A shared garden

Permaculture is a philosophy that inspires me, although I don’t anticipate fully realizing its ideals in my garden. It envisions a lightly managed landscape that provides for all living things, including humans.

Permaculture gardens combine many kinds of plants in a productive whole

 

     Reading Toby Hemenway’s book Gaia’s Garden, my introduction to this approach, I wondered about his suggestion that a home gardener grow multiple fruit trees as members in “guilds,” communities of plants that work together. What if I really had productive apple, pear, peach and cherry trees in my yard? I imagined I’d have far more fruit than my family could possibly eat. Composting fruit we couldn’t eat or letting it rot on the ground didn’t sound desirable or sustainable. 

Why grow more apples than you and passing raccoons can use?

    In a chapter on urban permaculture, Hemenway proposed viewing a whole neighborhood as a permaculture garden. I could grow an apple tree, another neighbor a pear, and we could share the fruit. That sounded more neighborly and much more practical. 

    When I’m walking around town coveting the flowering trees and shrubs growing in other yards, I’m reminded of Hemenway’s idea. We share the spring landscape. We all get to enjoy trees covered with sublime blooms. They’re a community asset, even if each tree grows in someone’s front yard.

Someone else's azaleas

    I don’t own a flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), which is one of my favorite native trees. I didn’t plant one when I started my garden because I thought they were all going to succumb to anthracnose, a fungal disease on the rise at the time. As we know, that didn’t happen. I can’t see where I’d shoehorn this understory tree into my landscape at this point. That’s OK, though, because so many beautiful white- and pink-blooming dogwoods grow in my neighborhood. 

Dogwoods are blooming in my neighborhood now

    I also don’t need to own pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule). These shy native orchids bloom at this time of year on woodsy hillsides with high shade from conifers. 

I came upon these lady's slippers during a walk in the woods

You can buy ethically grown specimens propagated in nurseries from seed (not plants collected from the wild, which is illegal on federal lands and undesirable anywhere else). But why take the risk? I don’t want to bring home a precious plant and kill it with the wrong growing conditions. Better to enjoy it where it grows naturally in local conservation areas.

    Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) are among the beautiful perennials that are never going to grow in my yard. 

Oriental poppies don't work in my garden

I tried a few, but I just couldn’t offer them the right site. There was nowhere sunny enough in my yard. The one or two flowers they produced leaned hard toward the western light coming over the back fence, hiding their faces from our view. But I know of a front yard a few blocks away where a talented gardener displays a luscious swath of these flowers every June. All I have to do is stroll by this neighborhood asset.

    I remind myself that I don’t have to own one of every plant I admire. I can enjoy them in the larger garden that we share.

More irises than will ever bloom for me, in a neighbor's yard