Sure, wild gardening sounds cool, but what exactly is it? It's a garden that's helpful, both to you and the environment. It's a space where beauty, habitat and diversity reign.
A Wild Garden is a garden that mimics the look and feel of a Beautiful Wild Landscape.
At home this usually means a field at the edge of a forest. One of nature's most productive ecological systems. The goal for it is to survive and thrive, with minimal input (water, fertilizer, aggressive pruning) from caretakers and maximum benefits for the environment. We plan wild gardens by using plants primarily for their function and secondarily for their beauty. Despite being something we typically perceive as 'natural' wild gardening often includes a lot of strategy. This is so the plants that are combined, are companionable enough with one another to support your local climate. And can go on to create their own little ecosystems. Using a diverse mix of plants that support and compliment one another in the garden.
We now know most 'wild' landscapes in California (and across most of North America) were actually vast forest gardens and hunting grounds managed by indigenous cultures. Vast swaths of the continent were gently manipulated to create easier access to foods and useful materials like berries, cedar, wild game and so much more.
Wild Gardening in Mediterranean Climates
Wild gardening isn't as well studied in warmer temperate climates as it is in Northern one in Canada and the United States. That's because the term and style, largely originated in Europe with the work of Piet Oudolf in the late 90s. It became bigger in America first in early 2000s. But it's spreading fast. Here at California Wild Gardens, Founder Briana Lyon's been surveying, researching and trialing for 10 years to help pioneer drought-tolerant plant combinations that naturalize in Mediterranean regions.
In hot and drought prone climates, we carefully combine:
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Big succulents (aloe, agave) to store water in soil
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Nitrogen fixing shrubs (acacia, ceanothus) to replenish soil nutrients
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Hardy herbs to feed pollinators (sages of all kinds, wild mints like coyote mint, and so many others)
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Ornamental grasses to house beneficial insects in winter
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Fruit trees and bushes (and an occasional vegetable garden when able) to help feed ourselves
We can also use plants from the Southern hemisphere for their fabulous winter blooming cycles. Creating a year-round supply of nectar and pollen for hummingbirds birds and butterflies creates habitat for many valuable native species. Depending on your personal taste you can geta modern look with wild gardening, by keeping everything a similar color and growth pattern. Or you can create a free and relaxed look by having a big variety of color and form.
The picture below is a great example of a modern looking wild garden on the San Francisco peninsula coast (garden of Jim Baerd, Northern California palm society). It's a garden that showcases drought-tolerant plants. Agave 'Blue Flame' helps to store water, Acacia 'Cousin itt' acts as a soil-improving plant, binding soil and releasing nitrogen whenever cut back. Deer Grass, Muhlenbergia rigens serves as a habitat cornerstone. Underneath it all Wild Strawberries, Fragaria vesca act as groundcover. Just as, in the wild, California's Beach Strawberry naturally blankets coastlines. And alpine story grows in part-shade forest.
So, how do you design a wild garden? You mix plants with different functions (and species family and root profiles) to allow them to compliment and support one another (and the ecosystem) through a beautiful and complex web of relationships.
How to Build a Wild Garden
The best part about wild gardens is that they come to life. In many people's yards birds and butterflies show up almost instantly. Eager for the steady supply of nectar. The air takes on a different, fresher quality. And something different blooms almost every week.
Here's a quick primer on how to build a wild garden in a single garden bed:
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Pick 4-8 different plant species (choose 1 or 2 species that are either spreading groundcover or are adaptable to shade to fill in down low)
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Mark off your garden beds (following a regular geometric pattern can help balance out the freer look of the garden).
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Group stuff in little clusters of odd numbers (3-5) of the same species to create a natural rhythm. Keep tall stuff in the back and short or plainest looking species in the front.
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Repeat your patterns.
And that’s it! With a little bit of layering, your yard will be looking like Piet Oudolf’s in no time.
Other things to know...
If you want to operate at a larger scale, wild gardens are still best constructed from a restricted number of species. This way the combinations can be tested and adjusted as you go. This also prevents the space from becoming too chaotic (which means it now looks like an abandoned parking lot and not a garden). In a single planter this might be 5 species. In a larger garden you might have 15 species. In a full yard with multiple trees this might be 30-50 species depending on how keen you are. Keeping it under 25 is best if you're newer to gardening.
Is there anything better than growing good-looking landscapes that need less love from us and give more love to the environment?
I think not. I hope you'll join us in gardening wild. If you want to geek out on this further, there's a huge array of information on the strategic use of thoughtful plant communities, natural patterns, ecological histories and habitat cornerstones available from horticulturists and landscape architecture thought leaders. My personal favorite is Eric Toensmeir's Forest Gardening Volume I & II (not for the faint of heart).
Regenerative Agriculture, Agroforesty & Permaculture
As someone whose practiced and study all of the above, I like how the term Wild Gardening encapsulates a broad and less technical notion of putting together plants in thoughtful patterns. I also like the term Ecodesign but, because these practices are so new to the Western world (they've been practiced continually for thousands of years in Vietnam, Turkey and Egypt), here's a technical break down so you can understand the nuance.
Regenerative Agriculture is a term coined in the last 2 decades to describe indigenous land management practices that encouraged the growth of food sources with minimal effort. These systems generally favored the enhancement of environments and species of value to various persons.
Permaculture, is similar to Regenerative Agriculture. Permaculture stands for 'Permanent Cultures' which means its aim is to create beneficial and self-renewing systems to feed and house humans. Its biggest focus is on agriculture but it can be applied to all manner of design systems. Permaculture is tied to a technical Western-lens framework of design ethics, earth sciences and management philosophy with a set of certification courses and texts.
So, just like regenerative agriculture and agroforestry, Permaculture is the growing of food in habitats that sustain and reproduce themselves with minimal input and intervention from people. The term itself was coined by a specific grass roots movement started in Australia in the 1960s (by Bill Mollison, Jeff Lawton, and others). It's become widely practiced around the world. It's especially broadly applied in low-cost methods for greening deserts in the Middle East and Africa.
In the this example of a low-water food forest in Van Nuys, California there are many edible and medicinal plants mixed with beds of pollinator and habitat supporting species. Some of this gardens best products include jelly palm fruit, apples, bananas, guavas, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, passionfruit and one day mango (in the front yard). A giant elm tree casts part shade over much of the yard. This tree offers 2 crucial benefits for the food producing garden system underneath. First it's leaf litter mulch (and regularly required pruning) release valuable nutrients like nitrogen into the soil. Second, its vast canopy cools the climate understory beneath by filtering sunlight. These plants are growing in a hot inland region of California that can regularly reach 110° F in the summer.
Agroforestry, Food Forestry or Forest Gardening is a subset of Permaculture that specifically studies the design of wild plant communities and how to replicate in the garden (with a few tweaks) to create more sustainable edible spaces. It also involves the exhaustive and detailed study of plant root systems, nutrient accumulation habits, medicinal properties and habitat functions. The goal of which is to document and create plant combinations that support beneficial life forms (whether it be insect, pollinator, birds, human etc.) and regenerate (instead of diminish) the natural resource systems we support ourselves with.
While the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple. - Bill Mollison
