A Garden on the Edge: Creating a Heritage Habitat Garden

By Lorin Knapp

Daily life for most of us, particularly Americans, frequently achieves a pace that becomes busy to the point of being harried. As one activity spins into another, each day distinguishes itself little from any other day. In a like manner, our immediate surroundings of buildings, products, or media set a uniform scene for our lives. Meanwhile, the sameness spreads from one place to another relentlessly leaving cities and suburbs where once could be found bucolic countryside, native landscape, and wildlife habitat. Many people seek an escape. That escape need not be far away. It can be as close as a home garden, particularly one based upon a natural design that belongs where it is located.
Particularly well suited to providing an escape from the mundane is a garden filled with native plants that belong in the general area of the site and that are chosen to specifically fit the conditions of the site. By being within such a garden, the authenticity of its site lets both people and wildlife know that they are home. A garden that provides such authenticity finds itself resting gently on the land gracing the site with a natural style that belongs. That garden breaks away from some of the conventions of design promoted by various media and the horticulture industry that intend first to sell profitably produced plants and landscaping material across the nation.
Media promoted gardening styles, including the plants in them, besides intended for use just about anywhere come in and out of fashion and use. One years set of must-have plants and landscaping materials promoted by the media replaces another in succession. Meanwhile, the horticultural industry, naturally in pursuit of as much business as possible, touts varieties of plants for garden use that are adaptable to as wide an area as possible. As a result, similar-looking gardens or at least the plants in them appear across the country and even around the world often out of context of the area in which the garden grows. Having the latest plants and garden style at a minimum provides a point of conversation for the gardener and visitors to the garden even if much the same plants and landscaping appear across town or across the continent.
Just as uniformity in garden styles and ubiquitous plants seem nearly to overtake suburban and urban areas, a movement to landscape with native plants has begun to gain acceptance. Any gardener can be a part of this. The effort to include native plants reflects a desire by some gardeners and landscapers to create a garden anchored with a sense of the place that includes the garden. This new direction may be happening just in time. More and more native habitats disappear leaving fewer places for the native plants that lived there, not to mention the wildlife that joins them. Both native plants and wildlife need new places in which to live. Home gardens that incorporate places for native plants and wildlife may be those sanctuaries. All gardeners are in fact gardening on the edge of an era in which widely dispersed cultivated gardens may be the key in continuing the existence of some plants and maybe even some of the other living things that go with them.
In order to show an example of how a new garden style incorporating native plants can be done in nearly every garden, the story of the evolution of the gardens at Windflower Grove has been used for illustration. Growing on the tallgrass prairie of central Iowa along a woodland edge, the gardens continue to be the authors own life work, which continues on as it has for over sixty years. Many specific methods proven in the gardens to work for growing native plants are shared in order to make inclusion of native plants a little easier for others.
Gardening with inclusion of native plants and encouragement of wildlife gradually evolved over the years at Windflower Grove into a garden style that can be described as heritage habitat gardening. Specific rules of the style are few and flexible in o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483645865

Lorin Knapp

Lorin Knapp has been gardening over more or less the last sixty years at what are now known as the gardens at Windflower Grove. As the years passed, he became interested in native plants particularly when it became apparent that most of the plants that had always been on the site of the gardens were native to the area around central Iowa. This grew into an interest in the birds and butterflies that had been around the area and ultimately adding native plants to the gardens that were best for particular kinds of birds and butterflies. He thought that the best way to pass on his knowledge about how to incorporate native plants into any garden was to a book A Garden on the Edge.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Lorin Knapp.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/28/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Introduction

Part 1 - 1—Moving Toward a More Natural Landscape

Chapter 1 - The Need and a Solution

Disappearing Native Landscapes

Consider Consequences

A New Garden Style

Chapter 2 - Overview of Heritage Habitat Gardening

Putting Back

Carrying Forward

An Authentic and Gentle Garden

Part 2 - Making a Heritage Habitat Garden

Chapter 3 - The First Steps

Learn about Habitats of the Region

Determine Conditions on the Garden Site

Identify Native Plants That Belong

Plan a Transition

Chapter 4 - Heritage Habitat Gardening Practices

Where Else to Learn What Works

General Considerations

Preparing the Area

Size of the Garden Can Vary

Water Belongs

Beyond Letting Things Go

Weeds

Defining Boundaries

Nonnative Compatibles

Chapter 5 - Special Elements

Native Wildflowers and Grasses

Wildflowers and Native Grasses at Windflower Grove

Trees

Trees in the Gardens at Windflower Grove

Attracting Birds to Your Garden

Birds at Windflower Grove

Encouraging Butterflies

Butterflies at Windflower Grove

Critters Sharing the Landscape

Chapter 6 - Living in a Heritage Habitat Garden

Living There Now

Carry on into the Future

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Cheri, Owen, Cleona and Lester Knapp and Vicki, Elizabeth and Vernon Sodawasser, and many others whose decisions and help have assisted with the creation and continuation of the heritage habitat garden at the gardens at Windflower Grove.

On the Cover

Wildflowers from the Gardens

at Windflower Grove

From top to bottom the

Varieties are: Jacob’s Ladder,

Prairie Smoke, and

Trumpet Vine

Introduction

Daily life for most of us, particularly Americans, frequently achieves a pace that becomes busy to the point of being harried. As one activity spins into another, each day distinguishes itself little from any other day. In a like manner, our immediate surroundings of buildings, products, or media set a uniform scene for our lives. Meanwhile, the sameness spreads from one place to another relentlessly leaving cities and suburbs where once could be found bucolic countryside, native landscape, and wildlife habitat. Many people seek an escape. That escape need not be far away. It can be as close as a home garden, particularly one based upon a natural design that belongs where it is located.

Particularly well suited to providing an escape from the mundane is a garden filled with native plants that belong in the general area of the site and that are chosen to specifically fit the conditions of the site. By being within such a garden, the authenticity of its site lets both people and wildlife know that they are home. A garden that provides such authenticity finds itself resting gently on the land gracing the site with a natural style that belongs. That garden breaks away from some of the conventions of design promoted by various media and the horticulture industry that intends first to sell profitably produced plants and landscaping material across the nation.

Media promoted gardening styles, including the plants in them, besides intended for use just about anywhere come in and out of fashion and use. One year’s set of must have plants and landscaping materials promoted by the media replaces another in succession. Meanwhile, the horticultural industry, naturally in pursuit of as much business as possible, touts varieties of plants for garden use that are adaptable to as wide an area as possible. As a result, similar-looking gardens or at least the plants in them appear across the country and even around the world often out of context of the area in which the garden grows. Having the latest plants and garden style at a minimum provides a point of conversation for the gardener and visitors to the garden even if much the same plants and landscaping appear across town or across the continent.

Just as uniformity in garden styles and ubiquitous plants seem nearly to overtake suburban and urban areas, a movement to landscape with native plants has begun to gain acceptance. Any gardener can be a part of this. The effort to include native plants reflects a desire by some gardeners and landscapers to create a garden anchored with a sense of the place that includes the garden. This new direction may be happening just in time. More and more native habitats disappear, leaving fewer places for the native plants that lived there, not to mention the wildlife that joins them. Both native plants and wildlife need new places in which to live. Home gardens that incorporate places for native plants and wildlife may be those sanctuaries. All gardeners are in fact gardening on the edge of an era in which widely dispersed cultivated gardens may be the key in continuing the existence of some plants and maybe even some of the other living things that go with them.

In order to show an example of how a new garden style incorporating native plants can be done in nearly every garden, the story of the evolution of the gardens at Windflower Grove has been used for illustration. Growing on the tallgrass prairie of central Iowa along a woodland edge, the gardens continue to be the author’s own life work, which continues on as it has for over sixty years. Many specific methods proven in the gardens to work for growing native plants are shared in order to make inclusion of native plants a little easier for others.

Gardening with inclusion of native plants and encouragement of wildlife gradually evolved over the years at Windflower Grove into a garden style that can be described as heritage habitat gardening. Specific rules of the style are few and flexible in order to fit with the site of a particular garden and the interests of the gardener. However, the overall idea is to provide a place for native plants and for the wildlife that authentically belong there. The plants and the wildlife will appreciate the effort.

Even author Henry David Thoreau often considered one of the earliest conservationists in America understood not only the importance of preservation but also that the area size may be small. He noted the need for even a little oasis of wildness in the desert of civilization. In the world of today, a home garden may have to be that little oasis of wildness.

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

—John James Audubon

Part 1

Moving Toward a

More Natural Landscape

Chapter 1

The Need and a Solution

Disappearing Native Landscapes

Wherever a garden grows in North America, it most likely lives in a place where the local terrain has been radically altered. It is not hard to come to this conclusion since nearly all of the areas of the continent have been improved in one way or another. With only a shadow or less of the local native landscape existing especially near where most of us live, indigenous plants and wildlife struggle to find a place to call home. Native plants and wildlife definitely need help.

Even though in terms of what native plants and wildlife desire, places of appropriate sanctuary and habitat do exist. Most of these places in terms of size are found in national, state, and local parks, preserves, and sanctuaries. Others can be found. Private habitat preserves of varying sizes formally recognized, and some not designated do appear across the country. Native plants and wildlife still need more space.

If your garden grows in the midst of intense and maybe extensive development, native plants and wildlife of the area likely need help urgently. Most of us live in these kinds of locations where little space has been set aside for native landscapes. In this situation, the original terrain probably has been little appreciated for its natural beauty and has been fully commercially exploited. Little may be evident of what was once there. This is especially true in nearly all parts of the tallgrass prairie.

The beauty of the tallgrass prairie in its natural state has been so overlooked, and the rewards of exploiting the soil beneath it have been so great that nearly the entire prairie as it once existed has been destroyed. This destruction occurs across the breadth and width of the tallgrass prairie, which stretches in the middle of North America from southern Canada to part of eastern Texas and from eastern Nebraska to Ohio. The dire situation rises to a pinnacle in the state of Iowa, which can certainly serve as a clear example of a place where native plants and much of the wildlife do need help. On the tallgrass prairie, in the oak savannahs, and in the woodlands of Iowa, where once hundreds of native species of plants and a bevy of wildlife coexisted in self-sustaining and complete habitats, cities, towns, and suburbs now rise between giant tracts of primarily corn and soybeans.

Among all of the human development in Iowa, some hope still exists for native species. Among all of the developed property in Iowa, some land can still be found that remains mostly untouched. These parcels are, however, usually small. Some people call them remnants. When a property is labeled as a native remnant, it usually means that the parcel of land is not only relatively small but also mostly free human alteration. Some remnants make up a few acres. Others are larger. In any case, the property generally stands large enough to sustain itself with a minimum of help from people.

Much of the native habitat of the prairie and woodlands in Iowa largely hangs on in the isolated remnants. However, still more of the natural diversity survives in very small pieces of landscape that can be called nothing more than a scrap. These remnant scraps of native plants appear in many hidden and forgotten corners often on parts of properties otherwise considered not useful. Still others of these scraps can be found in yards and backs of lots of otherwise developed property. The native plants of a remnant scrap make up such a small piece of the former landscape that what was a complete and natural environment can no longer sustain and perpetuate itself. Since there are so few native plant habitats that survive, especially in Iowa, preserving or restoring even the remnant scraps rises to a fairly high level of importance. The native plants and wildlife that naturally live on the prairie or within similarly exploited habitats need help.

Consider Consequences

If a group of native plants in its entirety comprises no more than a remnant scrap of a natural landscape, that small piece of land along with the plants and wildlife upon or in it do likely make up an interdependent community, a complex organism. It lives. As with any living thing, a remnant scrap can change over time. In fact, a scrap has a particularly large susceptibility to change because of its small size. Natural forces producing change can be many for a scrap-sized community. Climate and weather may alter the community. Fire and flood can also transform the land and those that live there. What might be events with temporary impact in larger natural communities can have large and permanent consequences in a remnant scrap

By far, the most drastic of consequences can happen as the result of the actions of people. Even gardeners, who only hope to make things more beautiful, can have large and unintended impact upon the land that they tend. The consequences of the actions of a particular gardener can be either good or bad for the health of the land and of the plants and wildlife upon it. A gardener can choose between conquering the land, covering it with altered and civilized development reflecting the fashion of the moment and focusing upon showy, carefree plants originating far away or accepting the land as it is, allowing its essence to live, in the form of native plants, in the place where it belongs. For the gardener, deciding which plants to remove or to add and choosing which animals to invite or to discourage can directly have consequences.

Sometimes the gardener’s choices may even have consequences far beyond those intended. For instance, in a suburban community that could be almost anywhere in North America,