Do you appreciate a manicured lawn, well behaved shrubs and clean trees? Or do you look out the window while speeding along the highway in the heat of summer and marvel at the grasses and flowers that grow in the fields?
We plant trees, shrubs and perennials around our homes as curb appeal. Our lawns replace grassland and that group of pines on the corner barely whispers forest. If we are forward thinking we plant trees, but only if they are clean and well behaved. We can't all be gardeners, naturalists, or if you want to get really heavy "stewards of the land".
Yet, whether we know it or not we need that bit of wild in an otherwise concrete world. Under planting a group of redbuds with a mass of ferns in the shade of that really big tree you cannot get grass to grown under grasps for that feeling of forest. It isn't complex and will save you a lot of grass seed and frustration.
So many people I talk to are afraid of plants. What if it doesn't look like you think it will or what if the unthinkable happens and you kill it? Don't worry. Mother Nature does strange all the time and death is common in the wild. If a plant can't cut it then it evolves or disappears and the same is true of your planting attempts.
So try throwing some grasses, flowering perennials, trees that are "messy" or something that attracts bees into your yard. Let's make living, moving, growing spaces that we can relax in and say,
I'm okay with a little wild.