So make a prairie…

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost fifteen years since I did some work recording for Statistics Canada. The job required door-to-door visits to all the homes in a designated area, interesting because I had a chance to see what people do in their yards. One residence in particular left a strong impression on me and it continues to resonate now in 2025 all these years later.

It was a beautiful home, probably 40 years old, on a fairly large estate.

The lawns were nicely manicured and the architectural evergreens were tastefully placed. It looked like a photo in a 1970’s Better Homes and Gardens.

But as I walked to the front door, I realized that there was no movement.

Nothing swayed in the afternoon breeze. There were no herbaceous plants, no flowers, and worse, no bees, no butterflies, no birds. This place had as little movement as my imaginary magazine photo. It struck me as being uninteresting and unnatural. Land without life.

In my experience we show ourselves at our best when we interact and connect with nature and even find a kind of fulfillment in it. This completion has been lost for many of us, but paradise can be regained at any time.

There are all kinds of small ways to re-connect and to bring restoration, not just to the land, but to ourselves as well. I encourage everyone to put in a garden of some kind. A vegetable garden is of course the most practical and immediately useful. Start small and easy if you have never had a garden before.

If the practicality of a vegetable garden isn’t appealing, then plant something in to nourish your soul.

A couple of years ago I put in a no-maintenance garden specifically to attract hummingbirds. The thank-you’s come at dusk when increasing numbers of my little buddies do their end-of-day rounds. Scarlet runner beans, red monarda, salvia, tithonia, and crocosmia – they did the trick.

And copying the garden of a friend , I have also put in a small butterfly garden.

Milkweed, Echinacea, and butterfly bush (Buddleia) are good starter plants. I’m doing my small part to help save the monarch butterfly population. The nice thing about both these gardens is that they require almost no attention, just observation and enjoyment.

I’ve often thought about theme gardens. “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance…” Ophelia’s mad scene in Hamlet is a great starting point for a Shakespearean garden and a study of plant symbolism in literature. A biblical garden would also be an interesting exercise, though the plants themselves would be local approximations of Mediterranean species but the life lessons would be endless. Consider the lilies of the field. What about a cutting garden, a scented garden, a night garden?

Poets and painters have found inspiration in gardens. Like them, let nature take your breath away. Start small. To quote the American poet, Emily Dickinson:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.
One clover, and a bee.
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If bees are few.

It doesn’t take much to make a prairie – or your own personal sanctuary.For the Silo, Rick Posavad.