This month’s book, Planting in a Post-Wild World:  Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West presents an alternative to the landscapes that fill our yards with plants that do not touch, or touch because they have grown beyond their allotted space. Bare areas in the beds are covered with mulch to prevent weeds, that grow anyway. Maintenance consists of pruning, weeding, mulching, watering and spraying, all costly in terms of time, money and effects on our environment.

By “a post-wild world” the authors mean a world where “the wilderness of our ancestors is utterly gone.” “There is no going back.”    

Rainer and West’s alternatives are landscapes that cover the ground in layers, but not the familiar layers of tree, shrub and groundcover. They describe their design framework as structural, seasonal theme and ground cover layers. The structural layer is formed of tall forbs (flowers) and grasses. The seasonal themes are created with flowers and textures while the ground cover layer functions by preventing erosion and weed growth.

Their designs and those of their colleagues, most often seen in botanical, public and estate gardens, utilize drifts of plants interspersed with taller structural plants with a cohesive layer of smaller plants with muted colors and textures. The authors create plant communities based on close study of all their characteristics. The noninvasive plants are either native or exotic and include many cultivars. These beautiful gardens are called resilient landscapes. They define a resilient planting as one where “plants are allowed to interact with other plants and respond to a site.”

I have written about the sense of loss that many have had when realizing that the tall grass prairie is gone. Rainer and West write about the sense of loss of native sites and how this creates a craving for an encounter with the natural world. Their solution is to create landscapes, small and large, that evoke the shared memories of common landscape patterns. They draw inspiration from spontaneously colonized areas such as common weed patches. “By focusing on naturally occurring plant communities, as opposed to those that are purely native, the focus is shifted from a plant’s country of origin to its performance and adaptability.” This is a very different approach from those who design native landscapes or sustainable landscapes which may include a small number of noninvasive exotic plants.

Throughout the book the authors write about the value of diverse landscapes and plant communities without ever mentioning the creation of habitat for native insects, birds, butterflies and small mammals. Native plants are crucial in these landscapes. The authors have tipped their hats to these plants, preferring to value most those exotic plants that adapt well to site conditions and add great ornamental value. These exotic plants and hybrids of native plants offer the designer a larger pallet of colors and flower shapes and do not provide the beneficial ecoservices that sustainable gardens with predominantly native plants provide.

In this period of climate change, it is more important than ever to protect, sustain and encourage the diversity that native gardens provide. Gardeners want landscapes that provide native habitat because these gardens provide an outdoor experience for their families as well.