our gardens after we’re gone

Ever won­der what your gar­den would look like if the human care­tak­ers just vanished?

Maybe I’ve been inspired by all the dis­as­ter flicks like 2012 or the His­tory Channel’s Life After Peo­ple series. But envi­sion­ing gar­dens after gar­den­ers is an inter­est­ing intel­lec­tual exer­cise that might help us answer that pesky ques­tion: What is a garden?

Would all the inva­sive species take over? Would the native plants reclaim their turf? For how long would you still be able to tell that a gar­den existed in a spot in the first place?

I looked at parts of my back yard and tried to imag­ine what would happen.

Within the first month, in South­ern California’s dry cli­mate, most of the pot­ted plants would per­ish for lack of water. Some of the suc­cu­lents might hang on longer, but with­out an exten­sive root sys­tem in the ground, they’d be doomed.

This lit­tle frog would be star­ing at a bog gar­den where all the bog plants have died back, once again for lack of water.

Within two or three months the fish­ponds would be dry: no waterlilies, no cat­tails, no sedges, no water for the local birds.

This pathetic patch of grass would go through boom and bust cycles, turn­ing green with the rains, dying back to brown other times of year. Seeds of other plants bet­ter adapted to the con­di­tions would even­tu­ally take hold. Maybe some plants from the local canyon. Maybe some hardy exotic or inva­sive species.

Behind the back fence of the house is this slope dom­i­nated by ram­pant ice­plant. The the neigh­bor behind me and I haven’t been able agree on what to do with the space. I’ve planted a small col­lec­tion of native plants to help sta­bi­lize the slope. These are species that with only once excep­tion can be found within a five mile radius of the house, and include plants like this night­shade, Solanum parishii…

…and Del Mar Man­zanita, Arc­tostaphy­los glan­du­losa ssp. cras­si­fo­lia, an extremely rare plant that’s on the Fed­eral endan­gered species list. The neigh­bor, how­ever, loves their ice­plant and can’t imag­ine of a slope with­out this gaw­daw­ful inva­sive species clam­or­ing all over it. The local chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety has pre­pared a great pam­phlet on get­ting rid of ice­plant that you can view [ here ]. It goes into some great rea­sons to get rid of the stuff:

Planted on hill­sides of thou­sands of homes in San Diego, it has since crawled off the orig­i­nal site and into neigh­bor­ing Open Space parks, endan­ger­ing unique plants by smoth­er­ing them. Ice­plant pro­vides lit­tle habi­tat value com­pared to the plant com­mu­nity that it is replac­ing. Com­pared to the native shrubs, ice­plant has very shal­low roots that do not hold soil well; close inspec­tion often reveals gul­lies under­neath the twisted mat of vines. After rain, Ice­plant engorges with water, sub­stan­tially increas­ing its weight. As a result, ice­plant can cause the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of steep hill­sides by encour­ag­ing slump­ing – poten­tially endan­ger­ing the house above.

For peo­ple in sub­ur­bia, “habi­tat value” might mean plants that har­bor scary wild ani­mals and bugs, so that’s not always the most com­pelling rea­son to go native. The fact that ice­plant might endan­ger their prop­erty val­ues could be more persuasive.

So, return­ing to my main topic, the ice­plant would prob­a­bly over­run most of the native plants in a very few years and form a deep pile. Once we neglected the slope for a few years and found that the mat of ice­plant was start­ing to push the back fence over. Within ten years the fence would begin to fail and the ice­plant would begin its descent into the lower garden.

These plants along the back fence would stand a chance of sur­viv­ing with­out water. The yucca, palm, pro­tea would be tall enough to sur­vive an onslaught of maraud­ing ice­plant from behind. They’re plants that don’t require much main­te­nance, and this wall of foliage would prob­a­bly look unchanged for a num­ber of years. But the lower aloes and other suc­cu­lents would likely be smoth­ered by the iceplant.

This apri­cot against the back fence never looks great with­out sum­mer water­ing, but it sur­vives. It’s tall enough that it would prob­a­bly sur­vive the ice­plant inva­sion. Some of the adja­cent native plants do great with the nat­ural con­di­tions. They might not cope so well with the maraud­ing iceplant.

The neigh­bor on the side has Alger­ian ivy that requires con­stant clip­ping to keep it next door. Within two years it would begin to estab­lish itself in the back yard. Taller plants that might sur­vive the ice­plant inva­sion might have ivy crawl­ing up and smoth­er­ing them.

This raised bed near the house is where veg­gies and irri­gated plants live. Most of the exotic plants wouldn’t make it with­out water. The Dr. Hurd man­zanita, the bougainvil­lea vine and maybe the Gar­rya ellip­tica would prob­a­bly hang in there, how­ever, maybe for decades, maybe for much longer.

Fifty to seventy-five years out the house would start to fail. Plants might begin to move in. The sur­round­ing gar­den space would be over­grown with the hardi­est drought-adapted species. I almost never plant in rows, but the mixed ori­gins of the species–South Africa, South Amer­ica, Europe, as well as from all over Cal­i­for­nia, not just local species–would clue an inves­ti­ga­tor into the fact that a gar­den existed on the site. The rela­tion­ships between the plants would be dic­tated by nature, not a gar­dener pre­serv­ing order between plants with mis­matched lev­els of vigor.

Chances are excel­lent that one hun­dred years out, maybe two hun­dred or more, the most per­sis­tent inva­sive species would still be here. Ice­plant and ivy, plus fen­nel and black mus­tard that have invaded the local canyons, would fea­ture in the neigh­bor­hood land­scape. But while many inva­sives bask in the newly dis­turbed earth of a gar­den or the re-engineered grades around roads, they don’t always do so well long-term. Biol­o­gists have sug­gested that many native plants would return to a place where they’re not being pulled out or con­stantly mowed. My yard might be col­o­nized by the local Mex­i­can elder­berry, or toyon, or lemon­ade berry, or prickly pear. And maybe some of the plants I’ve already intro­duced to the yard will per­sist and repro­duce. The restora­tion of nature might spread from my house and from the wild edges of nature just a few houses away.

Even after nature returns, the occa­sional hardy exotic plant sur­viv­ing amidst the natives, along with some of the neighborhood’s plant­i­ngs of trees and shrubs in rows will make it obvi­ous: There used to be gar­dens here.

February 02 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • landscape | Tags: • • •

26 Responses to “our gardens after we’re gone”

  1. MNGarden on 02 Feb 2010 at 7:55 am #

    The best hardi­est parts would remain if not com­pletely destroyed by a new owner.

  2. Noelle/azplantlady on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:45 am #

    This is such an inter­est­ing post. I have noticed Bougainvil­lea and Ole­an­ders hang­ing about here in the desert, long after the water had been shut off. I think they may sur­vive with just nat­ural rainfall.

  3. Gayle Madwin on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:47 am #

    This was fas­ci­nat­ing to read and think about. My goal is to cre­ate a gar­den that won’t need me at all, espe­cially because we’re only rent­ing and will prob­a­bly end up leav­ing most of the plants behind to fend for them­selves when we buy a place. How­ever, I sus­pect that if we left today, my drainage ditch would fill up with dirt within two or three win­ters, and the rest of the back yard would then sit com­pletely under­wa­ter for sev­eral months each win­ter, so pretty much every sin­gle plant I’ve planted in the entire back yard would drown in no time at all. All that might sur­vive (besides the unwanted bermuda grass) would be my blue elder­berry, golden cur­rant, nar­rowleaf milk­weed, and Santa Bar­bara sedge. In the front yard noth­ing would drown, but every­thing shorter than about two feet tall would be smoth­ered to death by bermuda grass within a sum­mer or two, so that would leave … maybe a scar­let lark­spur and some sand-dune wall­flow­ers. Noth­ing else.

  4. Karen - An Artist's Garden on 02 Feb 2010 at 3:30 pm #

    This is a fas­ci­nat­ing and thought pro­vok­ing read — here I think the gar­den would revert to couch-grass, net­tle and bram­bles, and lots of self seed­ing lau­rel — but I will pon­der it some more I expect over the next few days
    K

  5. Lola on 02 Feb 2010 at 4:00 pm #

    Very inter­est­ing post. I’ve seen how a place looks just a few months after the inhab­i­tants have left. Not a pretty sight. It would be even worse if kudzu was any­where near.

  6. Susie on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:46 pm #

    Since I don’t care much for main­te­nance, hope­fully most would survive.….unless some­one else moves in…that would be a totally dif­fer­ent story. Next house all native!

  7. Nell Jean on 02 Feb 2010 at 5:59 pm #

    I saw what hap­pened to this gar­den after MIL was gone. FIL cut down a huge bed of aza­leas and let the black­ber­ries that birds had planted grow up, as he like berry pie much bet­ter than blos­soms once in spring. Trees, box­woods and camel­lias per­sisted, good bones don’t leave. Machin­ery takes care of over­growth. Life goes on.

    When we’re gone, I’m okay with hav­ing the county burn the house as a train­ing exer­cise and the land be sold. I am plant­ing a plea­sure gar­den, not a memorial.

  8. tina on 02 Feb 2010 at 8:31 pm #

    Scary thoughts indeed. I get so sad when I see gar­dens that have gone by because the gar­dener either died or moved on. I think before I go I must give away all my plants and plant grass. That way no sad­ness for me or others.

  9. Andrea on 02 Feb 2010 at 8:40 pm #

    I am new here, just fol­lowed your com­ment. That is some­thing to con­tem­plate on. That depends on how long will the observer arrive after we van­ished. There’s a lot of vari­ables to be qual­i­fied here, but i sud­denly visu­al­ized the col­o­niz­ers as if they are grow­ing so fast as in the movies, with roots grow­ing every­where!!! But that will not hap­pen, let’s stop the thought, because it is energy and energy is not destroyed. We are where our thought is. Let us just be happy and enjoy the land­scape we have now, and let’s not be a party to its destruc­tion, as much as we can. thanks.

  10. Brad B on 02 Feb 2010 at 9:40 pm #

    I’ve actu­ally been think­ing about this myself because there is a chance (now a very real chance) that I will be mov­ing in two months. I was hop­ing to stay longer to make sure every­thing was estab­lished, but if I leave I’ll just have to hope for the best. Neigh­bors on both sides have grass and weeds, and we had our own stock of weed­seeds, reduced from the first year, but still ger­mi­nat­ing. And though when replaced the front lawn with mixed native and drought tol­er­ant plants, some were just planted less than a year ago. Here’s hop­ing mother nature is stronger than expected.

  11. ryan on 03 Feb 2010 at 12:26 am #

    I think about this a lot, because we install so many gar­dens that don’t get any sig­nif­i­cant main­te­nance. My own per­sonal gar­den would dis­ap­pear beneath a for­est of bamboo.

  12. Elephant's Eye on 03 Feb 2010 at 5:04 am #

    (Sorry about the inva­sive ice plant. I was under the impres­sion that Cal­i­for­nia planted it for fire pro­tec­tion?) If we leave our gar­den, the first thing to go will be the roses, with­out water­ing. In win­ter it will be bright green with Oxalis and win­ter grass. In sum­mer hard baked clay, with a few shriv­elled shrubs, wait­ing. What is encour­ag­ing for the native fyn­bos, is that, when they clear inva­sive Aus­tralian wat­tles, even after 50 years, the fyn­bos seeds are wait­ing to grow! If he arrives soon enough the explorer will find fruit trees, and know there was once a gar­den here.

  13. Loree / danger garden on 03 Feb 2010 at 12:33 pm #

    Very inter­est­ing post, I enjoyed your well thought out and detailed descrip­tions. You’ve given me some­thing new to pon­der while I lie awake at night try­ing (but not suc­ceed­ing) to sleep.

  14. Barbara E on 03 Feb 2010 at 5:36 pm #

    I often think about this. In fact Lenz and Dour­ley wrote about it in their book, “Cal­i­for­nia Native Trees and Shrubs.” Ran­cho Santa Ana Botanic Gar­den moved from Orange County in 1951 to Clare­mont and they doc­u­mented which plants con­tin­ued to live on the orig­i­nal site for the next 20+ years (Chap­ter 5 — Sur­vival of Plants With­out Care). They even made a table show­ing how many species from dif­fer­ent plant com­mu­ni­ties sur­vived. Chap­ar­ral was the win­ner with 20 sur­viv­ing species.

  15. lostlandscape on 03 Feb 2010 at 8:35 pm #

    MNG, from what I’ve seen the most changes that can occur in a gar­den often is due to another gar­dener. We had a neigh­bor have their house pro­fes­sion­ally landscaped–very nicely–only to have it ripped out by the new owner.

    Noelle, I can’t say I’ve seen bougainvil­leas and ole­an­ders repro­duce from seed, but I’d agree that the orig­i­nal plants would prob­a­bly hang on for years.

    Gayle, you point out how much a human can some­times have to be involved to keep a gar­den going, even if it’s made up of native plants. I have a lit­tle cor­ner of bermuda grass that sur­pris­ingly doesn’t spread much beyond where there’s mois­ture. But I could see how it could be a mon­ster where it might be a lit­tle moister where you are.

    Karen, we have net­tles here as well, and I’d pre­dict they’d be part of the mix of sur­vivors that would show them­selves in the wet­ter times of year.

    Lola, kudzu hasn’t made it out here, and I think it might not do well. But we have ice­plant, which is almost as bad!

    Susie, it sounds like you’ve selected sen­si­ble plant choices for your gar­den. As much as I try I seem to end up with more high-maintenance plants than I should.

    Nell Jean, that’s a really healthy thing, plant­ing a gar­den that gives you plea­sure right now. I was sur­prised how unat­tached I felt to my parent’s old house when I drove past it a decade ago. It was a gar­den where I’d spent a lot of time with the plant­i­ngs, but it had been totally changed by the new own­ers. It wasn’t the same gar­den, but it was nice.

    Tina, I like your solu­tion of giv­ing your gar­den away. Know­ing that parts of a gar­den would go on liv­ing in known, car­ing hands would be com­fort­ing to me.

    Andrea, all this is a men­tal exer­cise for sure, try­ing to imag­ine a future based on what we see in the present. It sounds like you’re as attached to your gar­den space as I am to mine, and I’d do what­ever I could to pre­serve it.

    Brad, so this is sud­denly almost real-world for you! I hope your next sit­u­a­tion works out great. As for the place you might be leav­ing, it sounds like you’ve given it a good head start. Com­pare what you’ve done with your neighbors–your cur­rent place might stand a chance to con­tinue look­ing good since you’ve made some good plant choices that might sur­vive with­out typ­i­cal gar­den watering.

    Ryan, a bam­boo thicket could be a cool future. The bam­boo for­est plant­i­ngs that I’ve wan­dered in have been pretty amazing.

    EE, no need to apol­o­gize for the ice­plant. We did it to our­selves! I won­der: Are there any Cal­i­for­nia plants where you are that have escaped their bounds? Out here, when the most ram­bunc­tious inva­sives get cleared away, the natives seem to stand a good chance of recov­ery, like in your fynbos.

    Loree, I hope this doesn’t con­tribute to the insom­nia! The space aliens will be able to rec­og­nize your gar­den a cen­tury in the future as the place where all the spikey plants still grow…

    Bar­bara, the Lenz and Dour­ley book’s focus on plants for both gar­dens and “envi­ron­men­tal use” prob­a­bly gives it a more long-term focus than some native plant books. I won­der how obvi­ous it would be that the orig­i­nal gar­den was a planted and man­aged space in con­trast to adja­cent chap­ar­ral. Maybe there’d be a richer menu of plants? And maybe chap­ar­ral won out because that was the appro­pri­ate plant com­mu­nity choice for where the gar­den was located? I’d guess my “native plants” from Cal­i­for­nia foothills 600 miles away wouldn’t do so well long-term as many plants from my neighborhood.

  16. Jess on 04 Feb 2010 at 1:17 pm #

    What a fas­ci­nat­ing and though­ful post. One could rea­son­ably say that this men­tal exer­cise should be applied, at least to some extent, when­ever plan­ning a gar­den. Seems like it’s the inva­sions from out­side that would most threaten even the best-planned gar­den once its care­tak­ers have gone. I can assure you your neighbor’s ivy would not only invade your yard, but would has­ten your house’s demise as well! In my yard, the ivy’s chances might depend on when I dis­ap­peared, becuse I con­tinue to try to elim­i­nate it; if I dis­ap­peared today, the ivy would def­i­nitely come back and take over, and I don’t think anything–not the trees, not the house, not anything–would be able to out­com­pete it. There are other things that con­stantly pop up, such as Broom and Cot­toneaster, that would be for­mi­da­ble foes to natives, but I like to think the natives would endure in their midst, if not sur­vive. In terms of smaller herba­cious weeds, my obser­va­tion so far is that the native wild­flow­ers give them a good run for their money. I think Team Cal­i­fo­nia Poppy, Globe Gilia and Clarkia can pretty much take the weedy Oxalis, Scar­let Pim­per­nel, Senecio and the like, Any­way, thanks for the deeply tought-provoking post!

  17. skeeter on 05 Feb 2010 at 9:33 am #

    Such a sad topic to think about. I was just talk­ing to some­one else on another blog about how sad my Grand­moth­ers house now looks after her no longer there to nur­ture her gar­dens. In a Nut Shell; her once beloved Rose Gar­den, hun­dreds of Bulbs, Veg­gie plat, etc. All Gone with the wind. It looks as though a Gar­den Club Mem­ber never touched the soil. Such a sad thing to my eyes that I rarely go by the house. I so wished I had dug up the bulbs if noth­ing else… Sigh…

    The idea for the Vinyl Records is cool. I could never part with our Vinyl’s at this point but will keep that idea in mind when I am ready to take the plunge!

    Scooter is a cute Fur Baby…

  18. lostlandscape on 05 Feb 2010 at 4:30 pm #

    Jess, lots of thought­ful things in your com­ment… I may have under­played the pos­si­bil­ity of trou­ble the ivy would cause. The slope I showed with the ice­plant also has ivy and Bermuda but­ter­cup, a triple threat of obnox­ious­ness that could take over more of the gar­den. My local canyon has areas of sprawl­ing ice­plant mixed in with taller natives pok­ing up through it, with smaller spots of ivy and buttercup.

    Skeeter, it sounds like you con­sider your grandmother’s gar­den a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of her old home, and I can def­i­nitely see that. A gar­den can express basic human needs for order or vari­ety, and at the same time it’s the incar­na­tion of the gardener’s per­son­al­ity. Remove the gar­dener, and the per­son­al­ity van­ishes. What’s left? A gar­den? Or a wild assort­ment of plants?

  19. Dirty Girl Gardening on 05 Feb 2010 at 10:28 pm #

    Hmmmm, my gar­den would prob­a­bly be hap­pier with me gone… no more dog­gies play­ing tug-o-war with the jas­mine vine — or opps! too much mush­room com­post on my roses again!

  20. Pomona Belvedere on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:36 am #

    What a thought-provoking post, James. As usual.

    And a lot of thought-provoking com­ments as well.

    It made me think about rea­sons why we gar­den; the mania for grow­ing things can stem from many roots. In my own case, I was aim­ing to fit things in with the woods; I’ve spent more time hang­ing out with wild (not nec­es­sar­ily native, as we know) plants than gar­den­ing. I think my tulips and other mediter­ranean bulbs would sur­vive; they’d break out of their pots and many would find seat­ing in the native soil where they would grad­u­ally estab­lish them­selves. Most of my other stuff in pots would croak for the rea­sons you men­tion. The infant moss gar­den would mostly revive with win­ter rains. The natives I’ve added would be partly destroyed by inva­sive grasses and partly sur­vive; I’ll have to check Lenz and Dour­ley to find out which ones!

    I’m glad to hear that ice plant has been found to con­tribute to ero­sion and prop­erty dam­age. I’m not anti-iceplant as a con­tained plant, but don’t like the way it’s taken over beaches and all kinds of other nat­ural habitats.

    I loved get­ting to see the Del Mar man­zanita, as I’m a closet arc­tostaphy­los fan and didn’t know about this one.

  21. lostlandscape on 07 Feb 2010 at 10:58 am #

    DGG, like you say, I’m sure there are a few of my plants that view me as the over­bear­ing par­ent that’s always keep­ing them in line, cut­ting back an enthu­si­as­tic shoot, or hack­ing back and entire season’s worth of per­fectly viable seed pods before they have a chance to spread everywhere…

    Pomona, I think you’re in an inter­est­ing posi­tion, where you’re the pio­neer­ing myth­i­cal First Gar­dener for your prop­erty. For most of us it’s prob­a­bly more along the lines of try­ing to make our gar­dens work in rela­tion to what ear­lier gar­den­ers did. You’re where you have to decide how to fit your tulips into the woods. To me it’d seem to be at once really excit­ing and really intim­i­dat­ing. As far as the man­zanita, I’m just begin­ning to real­ize how many lovers of this genus there are out there. The fact that most are infu­ri­at­ingly slow grow­ers adds to their cachet as being spe­cial plants. (And OF COURSE they’re spe­cial plants!)

  22. Andrea on 07 Feb 2010 at 6:54 pm #

    hi James, good morn­ing, i vis­ited ear­lier even before your next post, so please bear with my 2nd com­ment. haha. To reply again to your reply to mine, i am not actu­ally attached that much to my gar­den, because i am an absen­tee gar­dener. I just let my mother do what­ever she wants in the gar­den. Before, i actu­ally dont like her style because what­ever she put, grows. The per­fect exam­ple of “Green Thumb”. What­ever i prune she plants later. So i just let go and let any­thing, because i am absent, i just try to appre­ci­ate and just call it The Bio­di­ver­sity Gar­den. Now i appre­ci­ate the but­ter­flies and how the plants put to use “sur­vival of the fittest”.

  23. Lynn on 15 Feb 2010 at 5:57 pm #

    Hmmm. Think­ing about it this way, as if we’d all been abducted, is eas­ier and more inter­est­ing than the prob­a­ble real­ity that the next peo­ple who will live in our house won’t be gar­den­ers, and it will prob­a­bly all go back to grass at best, weeds at worst. But some of the NE natives are burly enough to hold their ground. I’d like to think that it would go to milk­weed, gold­en­rod, Joe Pye, flea­bane, and aster, but a more likely scene would be a sea of evil yel­low Pasti­naca sativa, wild parsnip.

  24. Elephant's Eye on 22 Feb 2010 at 2:34 am #

    Linked back to this post today.

  25. 2012 end of the world on 26 Feb 2010 at 6:19 am #

    A friend of mine men­tioned 2012 last night to me and it’s the first I heard about it so I jumped on here out of curios­ity. I think it’s kind of sick and sounds like a bunch of skep­ti­cal jar­gon.
    I choose to live every day like it is the last because let’s be real, WHO THE HELL KNOWS what is going to hap­pen or when it’s your time to go on. The past is his­tory, the future is a mys­tery and now is a gift, thats why it’s called the present. It’s not healthy to sit around and trip out about when you will die. Stop wast­ing your time you have now.
    2012 end of world
     — some truth about 2012

  26. DryStoneGarden » Blog Archive » The Garden Now That We’re Gone on 19 Jun 2010 at 6:30 am #

    […] while back, James at Lostinthe­Land­scape did a post titled Our Gar­dens After We’re Gone, mus­ing about what might hap­pen to his gar­den if or when he is no longer stew­ard­ing it. TownMouse […]

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