Going native
Jun. 21st, 2023 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileI finally stopped putting off taking a look at my backyard now that I have one and, despite my limited plant skills and determination for it to be something else, promptly identified a Japanese knotweed, an invasive monster of a plant that needs to be beaten back or it will eat everything in its path. Therefore, I have quite against my will needed to become one of those native gardening people, in the hopes that once I defeat Godzilla and fill my back garden with native plants I will then be able to once again blissfully retreat into not having to pay attention to my backyard. This may be slightly awkward conversationally when I have to go to lovingly engaged Native Plants People to acquire native plants, and I shall have to develop a tactful way of saying that I am aiming for a ~low-maintenance~ garden. But anyway, me being me, my first step in my crash course of learning about How To Have A Backyard was to check out from the library a copy of Native Plants for New England Gardens by Mark Richardson and Dan Jaffe, of the New England Wild Flower Society.
Despite some vocabulary difficulties due to my being an extreme non-plants person (I still do not know what a sedge is and what makes it different from a grass; I will Google that later today), I actually did find this a fascinating read. It was quick and filled with very helpful, gorgeous pictures. I will have to give it back to the library in a bit over a week but in the meantime I will try to take some notes about possible things to put in the backyard once I have raked up the layer of pine needles smothering 40% of it, and again next year when I have hopefully smothered/poisoned/dug out the knotweed. I will be taking it with me as a reference to see the Salem Native Nursery at the farmer’s market tomorrow. Maybe I will buy myself a copy if I manage to talk myself into a day trip to the Garden in the Wood out in Framingham, since I am incapable of leaving a museum without buying something at the gift shop.
Anyway, if you, like me, have a backyard full of pine needles and noxious weeds and want to have a nice one full of flowers but don’t want to dedicate your life to futzing with delicate little annuals every spring, this seems like it ought to be a useful resource! I’ll report back once I’ve actually put any of it into practice, though. It’s possible I will manage to also kill all these supposedly hardy plants by not being able to figure out what kind of dirt or drainage I have, or something.
Despite some vocabulary difficulties due to my being an extreme non-plants person (I still do not know what a sedge is and what makes it different from a grass; I will Google that later today), I actually did find this a fascinating read. It was quick and filled with very helpful, gorgeous pictures. I will have to give it back to the library in a bit over a week but in the meantime I will try to take some notes about possible things to put in the backyard once I have raked up the layer of pine needles smothering 40% of it, and again next year when I have hopefully smothered/poisoned/dug out the knotweed. I will be taking it with me as a reference to see the Salem Native Nursery at the farmer’s market tomorrow. Maybe I will buy myself a copy if I manage to talk myself into a day trip to the Garden in the Wood out in Framingham, since I am incapable of leaving a museum without buying something at the gift shop.
Anyway, if you, like me, have a backyard full of pine needles and noxious weeds and want to have a nice one full of flowers but don’t want to dedicate your life to futzing with delicate little annuals every spring, this seems like it ought to be a useful resource! I’ll report back once I’ve actually put any of it into practice, though. It’s possible I will manage to also kill all these supposedly hardy plants by not being able to figure out what kind of dirt or drainage I have, or something.