Love in Dark Settings

"I've heard a lot of this kind of thing from permaculturists"

Oh, yes, I've just been reading about permaculture. Thanks for the book recommendations!

"In fact, you may need to plant some things, because it's likely that the garden you have was not designed to be a complete ecosystem in and of itself."

Heh. My yard, as it was bought by my parents in 1974, was practically stripped down to its bones. (The land had been developed only fourteen years before.) Thankfully, my mother was an angel of salvation and went on a vigorous planting campaign - she actually planted fifty forsythia shrubs, among many other things. As a result, thirty-five years later, the back yard and front yard and part of the east side yard is brimming with plant life.

To what extent it's an eco-system I'm gradually figuring out. My mother must have had some sense of ecology, because I remember her telling me how much the birds like the pyracantha, but she learned to garden in an era before native plants were common in gardens. (Not that they're as common as they should be now.)

One thing I'm counting on is that I'm very close to parkland, so hopefully some of the right seeds will end up in my yard.

"What's in your garden now might be perfectly capable of maintaining itself with minimal interference from you."

I already know that what's there can survive without me, because I haven't gardened since I bought this house fourteen years ago. :)

"What else do you find yourself having to do?"

The situation with the ivy was what alerted me to the fact that I might need to intervene. I've looked around the yard since then, and the only problem spots I've noticed is the lack of flowers (because Doug has been cutting the lawn), the lack of water (I need to start a birdbath), and the possibility that some growing trees will topple over a low garden wall.

"For instance, if you have to water it too much"

I've never watered it. The zoysia grass looks a little pale, and we've lost some trees and most of the roses, but everything else has survived. My mother seems to have planted a lot of hardy shrubs.

"Or by observation you might find that when it does rain all the water ends up in one swampy corner"

What happens is worse than that: in the back yard, the rainwater (both ours and the rainwater from the neighbors that are uphill from us) all goes down a gully that is rapidly being stripped down to the soil. So yes, I need to look into the water situation at some point.

"What else do you have to work with?"

A lot of plants I don't yet know the names of. :) I'll give a full run-down in later posts, but to summarize, what we have is several tall trees, several short trees, about a zillion shrubs, a considerable amount of moss, a lot of ivy and periwinkle that I'll be pulling up (and which will leave tons of room for the growing of more shrubs and trees), and the zoysia grass that Doug and I both hate.

So basically what I have in mind is giving more room to the woody areas in the front yard and east side yard and turning some of the lawn area in the front and back into meadow.

What I'm worrying about right now is mainly borders around the wild parts of our yard. I need some borders, to reassure the neighbors that we aren't planning total chaos in our yard, but all I can think of that's free is logs, which will take time to collect. And I can't afford to buy anything.