Wildscaping North Texas: episode 2

Our series on thinking outside the boxwood continues.

by Anne Meyer

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Wildscaping is not only about bringing nature into your garden -- it's about bringing nature into the way you garden.

We've been conditioned for years to believe that plants are incapable of surviving without man-made products to fend off disease and insects. And yet... plants have been bursting with life before the test tube was ever invented! By harnessing nature's own tested processes, we can have beautiful, bountiful gardens.

While the complexity - the magic, really - of natural ecosystems is the stuff of many fascinating books, it boils down to three elements:

1. The plants. "Bloom where you're planted" is a fine mantra for a person down on his luck, but it doesn't work in the garden. The heat and humidity of North Texas are hard for many plants, so choose tough natives and a few well-adapted non-natives. McKinney's Heard Museum has an excellent list of butterfly plants here - and they are also lovely landscape choices.

2. Biodiversity. One long line of the same kind of plant is boh-ring, and it invites calamity: A soil-borne disease or insect infestation at one end will carry through to the other end. Since different kinds of plants host different kinds of insects both above and below ground, staggering species acts as a firebreak to problems.

3. Love your dirt. The soil is the heart, lungs, and liver for your plant -- if it's healthy, your plant will be healthy!! Before planting, loosen up that tight clay with compost until you get a nice crumbly consistency. A handful of red lava sand and another handful of expanded shale will provide extra minerals and improve drainage. There are lots of organic fertilizers available; a proven favorite is earthworm castings.

And finally: MULCH. If you do nothing else, MULCH. Top off your bed with a couple of inches of any kind of compost, then a couple of inches of locally processed hardwood or cedar mulch. You've probably already heard that mulch improves moisture retention and suppresses weeds. Maybe you've heard that the mulch will break down over the year and sink in to loosen up the soil for next year's garden. But the most important part about mulch is that it acts as a sunscreen to the soil -- to the roots, the earthworms, and the bazillion little microorganisms in the soil that will do the work for you if you let them.

One hour spent mulching my garden prevented a hundred hours of nursing and replacing sick plants. With healthy plants feeding the hummingbirds and butterflies, I can spend time on other stuff. Like reading Pegasus News. Or taking a nap in the hammock.

Now that's thinking outside the boxwood!!

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Videography by John P. Meyer