I knew it couldn’t last. A profusion of gorgeous wildflowers in a roundabout is just too attractive to a municipal weed whacker.
I’ve lately been savouring the benign neglect of two roundabouts in Kemptville. The one adjacent to the Tim Hortons had grown particularly fat and happy with the generous rainfall these past few months. Bladder Campions, Black Eyed Susans, Viper’s Bugloss, Milkweed, Cow Vetch, Mulleins and a plethora of other species sprouted uninvited amidst the most depressing, ubiquitous mono-planting possible: the dreaded spreading juniper.
I easily forgot the junipers as the wildflowers grew up and out, parading their striking forms and colours to the thousands of cars passing daily. Entirely unassisted by human hands, the plants naturally filled the low, medium and high planes and boasted a colourful, harmonious palette and variance of textures that is the holy grail of every gardener. I never drove by without the urge to photograph it. But I never did.
Last week, someone tampered with Eden.
A four-by-four patch was hand-stripped, its gentle denizens ripped from the soil and left to shrivel in a mangled mess. Somebody somewhere had decided to put an end to this weed nonsense. I wanted to put up angry/clever/persuasive signs to garner support for the wild garden and convince whoever was touching such beauty to bloody well stop. But I never did.
Yesterday, I found complete decimation.
Five weedy, browning heaps of perfectly beautiful wildflowers and grasses lay amongst the newly-emergent junipers. These plants, which cost neither one dime to purchase nor required one hour of labour to maintain, were gone, and the roundabout returned to its sullen, unimaginative, strip mall ugliness.
And so it goes.
[pullquote]Gardens are an attempt to mirror Eden. But what if you already lived there?…What if walking in the woods was like wandering through a vast and beloved place of abundance? Why clear the earth of all these life-giving plants in order to have…grass?
~ Theresa Kishkan, Mnemonic: A Book of Trees[/pullquote]
There are real options to ugly and unnatural: some interesting examples of creative and natural roundabout plantings are found here and here.
According to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, there are more than 2,700 uncultivated (wild) plants – including woody trees and shrubs – that grow across Ontario. Click here to find out more.
2 responses to “Roundabout Paradise”
Beautiful post, Andrea. I had a similar experience a month or so ago when a mower came along the highway near us and cut down the miles of foxgloves just coming to full bloom. Remember “Inversnaid” by GMH —
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness ? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet ;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
tk
Love the excerpt. And I’m guessing buddy mower was only doing his job. How much is an education component? I exchanged emails with one of the local counsellors and he said the municipality had had a number of complaints about the unsightliness of the roundabouts (assuming that included the wildflower one). So influencing people’s tastes/beliefs is likely the most difficult part of the whole endeavour. It does have me dreaming about large round circles and their potential for an art/planting mix. Imagine how interesting they could look from an aerial perspective with, say, a labyrinth walk or other mandala shapes. Hmmmmmm….