reclamation

The house behind us has a back fence that is about fif­teen feet behind our rear fence. Between the two is a no-man’s-land of unmain­tained ice­plant, ivy and what­ever else has escaped from the adja­cent gar­dens. In some neigh­bor­hoods this might be the loca­tion for a back alley. But with lot of the back house ris­ing six feet over ours, the land is too sloped to accom­mo­date much more than a nar­row con­crete cul­vert to drain the slope behind us and keep the infre­quent rains from inun­dat­ing all of us below.

A view of the Back 40

A view of the Back 40

We have a gate that leads into this space of ambigu­ous own­er­ship, but I’d never spent much time back there until a recent project to repair the fence.

I looked with con­tempt at the thick mat of ice­plant. Botan­i­cal shag car­pet­ing, I thought. Every ignored space in town is cov­ered with it. It does next to noth­ing to pro­vide habi­tat for the local fauna. Although it’s often planted to sta­bi­lize a slope, its weight can actu­ally pull the slope down more than hold it in place. Yes, it’s very drought-tolerant, and it’s ser­vice­able in some sit­u­a­tions. But the plant for me usu­ally rep­re­sents a colos­sal fail­ure of the imag­i­na­tion. We can do bet­ter than this.

I just hap­pened to have two pots of seedlings of the native sacred datura, a.k.a. toloache, a.k.a. Datura wrightii. The plant eas­ily grows six or more feet across, and I real­is­ti­cally had no space for it in the gar­den around the house. The light­bulb over my head came on.

One of the daturas planted in the back 40

One of the dat­uras planted in the back 40

It’s amaz­ing what ten min­utes with a trowel, a water­ing can and two pots of plants can accom­plish. In this sec­ond photo, lower right, is one of the datura seedlings that I inserted into the thatch under the iceplant.

I must admit that after plant­ing them I for­got to water them for almost a week of dry weather well into the eight­ies. Expect­ing to see car­nage, I was sur­prised to instead see the plants look­ing at least as happy as they were in their seed pots. I gave them another drink of water, but that may be all they’ll require from here on out. Start­ing next spring, I’m hop­ing to bee able to see their amaz­ing morning-glory flow­ers from my deck, unfurl­ing at dusk to greet the night.

From my last walk in the local wilds I came home with a nap­kin folded around the seeds of another plant I pre­vi­ously didn’t have room for. I’m thrilled. I’ve got a whole new plot to garden.

November 25 2008 04:50 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • •

2 Responses to “reclamation”

  1. Philip on 25 Nov 2008 at 11:05 am #

    Hi James,
    How fun!
    Yes, they did plant a lot of ice­plant in the 70’s…shag carpeting…Perfect!
    What a great choice, the Datura wrightii.
    It seems like they like their loca­tion.
    You have reminded me of this plant…maybe I can find a spot in my garden…I think I need a no mans land!
    Good work on pro­vid­ing plants for the native habi­tat!
    Best regards,
    Philip

  2. lostlandscape on 25 Nov 2008 at 9:51 pm #

    Thanks again for stop­ping by, Philip!

    With so many species of plants in the state–plus how­ever many other plants there are out there in the world–how is a per­son to choose from among them? I enjoyed your story about your fam­ily trip to col­lect seeds, and that way you form a gar­den of mem­o­ries as well as one of plants. Of course we gar­den­ers all seem to have far more room for mem­o­ries than plants, and we’re back to have to select­ing between them. Here’s wish­ing you all the room you’d like!

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