“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Restoration for the Way We See the World

As Robin so beautifully put it, we need restoration for the way we see the world. Learning to love the plants and animals around you is not going to be a fast process, but it will be extraordinarily beautiful. Every day offers up an opportunity to be astounded in the natural world. After years of being on one piece of land, those layers of astonishment have accumulated building a deep love and reverence for the reciprocity of life and its systems. Our challenge as humans is to recognize our place in the synergy of those living systems. Maybe it’s time we stopped standing in the path pretending to know all, and at last listen to what the world around us is saying. It’s enough to break your heart and fix it all at once. Perhaps we are not so grand, and maybe that is wonderful.

Wait and See Ecology

Living on our land for the last ten years and working daily with plants has been a humbling experience, often a revelatory one, and always one full of surprises.  We have found the wait and see approach to plants one of our greatest assets when it comes to native plants and their placement and survival. Through the years when a plant comes up that we don’t know, we remain curious and wait. Why? Because life is full of fun surprises and mowing a lawn just because that’s what’s typically done doesn’t have to be our narrative. Selectively keeping plants that find their way into your yard is a great way to learn how to identify plants, get free native species, and develop a relationship with your yard or gardens that isn’t all about controlling every step, but stepping back and being amazed.

Selective Regenerative Landscaping

Through the years my husband has been selectively mowing our pastures, allowing new sprouting trees to leaf out and show their colors. In this way we have been able to nurture some of the best-for-wildlife plant species, just by waiting to see who they were. It has been an eye-opening evolution through preconceived ideas, to realize our constant desire to do what’s right often backfires with a lot of struggle to get plants established in the wrong place. We have unknowingly pulled out useful species to plant those we think are better. You can’t know what you don’t know but being open to the learning process and getting to know the plants, their purpose and function in your region can change how you experience the world and its complexity.

Learning to Love What You Have

We have always wanted peaches, plums and nectarines, fruit we grew up eating from market stands in PA. We happily planted many stone fruits with dreams of bountiful harvests, only to have them rot and fall off the trees due to mold and fungus growth because of our more humid climate here in NC, not to mention their lack of adaptation to our ecology. We have bagged every individual fruit, worried over organic sprays and spent time researching how to get good harvests from these trees. All the while our landscape was growing native black cherries, blueberries, persimmons, blackberries, muscadines and paw paws without any trouble at all. 

This is a field we’ve been managing with selective mowing. The understory consists of native goldenrod, and the overstory is a mix of pawpaws, persimmons, oaks, tulip poplar, and many more. This field also contains grafted pear trees using Bradford pear as rootstock.

As we learned the names of our native fruits and when appropriate, left them to grow, our landscape shifted subtly towards abundance. Instead of changing the landscape to give us what we wanted, we learned to want what the landscape had to give. Now our favorite fruit is wild black cherries, which turn out to be a superfood, and delicious! We look forward to the wild muscadine grapes and gather lots of blackberries. These fruits have become a part of a seasonal rhythm, announcing the changes in varying flavors and colors.

We haven’t given up on planting other cultivated fruits, but we have learned to love our wild ones even more! We have learned to bend with the climate instead of trying to wrestle into our preconceived notions. The new question becomes: how do we support these native plants with all their intelligent and adaptive qualities? The answer may just lie in our understanding of who they are and what they do, and how our interactions can create a shared abundance.

“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Staghorn Sumac and Our Relationship to Plants

When we get to know a plant as an integrated part of our lives, our wellbeing and the health of our ecologies, suddenly there is a shift, an understanding and shared purpose. We are not just the gods of landscapes moving soil and plants, rather we are givers and receivers of gifts. When we work to restore a piece of land we focus on organic matter, on keeping soil covered, slowing the flow of water and establishing biodiversity. From that place of new balance, the land begins to offer up abundant gifts, if you know how to look for them.

Just recently while doing research for one of my t-shirt designs, I learned that Staghorn Sumac is one of the host plants for the Luna moth larvae here in NC. That alone makes it a wonderful native plant. Over the years we have been curious foragers and landscapers, so I already knew that Staghorn Sumac was an amazing edible: producing shoots in the spring, and sour berries to use in making sumac lemonade or ground as a spice. It was used by indigenous cultures for food, dye, and medicine. It provides berries for birds in the winter, good nesting sites and is a food source for rabbits and deer.  It helps to control erosion, coming up quickly in mid-succession landscapes to hold the soil in place with rhizomatic roots systems. They provide nectar for pollinators, support specialist bees and are even home to some types of wasps, which burrow into the pithy stems to raise their young! This is only one plant, and I could go on and on about it; including how beautiful it is from spring to fall providing color and flare across the landscape.

Staghorn Sumac is a great example of why remaining curious about plants that arise in our landscapes is so important. We didn’t plant a single sumac, but we did leave it where we could and learned about it through the years. Now when I walk through a corridor filled with blooming sumac full of pollinators, that appreciation I have feels like it keeps growing an exponentially deep love that ties my heart to this place and these species I share it with. It also makes me look at all the plants around me as hidden stories waiting to be listened to: elders with wisdom beyond mine, and plenty of lessons to share. I get so excited to learn and find myself looking at a new plant and saying, and who are you? Learning our local species, their history, and their ecological roles is an endlessly fun adventure of interconnectedness. Gratitude is a daily byproduct of learning how complex and integrated our ecosystems are.

Regenerative Wild Intelligence

The wait and see approach to native landscaping offers us a chance to learn the names of our plants, to nurture a curiosity about living systems, and allow for regenerative wild intelligence to do its work. There is space for all kinds of gardening, farming, and landscaping in this world; I am not suggesting everyone let their yards go and never mow again, or that they don’t garden or plant trees or buy the plants they want to have. What I’m suggesting is that there can also be a little space for our landscapes to heal themselves, because they are far older and wiser than we are. Plants know what they’re doing. All too often we get in the way of what our wildlife needs, getting obsessed for a while with there being a certain type of gardening that is “best” or approach to restoration that is trending. Our local ecology often knows what its needs, and most likely, it is patience and a little bit of humility.

Shifting Our Mindset to See a Different Kind of Beauty

There are many ways we have been given standards of beauty in this world that are fraught with unhealthy and degenerative patterns. Heavily landscaped, highly managed landscapes with big lawns have dominated what is considered the beauty model for perfection in the landscaping world. There is no doubt that a Japanese maple is lovely in a landscape and that going to Lowes and getting bright and beautiful annuals and perennials can have a place. However, these plants while bright and fun don’t provide nearly enough food resources to supply the desperate need our birds, bees, amphibians, and mammals have for their survival. While continuing to enjoy these exotic plants, we need to begin incorporating native species in order to create hospitable habitats for the species we love.

What I would love to see, and what I have felt unfold in my own life, is a shift in our relationship to plants. In the most slow and tender way, my husband and I have learned to find beauty in the interwoven fabric of the plants and animals around us. Learning all those wonderful things about the Staghorn Sumac took years; it took eating the shoots, making the lemonade, becoming curious about the pollinators that visited, watching the birds eat the berries and observing the shifting color across the season like a slow burning fire. When we see a plant or species of animal with greater depth, our appreciation deepens. In this way, I find myself wanting less of the showy exotics and finding joy in the knowledge that these native plants are rich and diverse in their beauty.  Walking the landscape has become like reading a favorite book rich in characters, plot twists, humor, and biodiversity that supports the lives of its inhabitants. It’s a good read.

Creating Conditions for Abundance

Our land was a desert in some ways when we bought it. It had been logged many times, had the topsoil scraped off and severe erosion every time it rained. Our first year we rented a heavy-duty track hoe and built swales to catch and slow water filtration through the landscape.

We also built three ponds to hold overflow from those swales. Now our landscape has a new condition, access to water. 

Anyone who has ever raised a plant will know how essential water is for its survival! We seeded our swales with a mix of clovers and cover crops to hold this soil, and over time have established trees and understory bushes. This new semi-shaded, water rich landscape is a perfect example of creating a condition for dormant seeds to sprout, birds to find refuge and distribute new species, and soil microbes to flourish and support their growth. There blooms an exponential burst of life when we give our landscapes the love and care they deserve. Now we are in it together, we seeded the beginning, and the land ran with that healing momentum. 

Here is a photo ten years later of the pond shown in construction above. In the second picture you can see the heron who has come to spend her summers fishing here for the last few years. Bats eat bugs and dip in the evenings for a drink, barn swallows hunt above, and amphibians of all kinds call it home.

Another example of creating a condition conducive to selective regenerative intelligence is a wildflower field we planted around our blueberry bushes. We bought a highly diverse native wildflower seed mix and after no-till tarping a small field next to our blueberries, broadcast seeded it to wildflowers. We have managed this field by mowing at the right time of year, as well as leaving the dried seed heads all winter for birds.

Now in our third year with this project the loveliest thing happened, those wildflowers are showing up all over the landscape, carried by birds, wind, and who knows what else, until one good thing becomes many.  Now we get to selectively keep these flowers when they show up! This is such a gift, one that feels like soul food. Seeing the amount of life on this flower field alone is magnificent, but to realize it is spreading beauty multiplies its effect! Our own depth of love and appreciation for what is possible if we create healthy conditions is expanding right with the plants.

“All flourishing is mutual.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Now our journey of listening begins, of being amazed, of creating conditions for abundant life and regeneration. When we shift how we see plants, we begin to understand what restoration for the way we see the world means. It is awe for the generosity of living systems, and our own belonging to them. It is an opportunity to be amazed.

In gratitude,

Mary

"When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." - Mary Oliver

Ways to Create Conditions for Selective Regenerative Intelligence

• Study the flow of water in your landscape, note where there are erosive tendencies and see if there is an up-stream way to slow the water through your landscape on contour.
• Bring in organic matter such as wood mulch, leaves or organic straw.
• Incorporate small logs for microbes, insects, soil moisture retention and habitat for earthworms (free no-till soil improvers).
• Compost your food scraps and build your soil tilth with organic matter. This helps to loosen soil, allowing for better rainwater absorption and less runoff.
• Use non-chemical, no-till practices in your garden or wildflower field establishment.
• Use reputable wildflower mixes from trusted brands. Our favorite is Prairie Moon. We used their grand diversity seed mix in the wildflower field mentioned above.
• Remain curious! Weeds are often native plants waiting to be appreciated. Be open to the idea that what our landscapes need is for us to work with them.