LEARNING TO LET GO, naturally

Neatly cropped lawns and perfectly manicured borders are out. Natural gardening is in. And frankly, Becky Searle – for one – is relieved

- Becky Searle

When we understand what is happening in our gardens, how our plants survive and thrive, we can step back and watch the magic happen rather than wanting to get involved and lend too much of a helping hand. In fact, our gardens can become places of spectacular wonder, where we can get back to nature and let go of our need to control. We can relax and let ourselves be a part of it. Also, we have a legitimate reason for being just a little bit lazy!

In last month’s issue I spoke about the garden as an ecosystem and how letting nature do the work can produce a healthier and more resilient garden with less work from us.

But how do we let nature do the work? Is it really as easy as just walking away? Well, we all know that if you turn your back on a garden for more than a few weeks in summer, when you look back you will be confronted with a mass of weeds, slug and caterpillar damage and plants in places you didn’t expect them. This can be part of the fun sometimes but in small areas that we wish to be productive it’s not much fun at all. We need to maintain some sort of control to get anything out of our gardens. But the key is knowing what we can control and what we should let nature do. If we are smart about it, we can let nature do the hard work while we simply act as conductors.

TIMING