A New Place, a New Garden

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Oak saplings at MWRD Dear Readers, Over the past few months, I have heard from a number of folks asking when I would start posting again. This has been heartening: an interested (small) reading public! Soon, I’d say and then do, not much. The truth is, since last I posted, almost two years ago, my life has changed a great deal in ways both dramatic and subtle. It’s taken awhile to adapt. In early 2023, my husband and I decided to leave our old, loved house with its 35-year-old native plant garden, and move into a hundred-year-old two-flat with our grown daughter and her dog. We felt happy to be upholding that fine old Chicago tradition of multi-generational two-flat living. However, like anyone else who has left long-term, settled life in one place, we discovered that the phrase “we moved,” doesn’t even begin to do justice to the upheaval involved. And then there’s the starting over/settling in process requiring new adjustments and forming new habits of life, for much longer than you m...
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Ecological Gardening

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At one time all gardening was ecological, based on organic inputs and using mostly native plants. During the twentieth century, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and the standardized use of exotic plants, changed gardening practice to the extent that gardening could be very harmful to the ecosystem. Ecological gardening encompasses philosophy and practice that reverts to the old idea that a garden should be part of and work with nature to create beauty and grow food, using modern ecological knowledge and organic methods.

An ecological garden can be a 20,000-acre prairie restoration, a 100-acre organic farm, a 1/4-acre suburban yard, or a 25x125-foot city lot. Goals and methods may differ, but the central philosophy of managing the land while contributing to the health of the biotic community, or ecosystem, remains the same.

Some attributes of ecological gardens:
  • They are beautiful
  • They conserve, restore and repeat (echo) the local landscape
  • They are true to place and ecosystem
  • They use mostly or all native plants (except in agriculture)
  • They are sensitive to the needs of and provide habitat for other species
  • They build soil health
  • They use organic inputs and sequester carbon
  • They help manage water