Mt. Cuba Wildflower Celebration

There are many types of gardens, and many types of gardeners. Ultimately, all gardens highlight the specific goals of their creators. Many large gardens seek to create a sense of space, to provide useful information to the public, or combine horticultural aspirations with truly artistic endeavors. But all gardens have one thing in common: they are created and maintained by people for people. This creates all kinds of fascinating conflicts and tension between the humans that care for the gardens, and the plants, animals, and climate conditions that are competing for and occupying the space, despite our dedication to removing or altering them. And despite all our best efforts to control our little spaces, a garden is ultimately a losing battle. There are weeds, insect pests, animal pests, unexpected adverse weather conditions, disease, the struggle to maintain seasonal interest, etc. etc. Despite this, we are happy to continue the timeless dance of selection, protection, and eradication.

 

Actually, eradication and selection go hand in hand, and the complex relationship that humans have with the plants they love is founded on the importance of the eradication.

 

Get the stuff we don't want or need out!

 

But back to gardens. Anyone who has ever been to a botanical garden can tell that they are deeply human creations. The plants that adorn their glasshouse displays, outdoor walking trails, impressive collections and education centers are not wild creatures. They are manicured; they are fertilized, pruned, replaced and labeled. They are a reflection our values and our interests. When we look at the plants we have so carefully bred for centuries for scent and color display and texture, when we are awed and inspired by plants we select, and we create, when we say, only the natural complexity and mystery of this world could have rendered something so beautiful as a rose, or an apple, or an oak, we have forgotten that we are the architect. Those beautiful daffodils are tiny mirrors; we see ourselves looking back.

After all, we all know that a landscape is not actually the mountains and trees and little waterfalls that it depicts. It is clear to us that a painting of a particular landscape is simply the expression of a particular artist's understanding of a particular environment. It does not exist independently of the human mind, unlike the actual location it depicts, because it is a symbol. It is a placeholder for a human experience, riddled with subtle implications about how one should feel about that particular location, and what about that location is valuable. And so it is with the plants we love. We are growing little representations of the things we value in the natural world.

Perhaps also, hidden in our gardens, are subtle cues as to the things we fear, things that are a bit haunting to our sensibilities.
 

 

And what we fear now, are invasives. And with good reason. But first, some definitions for your reading pleasure:

 

The easiest way to describe invasive plants is to define their opposite: native non-invader plants. Native non-invaders are those species or populations that have evolved and adapted to live in a specific location or environment without the interference of humans. They are plants that exist in balance with their environment and the organisms that are found there. However, just because a plant is native does not mean it is always non-invasive. In some instances, such as the involvement of humans, environments become unbalanced and in some instances, natives can exhibit invasive potential as they take over an environment in chaos. But it is a MUCH more common attribute of non-native plants and critters [think Australia].  Examples of invasives also helps to really put what we are afraid of into perspective. Kudzu is a great example:

All looks the same, doesn't it?

 

Lets be honest with ourselves though, for a moment. What we are really talking about here is the march toward globalization! The information age, when the world became flat, is what they say we'll be saying in one hundred years. Competition! Survival of the fittest! The great age of unification, where diversity was lost on every front amidst the great flourishing of a new global culture. We're all in this together! Look at all these new things we can buy! Look at all these other people we didn't know existed!

 

Globalization is the ultimate in double edged swords. It will give millions of people access to life-changing information and potentially a better future, and it will also guarantee that not everyone makes it into the boat before the flood. Entire cultural perspectives, entire peoples, languages, and historical consciousnesses may be lost. It is clear that tensions are being felt around the globe, as change rumbles under the earth, shifting our cultural weather patterns, and revealing new fault lines.

But what does this have to do with Mt. Cuba?

It is a truly gorgeous place. Mount Cuba, a private garden in Delaware, contains nearly 600 acres of woodlands, streams, and fields. They have created a beautiful series of gardens composed entirely of native plants rescued from on and off the property. It is an extremely impressive organization. Five dollars and a reservation will get you a two hour tour of the gardens. You can't even see a matinée for that anymore. While the amount of land they have is relatively large, the organized gardens themselves are relatively small, even though they are breathtaking. They are particularly well known for their wildflower gardens, which peaked this weekend at the Mt. Cuba Wildflower Celebration. This annual celebration featured free admission, a variety of informational booths located throughout the gardens, a free coreopsis, and lots of staff mingling with visitors, ready at a moment's notice to offer all sorts of useful information 

Long story short, I spent three hours trying to find this place on Saturday, and got hopelessly lost. I eventually found it, only to find out that the event was TODAY, Sunday, and that I would have to come back. It then rained all day today. Needless to say, when I got up this morning, I was not too excited about reliving the nightmare. But I went, and I am planning on going back.

 

It doesn't feel like you are in a garden for the majority of the trails. Instead it feels as though you are simply in the woods, and lucky enough to be surrounded by mysterious and haunting flowers which exist for no other purpose than to remind you how gaudy roses really are, and how obnoxious breeding for double petals and larger size and brighter color can be. It will be difficult for me to go to Lowe's anytime soon, and not be ashamed of the zinnias for sale. It is clear that these plants do not exist solely for our enjoyment, but as part of a larger network of breathing energy pathways and resource sinks, with complex pollinator rituals and communication, dependent not on our care, but on the length of days and the temperature at daybreak, and at the mercy of the last frost. They are delicate, and often pale with strange architecture, so subtle that without noticing you could easily miss them; gems hidden on the forest floor.

 

One booth was dedicated to the identification and removal of invasives, those super-adaptable foreign plants previously mentioned. The booth reminded us that these buggers propagate readily, are difficult to kill, and are extremely competitive in the natural landscape, often because they have no natural predators, are resistant to different diseases, or simply grow like crazy.

The trick is, we love invasives. Most invasive plants were introduced here on purpose. They are easy to grow. They often put on impressive flower displays and rebloom. They aren't difficult to care for. They're often cool to look at. They provide enough parking, and you can find pretty much anything you need there, any time of day, at relatively low prices. When you go to other ones, the layout is pretty much the same. They are located everywhere, usually at least one in every town, sometimes more. At some of them, you don't even have to get out of the car. They'll put the food right through your driver side window. They have the products you have been taught to buy, created by brand names you have been taught to trust. There is something frighteningly ecological about them, and they are vibrant, rampant, and almost impossible to resist. Or stop.

All problems are faces of the same, larger problem.  

We love invasives because we are invasives, and we have a history of being environment changers and manipulators. Our gardens have always reflected our values and our ways of living, and the future for the beautiful, subtle, and rare living things is extremely grim. Endeavors like Mt. Cuba help to protect the things many people will never even know that they miss, and provide refuge for some of the tiny souls this world stands to lose if we don't get our appetites under control.

Remember the truth: Globalization is going to happen whether we like it or not and it is going to really hurt. We are going to emerge from it different than we were before. History will judge us based on what we choose to save, and what we allow to be bulldozed by the drive towards a more unified planet. It is not bad to buy zinnias at Lowe's. It is bad to suppose that all the cultural, environmental, and social components being lost didn't matter. What we must do, is notice what is really going on: we are about to begin the final stages of domesticating this whole planet. We are rebuilding this world, at least the parts we have access to, in our own image, and this project is reaching the global scale.

And I can tell you, that one of the things we are going to do as part of that process is make gardens to remind us of what has been lost, and what we stand to lose.

Invest in tulips, because they. aren't. going. anywhere.

The point is, Mt. Cuba is certainly a garden, but it is a garden that wishes it wasn't one. It is a garden that is subtle enough to fade into the surrounding woods without our noticing. It is a refuge, a quiet sanctuary for plants at risk. Mt. Cuba so artfully blurs the distinction between that which we have actively created, those plantings which are the reflection of our own souls, and those silent remnants of a quiet world which existed long before, that you aren't sure where the garden stops.

I felt a lot walking through Mt. Cuba today. I took pictures, but they don't really convey the soft beauty of the gardens, and I am not ambitious enough to try and describe how the quiet seemed to settle all around them, or how painful it was suddenly to see the native orchids in the mist, a silverbell by a quiet pond, a patch of shooting stars. I was almost tricked, and therein lies the real beauty. I almost forgot that I was in a garden. I looked all around for the edges, the rips in the masterful illusion that was so deftly manicured and quietly constructed to remind me of a place I will probably never find; it was a place I have never been, but a place seemed to know.

This is just to say that this is a complicated age with complicated values. We need to breathe more. Mt. Cuba is a great place to do some good breathing, and remember that the most valuable resource on this planet is life itself and it is beautiful.

Adventure is out there.