Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 19

John Weaver Tells It Straight Up

"The disappearance of a major natural unit of vegetation from the face of the earth is an event worthy of causing pause and consideration by any nation. Yet so gradually has the prairie been conquered by the breaking plow, the tractor, and the overcrowded herds of man…that scant attention has been given to the significance of this endless grassland or the course of its destruction. Civilized man is destroying a masterpiece of nature without recording for posterity that which he has destroyed....

Textures, Seed Heads, Exotic Last Stands, & Shame

It's June and the garden is growing about 17 feet per day. I'd just as soon it get on and make it to autumn, it's prettiest time of year. But life goes by too fast already and all we are left with are echoes and shadows of our five senses. I give you one sense:

Fountain pump gave out. Too lazy to check on it. Morning sunlight makes iris glow, and the dianthus is nice, though of no benefit to insects. Lots of green texture variety if you look for it... .... like on joe pye weed. Prairie smokin' A ra...

Deep Thinking on the Ethical Garden

I've been working for a week on talks for the Loess Hills Prairie Seminar and the Millersville Native Plants in the Landscape Conference, and I ran out of room to include some chunks of writing by others that have really guided my thinking. If / when this all ever turns into a book, I'd like to include these ideas. So for your reading pleasure:


David Gessner on slowing down our lives, how this focuses our ethical treatment of the planet and ourselves, about being patient (and oh how a garden t...

Being Reported to the County Weed Control for my Lawn

Last week, after two garden consults and a presentation on native plants, I came home to a letter in the mail:


I vowed that if I ever received such a letter, I would rip out the lawn and seed in shortgrass prairie -- little bluestem, sideoats grama, and buffalo grass. My best guess is that the guy across the street, who mows 3 times per week, waters religiously, and whose lawn looks artificial, had enough of my mowing 2-4 times a summer and at the highest setting. But it could be anyone. Here'...

How Native Plants Can Wake Us To Environmental Action

Gardening is a personal expression. It's "my art." It's a possession. And there's the problem. Aldo Leopold said that our land ethic is messed up because we treat the land as a possession, something that benefits us alone. If we say gardens should have most or all native plants in them, to many people that sounds like a personal dogma forced upon creative free will -- but that interpretation is being filtered through a western culture that puts human self above all else, and especially a conc...

Lookit My Garden

Inside the garden gate New bed along the deck, sans butterfly bush, opens up the garden. Looking back toward gate Insect nirvana -- Prunus virgiana (urinal cake tree)

The Garden is Catching Up

A somewhat late spring, but not bad. Trees are leafing out like crazy. It's been stupidly hot in the 80s. And we've picked up some rain for a change of pace. Here's my boring garden. Oh, April and May are the dullest months of the entire year! Give me July, give me October, give me January -- anything but the vacant glare of spring.

Goodbye, Winter Awesomeness

I have started cutting down the garden and the sadness is unbearable. This was the first year I totally, completely, and head over heals fell in love with the detritus. Truly, the winter garden can be more spectacular than summer's. I think I'm beginning to see summer as either a utilitarian necessity (to help insects) or as cake topped with brownies topped with candy sprinkles topped with pie. No -- the summer garden is the necessary overkill that gets us to the more profound and penetrating...

A Garden is an Act Against Nature

Here's the thing -- designing a garden, by its very definition, is an act against nature. A garden manipulates and contorts nature through the filter of our cultural and imaginative biases. These biases change over years and centuries and vary by class, gender, race, etc. But why a gardener (or landscape designer) must then throw up their hands and continue to do whatever they want -- even in the face of mass extinctions, ecosystem eradication, and climate change -- is beyond me. We like thin...

Pasque Flower on a Deeper Level

The first prairie flower that blooms in my Nebraska garden is always one that surprises me. I’m not even looking for blooms in early to mid April – instead, I’m counting the plants putting up new bits of green, wondering what’s made it through winter. Pasque flower always makes it, rising in a bulb of fuzz, some sort of thick cleaning pipe pushing it up through leaf litter and last year’s decay. In the afternoon sun the soft, fuzzy hairs around its emerging bud and few thin leaves reflect lig...