LOVE the wildflowers & grasses preserved for wildlife and are not just lowly weeds but can be our medicines, food cultivation, land preservation, and flowers that need no fussing in wild gardens.
What are the birds, bees, and butterflies to eat if we keep hacking down their food trails? Is it more beautiful to have everything so tightly controlled by mankind?
Are we excessively mowing and planting fussy plants that we have to struggle to keep growing? Are we using up our water tables for an unsustainable vision of green lawns, mono-crops, and water-needy plants?
I am learning to waltz with the weeds!
My field of wildflowers and wild grasses offers up seasonal displays of color and textures to view whilst it supplies the food chain to a variety of birds, critters, and bugs. The dogs come to visit and love to scoot through the wild grasses, hiding, running, leaping, and bouncing while bringing on the serotonin JOY juice of watching them have a blast in the tall grasses.
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Front deck facing Gaetz Lake & the Atlantic Ocean. |
Last year I transplanted a couple of ferns in early spring and one of them into a pot with two others with moss stuffed into the clay dirt along our lower ditch.
Surprisingly all the ferns came back this year so very pleased with that experiment. I find ferns romantic in their fashionable waving branches and then they shoot off a red plume that showcases like a Vegas Girl!
Last year I discovered yellow coreopsis on our septic lawn. I got Jim to stop mowing that area last year and was thrilled to see other wildflowers like the brown-eyed Susans, Queen of the Meadow, and lots of grass varieties with their own colors and seed style coming out of the sandy ground.
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A variety of wild grasses & ox-eyed daisies. |
Online I found an inspiring landscape designer Piet Oudolf who came to peace with the wild side of his original style of plant growing, selling, and landscaping. He is a well-known landscape designer implementing wild plants mixed in with perennials. He has taken the challenges of concrete jungles to create plots of landscaping that bring mother nature and sustainable plants.
I love to stroll through mother natures wildness to discover what is blooming, a scheme of perfection that no human could ever master the complexities but we humans enjoy the challenge of manipulating our own vision.
The entire front area of our home is a wave of ox-eyed daisies that have been cultivated with me rescuing a few from the mower and putting them into a bottomless planter made from a repurposed barrel.
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Ox-eye daisies (2014) were transplanted into a planter. Mother nature did the rest! |
Each year the daisies spread throughout the front lawn so this year they managed to cover the entire landscape. I went with Mother Natures' suggestion and stopped the mower permanently to let the ox-eye daisies become the sole plants for our front landscaping!
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Oxeye Daisy Barrel in a strawbale rock garden. Read more about gardening experiments. |
The straw bale and rock garden were built up over a few years and last year planted Egyptian Walking onions, mustard lettuce, brown-eyed Susans rescued from a parking lot and the herb oregano has taken over the strawbale garden shooting up tall its beautiful purple flowers. Under the strawbale is my first attempt to grow daffodils & tulips to which I found tulips to be delicious to the deer but not the daffodils!
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Celebrating Canada's 150th Birthday, I planted the dedicated tulip cultivated by the Dutch to honor Canada. |
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Mustard lettuce sprouted easily in pebble rock that surrounds the garden plots. |
Last year I planted some mustard leaf seeds in the garden plots to which we ate them and let a few plants go to seed. This year I had mustard lettuce all over the pebble walkway but they were easily pulled out and eaten daily. I loved the abundance and shared it with visiting friends to take home. I do not mind them spreading out and love their gorgeous red leaves and tiny yellow flowers that tower over all the other plants.
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Towering over all the plants is the rogue mustard lettuce turned to yellow flowers. |
Next spring 2018 I will have LOTS of mustard lettuce to eat and suspect some of it will be a part of our front landscape coming up before the ox-eye daisies that will be blooming a little later so they will get a chance to grow their red leaves and then come to flower along the side of ox-eyed daisies. I will never have to plant another pack of mustard lettuce seeds! This might be a normal gardener's nightmare but to me, it is self-sustaining, and can eat it so I like that!
I received my first couple of Walking Egyptian onion bulbs from a neighbor moving away. I enjoyed watching them grow and found they were decorative too and added character to my garden landscapes and in mixed flowering pots.
more about this amazing plant called the Walking Egyptian Onions...
Over the years I have given away many bulbs of the hardy onion to share with others in their gardens. They seem to grow even under the snow so will be one of the first green plants to raise themselves into a new season.
I like to pick the toppers which have little onion bulbs that by design will topple over and replant themselves hence the Walking part of the onions' nature.
My sister has pickled the topper bulbs just like pickling any vegetable they add variety to our daily food. My favorite way to eat them is to pull the whole onion out of the dirt, slice longways keeping the tall green part attached to the bulb, rub in olive oil and add a sprinkling of sea salt. I roast them draped long on a cookie sheet till the green stems crisp and the onion bulb carmelizes. Fabulous sweet onion flavors and can use the green stems like a store-bought green onion for salads.
The Egyptian walking onion does exactly that action. As they grow tall the bulbs will sprout off the top, which will make the plant top-heavy and will eventually drop back to the earth and start a new batch of onions. I eat the whole plant from roots to the bulbs which are like shallots. Mainly I grow them for their looks and like to share them with others who get also get visually captured by their whimsy style.
There is a trend spreading around the globe to re-think how we are tending to mother nature's natural landscaping. There are several landscape designers who specialize in rethinking how we can make parks, cities, and homes more sustainable and teaching all of us to really LOOK at the beauty and not judge mother natures style as bad weeds.
Dan Pearson is another landscape designer I have enjoyed watching his video talks. All the landscape designers inspire me to keep learning about all the plants that grow on our landscape. A goal is not only to learn the plants' attributes but also to inspire a series of paintings.
I received my first couple of Walking Egyptian onion bulbs from a neighbor moving away. I enjoyed watching them grow and found they were decorative too and added character to my garden landscapes and in mixed flowering pots.
more about this amazing plant called the Walking Egyptian Onions...
Over the years I have given away many bulbs of the hardy onion to share with others in their gardens. They seem to grow even under the snow so will be one of the first green plants to raise themselves into a new season.
I like to pick the toppers which have little onion bulbs that by design will topple over and replant themselves hence the Walking part of the onions' nature.
My sister has pickled the topper bulbs just like pickling any vegetable they add variety to our daily food. My favorite way to eat them is to pull the whole onion out of the dirt, slice longways keeping the tall green part attached to the bulb, rub in olive oil and add a sprinkling of sea salt. I roast them draped long on a cookie sheet till the green stems crisp and the onion bulb carmelizes. Fabulous sweet onion flavors and can use the green stems like a store-bought green onion for salads.
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To read more about the Walking Egyptian Onion |
The Egyptian walking onion does exactly that action. As they grow tall the bulbs will sprout off the top, which will make the plant top-heavy and will eventually drop back to the earth and start a new batch of onions. I eat the whole plant from roots to the bulbs which are like shallots. Mainly I grow them for their looks and like to share them with others who get also get visually captured by their whimsy style.
There is a trend spreading around the globe to re-think how we are tending to mother nature's natural landscaping. There are several landscape designers who specialize in rethinking how we can make parks, cities, and homes more sustainable and teaching all of us to really LOOK at the beauty and not judge mother natures style as bad weeds.
Dan Pearson is another landscape designer I have enjoyed watching his video talks. All the landscape designers inspire me to keep learning about all the plants that grow on our landscape. A goal is not only to learn the plants' attributes but also to inspire a series of paintings.
When we first built our house, the landscape was dug up and nothing but clay dirt was left behind. The way we build houses, it seems necessary to dig up the landscape and needed to dig deep for water drainage around our house.
Jim did toss some wildflower seeds & grasses when we first built out the back area and saw a few come up over the years but mostly the lupins flourished and now see the Shasta daisies spreading.
Anything that loves gnarly clay dirt, smashing rains, salty air, and wicked winds will find this spot on the hillside very challenging!
Listed below is the variety of wild plants growing list is only the tip of the wildlife story. I am waiting for my library book to help me identify the wild plants growing and will update my findings.
Listed below is the variety of wild plants growing list is only the tip of the wildlife story. I am waiting for my library book to help me identify the wild plants growing and will update my findings.
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Queen of the Meadow |
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Fleabane Daisies |
White Flowers:
Queen of the meadow
Queen Ann's Lace
Yarrow (white)
Brisbane Daisy
Strawberry
Bedstraw
Aster white flat top
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Yellow Wood Sorrel A cute plant with clover-like leaves & 5 yellow petal flowers. |
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Elecampane is a healing plant & a wonderful discovery. Find out more here |
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Elecampane is a fantastic healing plant Find out more here |
Yellow Flowers:
Buttercup
Cats-ear
Yellow Clover
Goats Beard Yellow
Golden Rod Seaside
Golden Rod
King Devil
Water Lilies
Butter-n-Eggs snapdragons
Elecampane
Elecampane
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Pink roses line our property and grow abundantly. |
Pink Flowers:
Lady's Thumb
Rose Pasture
Rose Rugosa
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Wild Pea Plant |
Purple Flowers:
Knap Weed
Lupin
Thistle Bull
Asters
Blue-Eyed Grass
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Black-Eyed Susan |
Orange Flowers:
Black-Eyed Susans
Clovers:
Rabbitfoot clover (T. arvense)
Hop Clover (T. campestre)
Chamomile:
I look forward to more discoveries in wild landscaping with transplanting and seed spreading to work towards that dream come true with wild fields filled with flowers and grasses encouraging all the critters to stop by and eat... naturally.
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