This Week in the Garden: A garden floor is nature’s palette
Some people walk into a neglected old house and their imagination runs wild.
Similarly, gardeners see a plot of land and the same thing occurs. We approach land as a great potential for a botanical paradise. Every place we come upon has either evolved or devolved differently. It has its own history. We approach it in a fresh way.
Now in wintertime, hidden seeds undergo the cold-front process before germinating. The winds have brought us many things that, in springtime, will be revealed soon enough. Mushrooms appear after the rains— signaling deeper processes, and some of our plants tell us they are in dormancy or are blooming with recent rains. The garden floor is neither asleep nor waiting.
When I first moved to my current property, there was a hidden history of caretaking that was not known to me, until after I moved in. The earliest known history shows cattle roamed freely here. Then a next phase of use was a dahlia farm. Then in the 1970s, the area was split with the development of four homes, strategically built on an elevation away from a flood zone of Soquel Creek.
By the time my family moved in, there was an asphalt easement that divided the homes. This asphalt easement ended closer to the riparian area than it is today. At that time there was difficult soil to work with alongside this strip. Automobile access was its sole purpose. We did our best to mitigate this. The work to heal the soil took more than a decade. We found blocks of buried asphalt, chunks of cement, brick and wire. Most of it, much too close to the wild vegetation.
Shifting into the current garden required trying to imagine what existed long before property ownership. There was so much to learn and do. My husband cleared and continues to clear the invasive plants such as Cape Ivy, English Ivy, vinca and more. For a list of California invasive plants, insects and pathogens, visit the California Invasive Council at www.invasive.org.
We also found local support to recreate our garden by participating in educational events from the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum, Cabrillo College Horticulture Department, UC Santa Cruz Arboretum workshops, and even the information at our state parks. We were inspired to figure it out.
Although we had an initial slow shift, it all seemed to depend on what the soil was needing, specifically. Without trying to blindly change the soil too much, there were many challenges and unforgiving experiments. Eventually, we were rewarded when we planted native species, as they took to even horribly compacted and acidic soil. Roots and seeds of native plants know exactly what to do to shift the soil and bring in the proper organisms. Eventually we employed the use of two composting bins that healed those asphalt contaminated areas. Plants thrived. As we divided our property in sections, I experimented with forest gardening, bird gardening, pollinator gardening and butterfly cultivation.
More for appearances than function, growing a culturally pushed conventional lawn was not appealing. Instead, California Fescue and other native grasses provide attractive texture and low watering solutions in my garden. Native grasses are hardy for both drought and harsh winters.
Currently, there are many sections of my garden that burst with native Miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), creating a lush path perimeter that will last for many months.
What is the garden floor? For me it is the key to matrix planting. It is the gardening artist’s living palette. If you are matching plant to space you will have the strongest hold on successive generations of vegetation. Since modern gardening is prone to modern chemicals and materials, it’s possible that there is more to learn about the affects of this truth on our geographic location, and about soil science too.
It turns out we are in luck. UCSC Center for Agroecology is hosting a “soil management for home gardeners” workshop online from 5-6:30 p.m. Feb. 9 (). This is an opportunity to learn from Darryl Wong, Agroecology Research Lands manager. I’ve marked my calendar! Many thanks to the plant people.