more closely at our (much-expanded) clump of yarrow and noticed it swarming with a variety of insects. I planted it in spring 2020 and I imagine that for the past two growing seasons there wasn’t enough of it to attract the insect life I’m seeing today.
When I find some time, I would like to transplant some to the edges of my vegetable beds which are basically empty at the moment. I am not feeling particularly motivated to do veggies this year and I’m also dealing with a pretty overwhelming gastropod situation. Yarrow grows so densely it might deter the snails and slugs (and/or provide a sacrificial meal) while also attracting beneficial insects and apparently accumulating nutrients in the topsoil.
We are just exiting spring in Richmond. There are flowers on asters, peas, Spiderwort and mullein. Buds on the coneflower, beardtongue, yucca, and yarrow. And by the afternoon today and tomorrow, the temperatures are expected to approach triple digits, twenty degrees above average. Texas recently struggled to produce enough energy during a heat wave and in India birds fell from the sky. When I got home yesterday, with the weather and everything else on my mind, I was gifted a visit from a Luna moth.
Whenever I start to think that the garden is my responsibility, weeding, watering, and (unfortunately) overreacting when my toddler accidently tramples plants, I am reminded how fiercely nature is already fighting for itself. You can only take so much credit.
In a sort of baptism, I watered everything last night that I worried might be affected by the temperatures. I told the plants that rain with cooler air was on the way. I also wondered briefly if covering plants, typically something done to protect against a freeze, might soon become a summer-time protection from the heat.
I love the beauty and symbolism of gardens, but I also worry that the climate will change faster than we can adapt. I try to give what I have to give and hold on to gratitude for every bud and bloom.
I have a few patches of Ajuga reptans in the back yard that have been swarming with carpenter bees for the last couple of weeks. It’s a great match because both the bees and the plant are so aggressive. I got buzzed by a few bees while I watched and they were constantly fighting each other. The plant is spreading so quickly that earlier this spring I contemplated digging it out, but after watching the bees I’ve decided I’m going to let it go for now. It’s also an attractive evergreen groundcover and, for now, there is plenty of room for it to spread.
When I first moved in to the neighborhood, a man named Ly Hia walked over and talked to me about the plants on our property and how it had changed with previous owners over time. Whenever he drove by he would wave and smile and I spoke to him if I saw him outside. One time, a car with a flat tire pulled over near his house and the two of us worked trying unsuccessfully to change it.
A year ago, I learned that he had died. A post on NextDoor drew over 50 comments and neighbors shared stories about the man who had immigrated from Cambodia and made a life in Virginia. He had been an avid gardener and guerrilla tree trimmer around the neighborhood. I didn’t realize until he died that he had been keeping English ivy off of a Dogwood near his house. As the weather warmed, the ivy saw an opportunity and by last fall it had completely enveloped the tree, hanging low over the road.
On Election Day last November, a new work holiday, I decided to try and trim the vines. I didn’t have enough time to finish the project, but I cut them at the base of the trunk so they would gradually die off over the winter. Even the small portion of vines I removed filled an entire supercan.
This spring, I spent a few hours on a ladder removing all the remaining ivy and smothered limbs that had died. It was more work and way more dead plant material than I had expected. The tree suffered, but survived. A few weeks later I got the reward I had been hoping for: flowers for Lei, in memory of his energy and life.
In the summer of 2019, my mom connected with the family of her birth father, Bill Fothergill. We learned that he was a fun-loving man with fair, British skin and dark, brown eyes. He had met my mom’s birth mom in New York City after college. It’s fun to imagine that my mom’s newfound origin story might somehow be tied to my irrational love for the city.
After learning about her birth family, I moved into a new house and began obsessively researching plants to fill the property. One shrub that I came across was Witch Alder, aka Fothergillia. I love the look of this shrub. The leaves are dark, shiny, and irregular. The flowers come before the leaves, starting as chartreuse buds (my favorite color) then blooming into clouds of white. In the fall the leaves turn a rich red-orange.
I feel a special connection to this plant because of my heritage. I don’t know if we are related to Dr. John Fothergill, the English plant collector who brought the plant back to England, but it seems plausible enough. Because of the connection and a general interest in the plant, I ordered two Fothergillia gardenii (dwarf witch alder) the second fall we lived in the house. I’ve watched them grow for the past year, one doing much better than the other, and started to recognize it in other settings beyond my garden.
This past July, while we were in Tennessee, I saw the familiar leaves and branches of Fothergillia. The shrubs were beautiful, large, and well-established. They were also putting out suckers all around. I told my sister about them and we talked about snagging some before we left. The last night of the trip, before dessert, we walked over to the flower beds and unceremoniously yanked as many suckers out of the ground as possible. We went back to the cabin, wrapped them in moist paper towels, and put them in plastic bags for the journey home.
I felt a little like Dr. John Fothergill, collecting specimens for my personal collection. I potted them, put them in a place with morning sun, and essentially forgot about them for the next few months.
Three of them survived and I planted them in the easement along our property where I hope they will thrive and spread for many years. I can’t wait to see the blooms in the spring after establishing their roots all winter and I hope to eventually have suckers to propagate and spread.
As my mom has learned about her birth families I have felt more drawn to the maternal, Italian heritage we discovered early on: the wine, the pasta, the crowded plazas. This reflection has helped me embrace my English heritage: gardening, walking, observing, and my growing collection of information, plants, and ideas.
I think about compost all the time. From food scraps to humanure, we discard, bury, sterilize, and burn some of our most fertile resources. Decomposition of organic matter happens naturally, we just have to set simple public health boundaries for rats and transmissible diseases.
Growing up, my parents kept a couple of compost piles in the back yard and it was very normal for us to save food scraps in a plastic bin under the sink. I think the bin was actually a drawer from the freezer that we didn’t need for some reason. My interest in composting went to a new level during Thanksgiving break in the fall of 2008. I decided not to fly back to Texas and instead I visited my older brother at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, a community devoted “to caring for people and the Earth by learning and demonstrating a holistic, sustainable culture.” I had never been to such a place and I soaked it up. There was so much to see everywhere on the property. It felt like a place where every mundane aspect of life had been reimagined. Most important in the context I this post is that this was the first time I ever used a composting toilet. I will always remember my time at Earthaven as a formative, positive, eye-opening experience. Over the next couple of years I realized my role could be connecting with the culture and innovations at places like Earthaven and helping to translate them to the mainstream. In my mind, that involves making these practices beautiful and functional.
A year later, I started a composting program on my college campus. Digging up some of that pristine grass and installing the composting system at UR was one of my favorite days of college. It was my small attempt to make the place more interesting and feel connected to the soil.
It was a special project for me. I loved seeing friends carrying bags of compost from their apartments. Like many college programs, the compost system fell into disrepair and the boxes were removed a few years after I graduated.
My first year out of college, the brother who had lived at Earthaven moved in with me. He started a compost pile in the backyard and it was fun to get back into that routine. Of course, composting can sometimes be a little like a cast iron skillet: everyone has their own way to do it and sometimes they are hard to share. One time, I was doing something that my brother didn’t like and we got in one of the biggest fights of the year together. We’re passionate composters 🙂 My main issue was that I wanted composting to be a low-stress activity. Things break down. I don’t want to think too much about it. A few years later we moved into a different house and I felt the energy to get it going again. I bought a plastic tumbler, pictured below, because we had just a small garden in the front and patio out back. This is a picture of it in its current, discarded state.
This tumbler served me well for a couple of years. I like how easy it is to turn, how sturdy it is near the ground, and how it collects compost tea in the reservoir below. My main complaint is that it is difficult to get the compost out. It gets stuck in the corners, the opening is too small, and the compost can tend to get too wet even with the drain holes in the bottom. It was also not enough room for us. After it filled up I started supplementing with five-gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottom and sides.
My current composting system is a little more ambitious. We have more outdoor space now so lots more room to experiment. A couple of months after moving in I noticed that one corner of the back yard had a steep slope. The soil had washed down the hill and left the area eroded and also created a gap under the sidewalk above. I had read about contour lines and thought that I could set up a fence sort of perpendicular to the slope to hold my leaves, collect rain water, slow erosion, and start to build up the soil. As a bonus, I had somewhere to put my leaves every year. At some point in the process I also learned about leaf mold (composted leaves) and it has been incredible to dig to the bottom of the pile and find loads of this soil amendment to spread around the garden.
During the summer of 2020 I planted a wildflower seed mix around the top edge of the leaf pile. I like the flowers and also wanted the roots to help with building up the soil. I also added two natural wood terraces on contour, the top for planting and the bottom for walking around and reaching everything.
Around that same time I made a connection: if I was piling all of my dry matter in one place, it made sense to do my kitchen scrap composting there as well. I started to prefer the five-gallon buckets to the store-bought tumbler and I moved them over to the leaf pile to try it out. Once the buckets filled up, I let them compost until I needed the room. For the next stage, I dug holes into the clay farther up the hill and put the compost there to finish. Whenever I have the motivation, I dig it out and save it or spread it around. The photo below is from the summer of 2020.
And this is from the most recent fall, 2021. This photo was taken after the first major raking effort in the back yard so the pile finally started to fill back up. I love the look of leaves.
At one point I spray painted the buckets a camo grey color to try and help them blend in. I think it helped, but the paint is also chipping which is not ideal and eventually I just dug the buckets into the ground so they could be more easily buried in the leaves.
I really do love having the leaves so accessible. Not having enough dry matter has always been an issue for my compost so this is a real significant win-win.
I also like that with the compost more connected with the soil there is room for volunteer plants to sprout. Here is a spaghetti squash that unfortunately did not survive, but added some nice greenery.
These tomatoes at the top of the hill are all volunteers from the compost. They were prolific, producing far more than the tomatoes I planted “on purpose.” I wrote about them already in a previous post.
Here is a more recent view of the leaf pile after raking all the leaves from the back yard, front yard, and street. It is more than it looks.
Here is the same pile after doing a little grape stomp to keep it from blowing away.
I’ve filled it this much at least once more since taking these last two photos and I think I have one last large batch to rake before my full leaf harvest is complete. It may look like just a leaf pile, but it is an entire universe of worms, millipedes, ants, fungus, and an occasional salamander. Birds love to pick through the leaves for food. Here is some compost I recently turned out to make room for the next batch.
Composting is definitely a lifestyle. It can be messy and it usually involves interacting with rotting material at some point in the process. It’s also just so much easier and quicker to throw everything away. Even though I like my system, food scraps can pile up quickly. This is an aesthetic and time-consuming aspect of composting that can sometimes be a turn-off.
At this point in the process, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve become the “difficult composter” I wanted to avoid. In making this system that works so well for me I have also made it difficult for other people to participate. I want to work on the user experience so that anyone could take out the compost bucket and know what to do. In the spring I also want to plant some native honeysuckle around the fencing. I personally don’t mind the appearance, but I’ve received some negative feedback. Like I said, I want people to leave with a positive impression of compost and I want composting to be beautiful as well as functional so I’m happy to make the change. If friends and family associate rotting food with the sweet smell of honeysuckle then I will feel like I have done my job.
Last year, my younger sister came and stayed with us to help watch our toddler while daycare was closed. She also gardened a lot. At one point while she was here she planted garlic, just the regular kind from the store. It came up quickly and grew all winter long until I pulled it out looking like this:
After harvesting it, I dried it in the basement over the summer. I am not sure this is the right way to do it, but I finally brought it up today to take a look.
I’m pleased to say it all looks and smells like garlic! I appreciate how magical growing food still feels.
I’ll probably plant half of this in the next few days, roast the garlic scapes in spring, hopefully harvest the rest when it’s ready, then do it all over again. It makes me think about whenever it was that garlic was first spreading as a food. One person harvesting a head of garlic and planting it all that fall. Then, with several heads of garlic the next year, sharing a clove with close friends and family so they could start a crop of their own.
I admire perennial, wild gardens that have been cultivated to bloom throughout the growing season. When I see most of my perennials have gone to seed, I especially notice examples of flowers that that are still or for the first time in full, glorious bloom. I don’t have the time or energy to add anything to my garden right now, but I hope to eventually bring in the first and third on the list. I know it isn’t going to save us from climate change and mass extinction, but it is still so encouraging and sweet to see bumblebees floating from flower to flower this late into the fall.
Canada goldenrod, Tall Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) – this flower has been planted as a companion to fruit trees in the Fonticello Food Forest near my house. I am a little worried that the goldenrod is actually crowding out the trees at this point, but I don’t care because it is incredible on its own and appears to be attracting all kinds of insects.
Panicled aster, Lance-leaf aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum) – also at the food forest, I noticed this aster completely buzzing with activity. They have it planted in a wet, low lying area of the property and it has thrived. When I got home, I was kind of thrilled to realize that I had two clumps of it growing in my garden also (last picture), a surprise gift from the native wildflower mix that I spread in 2020.
Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum) – I was at the Barboursville Vineyard last week for a wedding and noticed for the first time the Allegrante Meadow just below the tasting patio. Its acres of flowers had clearly faded from their peak summer color, but the blue mistflower was thriving. It’s color pops brilliantly against the browns and blacks of fall.
Sulfur cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) – Another gift from a seed mix in the past, Sulfur cosmos have started to take over a corner of the garden. This summer I saw one bloom and go to seed. Then I saw several more. Now there are dozens of these flowers adding a really nice pop of orange. It does scare me a little how prolific this flower seems to be so I may add in some other flowers that will start to compete for space. Or just let the cosmos completely take over and be happy about it.
Update (10/25): yesterday I walked by a lovely mound of Aromatic Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium), probably ‘Raydon’s Favorite,’ and realized it needed to be on this list. It was already somewhere in my garden plans, but seeing this example in person was an extra dose of motivation to include this plant some day.
Just some photos and thoughts to remember early fall, 2021. The first winter we lived in our house, I terraced and seeded the side of our yard to create a wild edge. I have received so much joy from the plants that have come up now two years in a row in this section of the yard. I keep filling in gaps, but the bulk of color and life come from the seeds planted on turned soil a year and a half ago.
New England Aster has taken the place of first coreopsis then coneflower in the wild edge. Bumble bees and other insects have enjoyed this late summer bounty.
Russian Sage that struggled this summer, but I hope will thrive in the fall and come back with full strength in the spring.
Ajuga reptans grown from seed is spreading in a few clumps nearby. I don’t remember planting this specifically, but I have thrown out a few seed mixes and wouldn’t be surprised if this was included.
I have graduated to mostly buying my flower seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery. I love their commitment to natives for habitat restoration and the variety of options is remarkable. I don’t limit myself to natives, but I’m definitely drawn to them and find myself using them more and more.
I filled half a “supercan” with weeds from this dog run a week or two ago. I let it go to seed last year and paid the price. I plan to put down cardboard and mulch to turn this into a walking path around the side and down the hill to the back of the yard.
I have already seen one small, extremely fast bird feeding on these spent purple Echinacea/coneflower seed heads. I’ll leave all of this up through early spring.
Agastache has been a fun, repeat blooming, addition and now is home to a Yellow Garden Spider, building the perfect place to lay her eggs. I remember when I was six or seven we had a “zig zag” spider web like this outside the window of the kitchen of the house where I grew up and I have loved them ever since.
On a recent visit to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens I saw large sections of chives blooming and it encouraged me because I thought I had just been lazy not harvesting the herb. I plan to add more of these for next year.
The blue basil in the front of the house was inspired my dad’s pollinator garden. It has been a summer-long source of entertainment for me as a steady parade of wasps, bumblebees, and honey bees have spent hours floating from one flower to the next.
Another garden spider in between the sedum Autumn Joy. It’s devastating that the second search result for Orb-weaver spiders is a page on the Orkin website. Why anyone would fear, hate, and kill this insect is truly beyond me.
My mother has connected with her birth families over the past several years and we learned that her birth father’s last name was Fothergill. This plant is Fothergillia Gardenii (dwarf Witch Alder) and I feel like I have a special connection because of my new-found heritage. This one is looking great, filling out and nice and green, but the next one is not doing well, possibly struggling because I planted it in partial sun instead of full sun (it’s on the transplant list).
I can’t wait to see these Rosemary bloom in the spring. They were both maybe 5″ x 5″ x 12″ when I planted them in early 2020.
Achillea/yarrow that has naturalized well and continues to bloom.
This third bloom of the Verbascum (wedding candles) is not as glorious as the first and not nearly as much of a bee magnet, but still gives me joy and nice visual interest.
Liriope in full bloom has been making this circle pop for the last few weeks. The purple Irises in the middle are divided originally from my mom’s childhood home in Dallas. They were transplanted to California by her step mom, then again to Arizona, back to Texas, and finally flew on a plane to Richmond. It is a constant battle cutting back the suckers on the Crape Myrtle in the middle, but I finally feel like I have it in a good place. It shows off the evergreen shape of the Iris which is also a nice backdrop for the Liriope.
The newest flower bed has thrived for the most part. Roses and Hidcote lavender in bloom along the fieldstone path and near the peonies that I hope to see more from next year.
An impulse buy near the cleaning supplies section of Lowe’s, I have really enjoyed watching these Elephant Ear stretch out and claim their piece of territory.
I had dozens of volunteer tomato plants sprout this year to affirm me in my lazy composting methods. Here is one I left to grow along the ground. Newsflash, you don’t have to trellis your tomatoes! I watched a YouTube video once of an Italian family harvesting piles of tomatoes from their yard, none of them were staked. Of course there are benefits to staking, but this is a reminder to me to relax. Here are three perfectly good tomatoes grown near the ground near some faded Anise Hyssop.
Volunteer tomatoes on a trellis between two trees.
I had some extra sprouts so I tried out some different sections of the yard for tomatoes and will definitely be doing more up the deck next year.
Late summer bounty:
I believe this is a Praying Mantis egg case on this fig tree containing dozens or hundreds of eggs that will turn into those amazing predators of the garden.
Insects tucking themselves and their babies in for bed all over the place.
Parsley ravaged by Yellow Swallowtail caterpillars that I watched over the past week. I haven’t seen a crysalys yet, but hope to see the butterflies when they emerge.
Something, I think underground, is destroying what was for months a beautiful white-blooming salvia. I’m depressed about it, but will probably post this picture on a local NextDoor gardening group and see if anyone has suggestions.
When I planted this butterfly bush it was tiny, maybe two feet tall. It grew all winter long with shiny green leaves and bloomed for most of the summer until the main trunk wilted. I cut it and pulled the side trunk to the middle, but as you can see below, it is also dying. I think I have root rot and will have to remove the entire plant, but for now I’m leaving the branches that are still alive to bloom while I cut out the dead.
Margaret Renkl is a regular contributer to the NYT opinion section who has made me sigh more than once. Her observations in the garden connect with me on so many levels, from the plants and insects that we share to the sense that things are not what they once were. As someone who has lived in both extreme corners of the South (Eastern Texas and Virginia) I always appreciate her references and storytelling. She writes in a Southern lament style as she finds beauty in nature as well as the death and decay below the surface. In a more practical way, the essay by Margaret Roach shares wisdom from the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park. While Renkl mourns the loss of butterflies, Roach reminds me that while rural and suburban America are a toxic wasteland of pesticides, a new wave of natural meadow-style landscaping is turning cities into oases of natural beauty. Here are just some quotes and photos I enjoyed from each piece.
From Renkl, there is always beauty and death. She and I are living parallel lives and I’m so grateful that she writes because she helps me organize my own thoughts, she connects the ecosystem and helps me appreciate each part.
“How ragged we are now, dragging summer behind us like an old blanket we can’t set down. The homicidal heat of August has given way to the merely cruel heat of mid-September, but we are done with it even so. Everyone is cross, and not just the people.”
“And yet.
The mornings are a gift. Cool and damp, they feel like part of an entirely different ecosystem. If I’m poking around the garden early enough, I can spy all the darling bumblebee butts deep in the bells of balsam flowers where the bees have tucked themselves in for sleep.”
“The spent zinnias and coneflowers and black-eyed Susans provide plenty of seeds, and the beautyberries, arrowwood berries and pokeweed berries are ripe now, too.”
“Already the fall wildflowers are beginning to come into their own. The goldenrod throws its yellow plumes into the air; ironweed and asters purple the fields and roadsides; snakeroot blankets the forest understory; anise hyssop and elephant’s foot flowers call to the bees on the naturalized side of our yard. All of them feed the insects that feed the birds who need fuel for the migration, or for surviving the winter at home.”
“A basilica orb-weaver spider has built her cathedral outside our front door. Her web has been pummeled by rains again and again, but her pearly egg sacs, all strung together in a row, are safe. Every day I check them to be sure, and every day their mother watches me warily as I check.
She will guard them faithfully until she dies, and the last thing she will do is secure the guy wires they’ll need to guide them when they climb out of their sacs next spring.”
From Roach, practical wisdom and photos that make me dream of my next trip to New York.
“Rather than following the common practice of planting and transplanting in spring, for instance, she suggests shifting virtually all of that activity to autumn — and not cutting back most perennials as the season winds down.”
“But in just 11 years since the first section opened, the place has become a refuge and breeding ground for diverse and unexpected species. The state-threatened golden northern bumblebee (Bombus fervidus) can be seen happily collecting nectar on wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), while nearby, fluttering swarms of the common but colorful little pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos) are delighted to find so much of their host plant, smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve), to savor.”
“More than 180 species of birds have been sighted in the park. And not just the mallards and herring gulls that you might expect on a waterfront, but swallows, woodpeckers and rare sparrows, as well as 31 species of warblers. An extremely rare painted bunting (Passerina ciris) spent two months in the park one winter.”
“The practice she adheres to is called ecological horticulture. It’s the polar opposite of the purely ornamental version, which is driven by asserting control of plants in the name of aesthetics.”
“Spring planting “gets in the way of our work, instead of complementing it,” Ms. McMackin said. And in the past four years, her crew has gradually phased it out. Next year, there will be no spring planting at Brooklyn Bridge Park, except for some tree species that resent fall root disturbance.
“When we do plant in spring, and then summer arrives, it can be such an extreme environment — hot, dry and windy, too,” she said, and those are hard conditions for plants trying to root in. With a fall planting schedule, the winter that follows is easier on them.”
“In May and June, instead of planting, we can get weeds while they’re still small,” Ms. McMackin said. “You can hoe rather than having to hand-pull — getting rid of things that can cause massive problems later, if you don’t.”
“At Brooklyn Bridge Park, the gardeners skip most of the traditional fall cutbacks and cleanup. That leaves plenty of seed that can self-sow, or be eaten by birds, and preserves an overwintering habitat in the leaf litter for arthropods. Except where mulch or compost is needed, the approach is hands-off.”
“We just had an endangered sedge pop up. And we had a state-threatened saltmarsh aster appear that we relocated to our salt marsh,” she said. “It’s amazing what happens when ‘Leave things alone as much as possible’ is part of your maintenance strategy.”
Soon after we moved into our current home, I started doing one of my favorite things: digging up grass. One grass removal project became a cutting garden and a fieldstone path through the easement to a gate into our back yard. It was definitely worth the effort, we use it all the time. Here is what the area looked like before we started, just a standard, anonymous piece of grass:
In July, I got some help to dig out the first iteration and see how it felt. The path went from the street to the sidewalk, but I realized it would only work for the one car parked near the path. The stone in version 1.0 was just old concrete and pavers I’d found around the yard and these are still piled up in a stack at the end of the flower bed, waiting for me to have the energy and inspiration to do something with them. At this point, it was actually more dangerous to walk on because nothing was set. Then, I saw this post on NextDoor:
It was a lot of fieldstone (flagstone?) and a great price. It took my sister and I at least three trips in my smallish SUV and I was definitely worried about the suspension, but we got it to the house and started to lay out the new path. I never would have had the motivation to do this without her help.
First, we dug down into the path to start making way for the stone. We wanted the stone to be level with the curb and sidewalk. We also decided to extend the long tail of the path all the way down the side of the street so that any car parked along the way could use it. We poured paver sand down and added more wherever needed to level the stones and make the path smooth. We filled in the gaps with sand then dirt and some moss in the hope that it might take over eventually. I planted one plant at this point, a butterfly bush that was a replacement for one that had died within the return window. Here is how it looked soon after we finished:
To prep for the cutting garden, I amended the soil with compost, leaf mold from the garden pile, and peat moss. I wanted good moisture retention and good drainage. I don’t like tilling up soil and I may find another way to do this next time.
Later on last fall, I laid out peony (Shirley Temple, Sarah Bernhardt, and Karl Rosenfield), allium (giant Schuberti, Ivory Queen, and tiny caeruleum) and tulip (casa grande). I didn’t get pictures of it all, but I was glad to see the bulbs come up nicely in succession through early spring. The peony also all emerged and look great, still growing well into the summer months. Here’s a WIP photo with my peony roots laid out for planting down the right side of the bed:
In mid-spring this year, we added Roses (blushing knock out, Lichfield Angel, and coral drift), hidecote lavender, two asters, and another lavender moved from the backyard (originally from our last house). I also planted a catmint that is so far looking like it needs more sun and two Gerber daisies that I’ll want to move eventually since the colors don’t really fit in. Some more photos for now,
Always a good sign of soil health when you have mushrooms popping up in July 🍄
Something about the combination of these plants (coneflower, false sunflower, mountain mint, anise hyssop, and sweet pepper bush) has made this picket a hot spot for flying insects, especially at a time in summer when many other flowers have dried up.
Highways and Hallowed Halls 