Growing up, we were considered to be the country mice of the extended family as we lived on a one acre plot about 45 minutes from the “big city.” All of my cousins, aunts, and uncles lived on medium sized suburban city lots, and it was just understood that we lived in the wild, though my family religiously mowed the lawn at least once a week spring through fall.

Our huge expanse of a front yard was mostly lawn, as was our back yard, and even though we had fir, cedar, and fruit trees placed sporadically about, our street was about as suburban as you can get in the middle of the country.

It wasn’t until I moved to a small suburban apartment complex with an almost perfectly manicured lawn and grounds that I began to realize the similarities between the two places and started wondering what truly is wild.

In comes William Robinson — with Rick Darke — and The Wild Garden. William Robinson pioneered the naturalistic gardening style in Britain (home of the perfectly manicured lawn and sculpted boxwoods), and his style continues to influence gardeners across the globe today.

Timber author Rick Darke updated Robinson’s classic with gorgeous new photography, and some introductory chapters, and he has recently written an article for The American Gardener magazine that describes exactly “What is Wild?” (Link goes to a PDF.)

William Robinson and Rick Darke have shown me that you don’t have to live in the country to have a naturalistic, “wild” space.

Over the holidays I went to visit relatives who live in Phoenix, Arizona.

Portland in the winter is often rainy. Also, it rains a lot. And it’s often wet. That’s normal. Phoenix, on the other hand, is in a desert, meaning that it is dry, a bit dusty, and with some dessication thrown in just for kicks. It was nice to have some sunshine and blue sky for a change, though I was ready for a dose of humidity by the end of the trip.

Since we were in a desert, I lobbied successfully to go visit the Desert Botanical Garden. I’m quite fond of desert plants — it’s like a quick trip to a different world. Gone are the large green leaves and perennials, and in their place are trees and shrubs that are often dull from a distance, but fascinating up close. Cactus and succulents both provide outlandish sculptural shapes and crazy details. I love them!

Some of them look like brains! How can you not love a plant that looks like brains?

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

When I was a kid my mother grew an enormous poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) in a dormer window in my bedroom. She had received it one Christmas as a small potted plant to decorate the dinner table. We always gathered as a very large extended “family” that included close friends of my parents and their children. My siblings and I are still friends with the children of these families and consider them hanai brothers and sisters. Hanai is a Hawaiian word that loosely equates to “adopted”. Holiday gatherings of our hanai family brought many celebratory traditions together: Jewish, Egyptian, German, and Celtic. I’m not sure who brought the little poinsettia as a gift, because all those cultures embrace the practice of bringing greenery and plants into our homes in winter, especially during the winter feasts.

Most of the time, the plant lived in a giant yellow pot in the bay window of my bedroom. There, it soaked up plenty of sunlight, just enough water, and not too many nutrients. To tell the truth, I never really paid attention to how my mother cared for it. But she must have babied that plant, because by the time I was a teenager, the poinsettia was lush, robust, and six feet tall.

Every autumn my mother came to my bedroom each evening and dragged that heavy pot and plant into my closet. Shoving the shrub among my clothes, she’d pull on the sting to turn out the light, shut the closet door, and forbid me to open it until morning. And by Christmas every year bright red “flowers” festooned the branches. I didn’t know then what I know now –- that these are not really flowers, but modified leaves that change colors through the lengthening dark nights of early winter. Before the solstice and the return of the light.

Green flower buds and bright red bracts on my mother’s poinsettia.

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It’s moss season in the Pacific Northwest. Moss grows on roofs, in parks, on streets, in pavement cracks,  on my lawn. Moss gets greener and greener the grayer the day, the harder the rain. Moss makes my backyard springy and cushy, as if I’m walking on an outdoor mattress.

And, if I am very, very lucky, moss will grow in the shape of a frog.

The Wall Street Journal ran an enlightening story recently about “turf wars” over water guzzling landscapes and what the EPA hopes to do about it.

The article outlines various municipal programs (incentive-based as well as voluntary) currently in place (primarily in the west) to encourage homeowners to “tear up” their turf lawns in favor of a more sustainable landscape, requiring much less water, fertilizer, and fewer pesticides. They are offering up to $1.50 per square foot of turf grass if you replace that same area with regionally-appropriate, drought-tolerant plants. It’s a neat idea, this “cash for grass.” Makes sense. People will be financially rewarded for ripping up their water-guzzling, synthetic-chemical-sucking lawns and planting better choices for their neighborhood and region.

But, what kinds of plants — besides the obvious cacti and succulents — don’t require much watering or fertilizer, you might ask? Lots of them, actually.

Enter the “new” American landscape: the meadow garden.

A meadow garden, or prairie-style planting, is a shimmering mini eco-system, in which regionally-appropriate grasses combine with colorful perennials to form a rich tapestry that is friendly to wildlife. This type of garden is not only good for the natural environment, virtually maintenance free, and needs far less watering than a turf lawn, but best of all—it requires no mowing, ever! Wow, can you even imagine?

As you can see, we’re not talking not boring, monotonous-looking, either. These are visually stunning, colorful,vibrant, bold, textured, flowering plants, with four-season interest. Bonus — they attract wildlife and are a huge benefit to the natural ecosystem.

It’s fortuitous timing that Timber Press’s new book, The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn by John Greenlee with photos by Saxon Holt, has just been released this month. It can help homeowners who are choosing to tear up their lawn this fall find the right mix of perennials and regionally appropriate grasses and grass-like plants to suit their local landscapes.

Author John Greenlee has been designing meadow gardens for decades. Dubbed “The Grassman” by The New Yorker, Greenlee (who also happens to be sought-after garden designer to a number of well-known Hollywood celebrities) is just the authority to help navigate and inspire folks to install a meadow garden at home.

And, if you’re interested in more information, check out the new Lawn Reform Coalition website, a newly-formed group of activists and plant nuts who, like John Greenlee, want to help educate others about “killing the lawn.” They’ve banded together in the hopes of creating a national revolution on the topic.

It’s time to get rid of the old-fashioned lawn and embrace a sane and healthy future: the designed meadow.

Other than vegetables, I subscribe to the “if it needs extra water, it doesn’t deserve to live” theory, which means that a lot of the ornamental that were in my front yard when I bought my house didn’t make it through their first year with me. It’s like the Marines, I like to tell myself: “the few, the proud – the ones who can do without water for four months.” A co-worker of mine says “I don’t kill plants – I just watch them die,” and I find that distinction very comforting when I think about the fate of those dearly departed perennials. (I don’t even know their names. I’m a monster.)

In the empty spots that somehow keep popping up in my front yard, I plan to plant things that are tough ‘n hardy, purty, impervious to neglect, and will give the crab grass a run for its money. Native plants are excellent for this sort of application – many of them are adapted to where I live anyway, so won’t require much care once established. Plus, they have the added bonus of providing food for local wildlife. One of our books, 50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants is also an excellent source of plants that require minimal care – every single plant in there is of the “plant it and forget it” variety. (Or, rather, “plant it and forget it, except when you are noticing how attractive it is.”) Thirdly, there is a book that we’ll publish at the end of the year that sounds right up my alley – The New Low-Maintenance Garden, by Valerie Easton. The parts of the book that I have seen are gorgeous and chock full of all kinds of beautiful, low-maintenance gardens, any one of which I would be happy to find serendipitously plopped down in front of my house. This book will go on my Christmas list.

I love a beautiful garden, but I have trouble keeping up with 4 raised beds of vegetables, and that’s only about 120 square feet. So I am always pleased to find books that recommend plants and techniques for fuss-free garden beauty. Maybe someday I’ll have a full-fledged, 40-hour-a-week garden – but I’m not aiming to have one of those anytime soon.

Last night I finished watching the series Planet Earth.

Most of the series contained gorgeous footage of animals from all over the globe and in every ecosystem–jungles, seas, deserts, mountains, etc. There were serious contenders for The Absolute Cutest Baby Animal Ever (I nominate baby musk oxen), and footage of animals interacting with each other in their environments (i.e., eating and being eaten.) The whole thing was very well done; a fascinating and beautiful series.

The last disc explores the effects of global warming and the interactions between humans and animals/plants, who are all competing for the same land. These parts of a nature show are always overwhelming–the obstacles are so great, and the questions aren’t easy, and the answers even less so. Often at the end of these sorts of shows, I want to burn all my worldly possessions and go live in a mud hut where I can have zero impact on the earth, but then I realize that burning everything would emit too much carbon dioxide, and maybe my mud hut would accidentally cover over the last surviving member of a particular variety of ant, and I would be back to square one. It’s so hard to realize that you can’t make it better, all at once, all by yourself. What to do?

This time, I thought about Doug Tallamy’s message in Bringing Nature Home. Plant native plants, he says, which will give native species a place to eat and reproduce. It’s such a small thing–it feels almost too small–but it is something that I can do. My plan to remodel the front yard suddenly includes a lot more native plants. I opened up my native plants encyclopedia and started looking this morning.

Doug was recently on NPR’s Science Friday. To listen, click here.