The Conversation
It takes a keen ear, eyes, and palette to experience the layered conversation of a garden that I fear too many of us are losing the ability to have.
In just a few weeks, the chive blossoms have faded, and the first coneflower is starting to open. The lavender will be ready to harvest right on time during the week of the 4th, and our garlic will be begging for removal soon thereafter. I have watched the garden dance through the first blooms of early spring and the end of spring. Now we begin progressing to summer. As the land is shifting and the sun begins to head back toward the south, little by little every single day, I see how it is telling the plants to produce and bloom.
Our daily walks take us past the near-overnight blossoming of the milkweed, which appears right after the daisies have faded and the blossoming grasses of the fields have lost their tan and yellow blossoms. Everything is shifting and changing so rhythmically and beautifully in this season. That the rapidness can be nearly missed.
I love my work as a landscape designer because I get to observe these shifts and changes amongst the land, not just around me, but at my clients as well. I get to see their land shift and change, but then also ask, what more could fill the gaps? What are we missing? What could be brought in to help offset those spaces for birds and bees? What does this land still need?
I ask this here all around in my corner, but wandering the land around the home of a client, sitting and observing, listening, intaking all of the information, I hear and see just what isn’t there or what we have too much of.
I believe our job as humans who tend to the land is to learn intently how to listen and then create a strong conversation with the land itself. It has taken years to hear the language of the lands around here. I think it will take my entire life to feel I can speak it as clearly as I speak English, but every year, I learn the words better, and I can subtly hear what I missed before.
In the last few years, I have begun to not just hear the master piece of the blooming and harvesting timings like a piece of jazz music, but I can also visualize the layers of space and time as if there is a 4th dimension to the conversation I had missed for years. I am beginning to see the connectivity not just from one bloom to another, but to the moon, the sun, the bees, the birds, and to the rise and fall of water as well.
I am not sure I can properly articulate it, but when I arrive at a property, I can hear a whole story from the land as I wander it. Not just where the deer wanders, or where the water sources flow because of the plants growing, but how it wants to be used and enjoyed as well. I can see the ways it can be adjusted to not just be a beautiful place for human enjoyment, but also the ways it can heal, replenish, and link into the greater layers of the ecosystem.
I feel this more than ever this year in my garden. Watching as we lost a portion of my garden this year for an update on the property, I felt it was a beautiful gift, ultimately. I felt the garden wasn’t serving nature and humans as well as it could. Now, as I watch the new seed rise full of wildflowers, both annual and perennial, I see just how beautiful the future may be in this space now. I know one day it will become something more, but for now, this is what it needs.
Yet, at the same time. I sit in my small kitchen garden or “outdoor living room,” as I call it, and I feel completely mesmerized by the words and stories being told amongst the plants right here in front of me. I find a deeper sense of curiosity and love for the way nature ebbs and flows, and that my small interjection in the process only helps it evolve and flow that much better. More than that is too much. Bringing perfection and control to the conversation simply limits the capabilities of nature to fully open itself to me in conversation.
What I find interesting about this entire thing is that this is also true in conversation with one another. We can find an openness and flow in a conversation that isn’t set with constraints, but given the chance to be fully open, we can discover and learn so much about one another while feeling seen in the deepest parts of our selves. To me, that is what a good garden is, one where we listen even more than we speak ourselves. We observe and take in what the other is saying, then jump in, and back and forth we go.
Maybe this seems rambly, but I have sat with this idea of gardening being a conversation for quite some time and feel it still has a lot to be brought to the surface. I continue to use my time with the land and the garden to be the thing that teaches me how to not only work better with the land, but be a more empathetic, curious, and curious human as well. I feel the wilder I let my garden get, the more I learn and the calmer I become as well in my life.
Every season, I make a new playlist, and with the beginning of spring comes a playlist as well. I love taking time to make these lists and pull together new sounds for your season, and selfishly, I love it for myself, too. I hope it brings a good background sound to your season ahead.
Gardening Advice: Let it Get Wild and Weird This Summer
I wish more people would let their gardens get a little wild and unruly this summer. I have spaces that I keep well tended, but I also have plenty of my garden beds, where I designed them to be unruly. I designed them to have a mind of their own, because it never fails to surprise me what I learn, what grows, and what I discover along the way.
I have learned more from my wild beds than from any other places on my land outside of the forests themselves. I have learned about new plants that grow better in that area. I have learned how little work you actually need to put into a garden. Most of all, I have learned that wildflower seed packets designed for your part of the world are a gift.
I think we too often prescribe to keeping things too perfect and clean when it comes to our gardens. Sure, there is a line, but when we let things get a bit wild and unruly, we also discover there are more plants growing than we thought. When we heavily weed and thin, we lose the opportunity for new plants we can move other places.
Currently, one wild bed and am breeding an extensive amount of plants to grow in an open field space instead of me buying new ones over and over again. It will save money and be beautiful!
So let it get wild this summer. See how it goes. See what you learn. Take time to observe and watch through the process.
On my mind this week
Just some things happening and that I am thinking of lately:
COOKING: This Cucumber Salad is on repeat from the New York Times right now. It is spicy and earthy, while having that creamy vibe from the peanut butter as well. Perfect on a warm day to complement any grilled protein.
WATCHING: Gardener’s World - After going to the Chelsea Flower Show, I feel I am still taking in a lot of amazing info and knowledge from the horticultural world there. I particularly have loved Monty’s episodes where he heads to the Adriatic to view gardens there. I watch sometimes while I am adding color and finesse to my designs, especially as the days were warm last week.
LISTENING: Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot Radio Station on Spotify: Tell me you have parents who grew up in the 70s in northern Michigan without telling me… Yes, I grew up on these vibes, and I still love them while I am gardening or just cruising. In fact, this playlist is one of my top ones while I am skiing in the winter.
READING: Wilderness Essays by John Muir - This quick read has been one I have been listening to on audiobook this month, and I am nearly finished. I am absolutely mesmerized thinking of these wild places he was exploring and just how they have changed since then.
WEARING: Oversized Linen shirts with straight-leg pants with Birks: I am living in this look this summer. I hate to admit it, but I have some thrifted items, but I also picked this one up from Target for a recent trip, and I am obsessed with the fit. Though I have one of Mike’s old linen shirts, I wear it too, which fits similarly. I also thrifted these Gap pants and these from Everlane instead of getting them new, and love them as well. It’s the perfect, easy, and simple look, no matter what lies ahead in the day.
MAKING: Every single garden supports this year - Yes, you read that right. I refuse to buy new things for our garden anymore. I believe, after years of doing Permaculture training, that nature provides everything we need to grow our own food. So here I am practicing that.
OBSESSING ABOUT: An outside summer full of all the free things - we are leaning into a summer of beach and outside time. Nothing too planned, and honestly, it feels awesome already. Leaning into the wild of it all, and it feels really good.
THE SUMMER GUIDE IS HERE! It is for our paid subscribers so if you aren’t one yet, you can get a discount below to join and get access to a new guide every season. I have big updates coming to the summer one so sign up now.