by Renee Studebaker
Finally, a home gardening trend has emerged that fits me like my favorite pair of old work boots. It’s called rewilding. And it has re-energized my gardening efforts in my fall garden.
Rewilding a home garden is similar to gardening for wildlife (championed by the National Wildlife Federation), but it is ... well, wilder, with less effort directed at keeping things under control.
Traditional gardening guidelines, like removing every weed and planting in groups of 3s and 5s, are not so important. If a single volunteer pops up in an odd place, it can stay
there as long as it’s beneficial to wildlife. Diversity is key to a successfully rewilded garden, so the more the merrier.
The term rewilding is not new. It was coined 30 years ago as conservation efforts shifted from habitat protection to habitat creation. Examples of large scale rewilding projects include:
These projects are intended to restore ecosystems, preserve biodiversity and mitigate the damage caused by climate change.
In the past few years, home gardeners and urban planners have adopted the term to describe smaller restoration projects like pocket prairies and meadows.
The prairie at Commons Ford Metropolitan Park has been successfully rewilded thanks to years of dedicated work by a group of concerned citizens who partnered with Travis Audubon. It was a visit to this lovely restored prairie in May that convinced me it was time to go wild in my home garden.
Rewilding my garden will take time and patience, but it will not require a complete do-over because it’s already a wildlife friendly habitat with an emphasis on native plants. (My garden was certified by the National Wildlife Federation more than 15 years ago; it’s No.100,641.)
My property, which is very near the western edge of the strip of Blackland Prairie soil that runs through Austin, has been a good testing ground over the years for me to discover which native plants do best in my deep dark soil. Plants recommended for Blackland Prairie soils love my yard. Edwards Plateau plants not so much.
The area where I plan to start my rewilding project already has stands of Indian blankets, brown-eyed susans, spiderworts, wild petunias and Mexican hats that come up every spring.
So, I’m thinking all I have to do to get a good start on a pocket prairie is to add switchgrass, Indiangrass, and little bluestem. Oh and a bit of Antelopehorn milkweed, which looks so good popping out of a stand of little bluestem. (See photo.)
The area also contains a patch of Mexican petunias (not native) and way too many dayflowers (native to Blackland Prairie soils but not my favorite).
I’m going to dig out the very aggressive Mexican petunias because I fear they will take over before the new plants have a chance to get established. (Most rewilders advocate removing invasive plants.) As for the dayflowers, maybe I will like them more when they’re intermingled with wild grasses.
This pocket prairie full of wildflowers and grasses should attract a diverse mix of insects, which means birds, bats, tree frogs and lizards will always be able to find something to eat there. In addition, the native grasses will provide good cover for the birds.
Will my rewilded garden require less maintenance? Maybe, I hope so, but I don’t really know until I give it go. I don’t have a lawn, but I do plan to keep walkways mowed and trimmed, and of course I will continue to make sure there’s plenty of water available for thirsty wildlife.
I will also try to resist pulling weeds. Maybe the dense planting of grasses and flowers will crowd out the worst offenders. Or maybe like other rewilders, I will learn to love some of the weeds.
A wild and weedy garden teeming with critters and insects may not be the look that most gardeners are going for, but according to a recent story by PBS’s News Hour, more Americans are beginning to embrace eco-friendly gardens, which tend to be more relaxed, and wilder-looking than either traditional cottage gardens or minimalist modern gardens.
According to the report, some people are simply mowing their lawns less, but others are eagerly taking out lawns and planting wild grasses, wildflowers, and edibles.
And here’s another good reason to go wild and get rid of your lawn. Researchers at the University of Florida have determined that highly maintained lawns sequester much less carbon than more natural areas that require less maintenance. In addition, yards with more lawn cover than tree canopy can actually shift to emitting carbon.
Finally, just to remind myself that my garden project is part of a larger worthwhile effort, I’m going to put my wild garden project on Doug Tallamy’s Home Grown National Park, which is spotlighting backyard native habit restorations all over the country as part of a grassroots campaign to regenerate biodiversity.
In his words: “In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty. Now they have to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators and manage water.” ❦
