The Woodland Garden –

a stream of consciousness Saturday presentation

The twists and turns of the short trails in the back of my house are miniature woodland garden with trails. I like, sometimes, to call them branches of the Warner Trail. The Warner Trail is a Trail in Southern, Massachusetts. For many years, I hiked the Warner Trail with my Friends, and after I returned from graduate school, I assumed duties as a co-leader on our annual series of spring and fall hikes along the trail.

My years along that trail were a journey that led from my early college years to summer returns during grad school to eventually walking the trail with my own children. That’s a long time.

Arthritis in feet and ankles gradually made ten-mile hikes into torture rather than a pleasure. But I can wander the path alone at home. This time of year, I have been pacing alongside the emergence of the springtime ephemeral flowers. Sanguinaria ( bloodroot) was first. Just a month ago, the first Trout lilies were in blossom, but they have already started there annual disappearing act. Trillium is coming soon, as is our little native geranium, wild sasparilla, and may apple. Woods phlox and violets are so discreet that you might miss them if you speed along your way, so take your time to enjoy them.

It wasn’t always this way. When we bought the house in 1997, the invasive vines covered everything so completely that you couldn’t even see the signs for the bird sanctuary that lay just beyond the property line. My kids first made me do something about the mass of vines. They wanted to dig a pond, and indeed, one day in the first spring we lived there, I came home from work one day to find the construction crew of my two sons and two daughters starting the excavation. I began clearing the bittersweet the following day. Working alone, I cleared the area by carefully pulling up roots and stems. I used chemicals only in the poison Ivy, which I sprayed and marked so the kids would stay clear.

I now had a large opening, and a neighbor offered the history. In the forty or so years they had lived next door, the previous owners had tried unsuccessfully to grow a lawn on the site, but it was too shady and rocky. In its earlier incarnation as agricultural land, it had been an orchard. With the pond taking shape, I decided on a woodland garden that took advantage of the adjacent refuge. The birds, frogs, and salamanders seemed to like the change.

These days, it is a predominantly native New England woodland verge. But every year, I have to do a bit of policing on the invasive bittersweet and barberry. I have reached a truce with the blue honesty flowers from someone’s earlier gardening. I have to accept the history of the plot. Just like I have to accept the fragments of a 1920s foundation for a garage on the site. A location is, to an extent, on loan to us, not something forever ours.

It is an attempt at rewilding the area, and I’ve succeeded. Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that the plot is taking on a life of its own without my guidance. Plants are spreading, seeding into better-suited areas, or receding from others. I can now walk along the trails and be truly surprised at what nature is doing, not what I imposed. It’s time for me to do less, just the touch here and there to repel the violently disruptive invasives and leave the rest alone to be enjoyed.