What LESS can be done?
- Lisa Sangelo
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Lisa Sangelo: I’m stretched out in my hammock, dappled light through the Box elder warming my face, bird song vibrant, and there’s a soft breeze, warmer than usual for this time of year. Ah, nothing to do but wait for spring… but then I startle awake! A ride-on mower roars and guzzles, kicking up dust as it sets off across the neighbor’s half-barren corner lot, grass not yet high enough to meet the mower blades even at their low setting. Scheduling didn’t factor in the drought and recurring revenue is king. Next the blowers: more dust, higher-pitched roar, and onto the backyard. Nap thwarted.
We’ve made a lot of work for ourselves in the landscape industry with our traditions and norms. It's a paradox of grand proportions. As a landscape designer, I will see various projects and landscape ‘vernaculars’ (personal expressions of what a garden should be or look like) overlaid in a yard. Steel, plastic, and brick edgers, thin flagstones and concrete paver paths, Amazon Prime garden boxes, follies, and exposed irrigation rig-ups cover the site, well-intentioned efforts to create some kind of order and functionality. In all of this busy work, natural beauty, or its potential, can be overlooked as the eye and attention are distracted by illegible efforts to ‘make better’ the place. The result is less than a sanctuary and more than a hobby in terms of the work it creates.
Michelangelo saw his job as discovering and revealing the figure already in the stone he was carving, an approach apt to the making of a garden.
The figure correlates with potential in a garden, which is revealed by standing back (and down), listening, observing, and appreciating what is there, inherent in the place. And waiting. In the context of a garden aiming to be life-enhancing, potential corresponds to connection with nature, living elements and systems, as well as beauty and enjoyability. In our physical context of the semi-arid high plains and foothills along the Front Range, potential includes the way a garden interacts with the existing conditions, wildlife, pollinators, resources - and the scarcity thereof. We also have the advantage, in many locations, of utilizing or ‘borrowing landscape’ through views and vistas of our beautiful shared setting.
‘Addition by Subtraction’ is a useful start on a site gone awry. Removing superfluous edges and unnecessary clutter of materials can create aesthetic calm and clarity immediately, as well as allow for the naturalization of plants which are indigenous or well suited to the site. Healthy soil harbors biodiversity, retains water and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. It must be protected and built at all costs. Synthetic weed barriers, traditionally maintained turf, and impermeable surfaces all suffocate the soil below, and should be examined for potential removal. At my home in old east Longmont, the removal of mismatched pavers, edgers and weed barrier allowed for the gradual immigration of Native Chokecherries, Western Wheatgrass, and Showy Fleabane, as well as bush honeysuckle and my neighbor’s wild roses. The rambling rose canes remember that our properties were once one, and before that mid-grass prairie.
Allowing natural take-overs can be a win-win, reducing the need for trying out new plants, and for battling against what wants to be. Groves and native grassy patches provide much-needed habitat for birds and critters as well as ground bees and other insects. It’s amazing to watch voluntary ecosystems develop at nature’s pace, as they begin to balance and attract their companion species.
Less DOING. Generally speaking, the further from natural the site is pushed, the more maintenance is required for its upkeep. Conversely, the less between us and the natural systems and characteristics of the site, the more closely we can be connected with the natural world, and guided in its care. That’s when the work becomes determined by nature, not by our misguided notions of what ‘looks good’ or ‘tidy.’ Our Epidemic of Tidiness threatens the very life that sustains us, and the beauty. I believe this is an expression of our ignorance or denial that death is integral with life. We must allow for death and decomposition in a garden, leaving leaves to rot, and sticks for habitat and decay. Erecting a ‘Dead Hedge’ is a creative way to appease our instincts to order by creating a structure with fallen or clipped branches. This provides places for nesting, protection. and all kinds of life.
Lawn, the elephant in the room. The highly worthy commitment to get rid of turf grass can be overwhelming and creates a lot of work in the early phases. In the meantime, there is every reason to scale back on inputs for what lawn remains to a trickle. Kentucky Bluegrass is a resilient cool-season grass, meant to be green in the cool, wet seasons, not in the summer on the dry plains of Colorado. It can handle much less water than usually given, especially if left higher (>3”) and more brown than green in the warm seasons as is its natural state. LESS work mowing, watering, fertilizing and removing grass clippings allows turf grass to adapt to more local conditions where it will survive just fine in near dormancy. This also allows the soil to recover and sequester more carbon, whereas traditional lawn care practices emit up to 4 times the carbon that lawn sequesters. (ref)
How would it be if we were to look for ‘the angel’ in the lot, and like Michelangelo, discover, rather than create, the garden that wants to be set free? I believe this way leads down the path to a garden that requires less ‘work’, is more successful and more rewarding, and allows the garden to shape us as we shape it.
Lisa Sangelo is a Landscape Architect and ‘global citizen’ who leans heavily on the principles of Deep Ecology. Her experience includes Conservation and Interpretive work, Visual Resource Management, Whole Farm Planning, Residential Design and Project Management. Originally from Perth, Australia, she lives in Longmont, CO.
