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4.5
Here's a test: ask any householder about their "landscape" and I will bet you get a list of flowering plants and possibly some small shrubs and a particularly lovely tree or two. Speaking broadly, almost since the time humans established permanent dwellings, plants have been seen as decoration. That's it. Eye candy.We gardeners in western South Dakota remember the truly stirring comments of Doug Tallamy, Ph.D. who spoke to us about his experience and philosophy expressed in his book, Bringing Nature Home (which should be on everyone's bookshelf). He suggested broadening the traditional definition of `landscape' to describe an organic, vibrant, vigorous, ecological, living whole. We do this, he said, by understanding the importance of and support of all the life systems in our environments. Thus we are encouraged to accept, for example, the important place of myriad insects to feed the birds and native plants to draw those insects, to put into play the vigor of living species that co-evolved. The great truth is the realization that we cannot garden selectively...everything in our landscape has a place and is connected for the health of the whole. This is easy to say; it is hard for some of us to do.Timber Press has just released a book by Rick Darke and Doug Tallamy, The Living Landscape. Let me state without hyperbole: this is the best gardening book I have ever read. Darke is a landscape consultant who combines art, photography, ecology and stewardship of living landscapes with years of experience as Curator of Plants at Longwood Gardens. He has partnered with Tallamy who brings passion and experience in many areas of ecology and whose research, according to the author notes, "...is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities." There it all is: the crucial connection of insects, plants and diversity of animal communities in our gardens.Although Darke's photographs are stunningly beautiful, this is not JUST a coffee table book. The Living Landscape describes, illustrates and promotes landscape "layers" and their functions as horticulture, as botany, as ecology, as biology, and as a challenge for educated stewardship.Chapters titled "The Community of Living Organisms: Why Interrelationships Matter More Than Numbers" and "The Ecological Functions of Gardens: What Landscapes Do" including "Applying Layers to the Home Garden" are bookended by discussion of the various layers, in the wild and in our home gardens - tree canopies, herbaceous plants, wet edges (stream and pond sides), the dynamic edge which we here in the Black Hills would call the forest interface, meadows and grasslands and layers of time and community and more.The authors have included comprehensive lists of selected plants for all areas, including 13 pages of plants for the Midwest and mountain states. The book delivers solid scientific information based on the vast experiences of the authors.The bonus for beginning gardeners is that the information is delivered with the authors' passion for understanding how landscapes really work and illustrated by photographs that are as instructive and applicable for persons on the East coast as they are for those of us in the Upper Midwest. This works because, in my view, principles - ethical principles - are illustrated, not simply sites.The bonus for experienced gardeners is that the authors lead with experience, research, and science, and in the process, at least in my case, deliver hearty portions of opportunities to experience reverence for life, a phrase brought into public use by the famous polymath, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who received the Nobel Peace prize in 1952. In `Civilization and Ethics' he opined that observing the world (landscapes) around us "...affords me my fundamental principle of morality...that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life..."This book, while teaching us, surely, calls us to expand and embrace a greater view of Nature, much as Aldo Leopold did in Sand County Almanac.This is a book I have been waiting for. It broadens our definition of a garden, any garden. It empowers the gardener with new vision, understanding and vocabulary and places him smack in the center of the ecological dynamic to ponder this question: as gardeners do we only decorate or do we also understand, support, and appreciate the living layers of our gardens?Cathie Draine
