The Monday Garden, September 6, 2004, Issue 128
Eco-gardening at its best
the FREE weekly email
When studying the invasive plants, we often talk about the evils of destroying diversity. Issue 127 showed the disastrous results that lost of diversity has for our sub/urban fauna. This issue is a look at the diversity that we’d like to keep. These pictures were all taken in mid to late summer in Stamford CT, in the Bartlett Arboretum’s fresh water swamp and along the Mill River river walk at Scalzi Park.
 |  |  |  |
NOAH’S ARC: Remember Noah’s arc? Well, as the uncultivated lands, including the wetlands, shrink, our sub/urban gardens are needed to provide similar sanctuary for our native flora and fauna.
 |  |  |  |
Many of us have great spring gardens but have little heart-lifting color come July and August. Uncultivated areas are a great place to learn about tough, disease-resistant perennials that need little in the way of supplemental water or nutrients.
These native plants are not sterile “pretty faces” They’ve earned their place in the ecology, providing habitat, pollen, seeds, and forage for the wild critters. Some are threatened in their nature environment by human development, so bringing them into your garden not only provides sustenance for the wild critters, and beauty for you, but helps preserve the gene bank.
 |  |
When you look to the wild places for your garden ideas, you’ll find some great native plants and a number of naturalized aliens of greater and lesser invasiveness. Skip the truly invasive ones, please. By the way, it’s bad karma (and often illegal) to collect plants or seeds from the wild unless the plant is growing so rampantly you might not want it in your garden. Get your ideas from the wild; buy your plants from the local nursery or on-line from reputable sources that don’t collect plants from the wild.
 |  |  |  |
RAIN GARDENS: If you’d like to cultivate some of these delightful wet-land plants, and if you’d like “give back” a little more in return for the blessing you’ve received in the form of that piece of sub/urban land that you call your garden, consider starting a rain garden.
The point of a rain garden, in addition to adding depth and dimension to your garden, is to channel rain run-off from your roof, and perhaps your driveway, patio, and the like, into the earth where the excess nutrients and environmental pollutants can be safely absorbed. The alternative is that too many of these chemicals and nutrients end up in our sewers and hence our waterways. There are numerous good sites on how to create and maintain a rain garden. A good place to begin is www.raingardens.org.
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
Photo credits: Sue Sweeney
© Sue Sweeney 2005