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1. Wildflower Gardens: Nature and Nurture
by C. Colston Burrell
Native wildflowers are among the loveliest parts of the natural landscape. They grace fields, woodlands, wetlands, beaches, and rocky mountain slopes. Sweeps of bluebells and trout lilies carpet the ground on a woodland floor. Joe-pye weed and swamp sunflower enliven a moist roadside. In the spring, even the deserts of the Southwest come alive with wildflowers, while in the fall, eastern meadows are awash with goldenrods and asters.
The sprawling stems of winecups (Callirhoe involucrata) make it an excellent weaver, best placed at the front of the border to knit together plantings. Photo © C. Colston Burrell
Many wildflowers are also well suited to the cultivated landscape, and there are lots of good reasons to use wildflowers in gardens. Gardeners love color, and we love to bring the beauty of nature into our yards. Growing wildflowers enables us to do both. Another important reason to use native plants is to preserve the character of our regions. The best way to keep the visual sense of place that makes Minneapolis different from Atlanta or Washington, D.C., is to use the local flora. As Wilhelm Miller wrote in his 1915 treatise The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening, "The Illinois rose beside the door is beautiful in itself and every year it will come to mean more to every passerby because it will suggest pleasant thoughts of Illinois." The same could be said about other plants and other regions of the country. What's more, native wildflowers foster and support the maximum diversity of associated plants and animals.
To use wildflowers effectively in the garden, it's not necessary to recreate down to the smallest detail habitats found in nature. This book shows how to incorporate wildflowers in meadows as well as beds and rs and other traditional garden designs. Whether its style is naturalistic or quite formal, however, a wildflower garden should grow out of the site's ecology. "A Gardener's Ecology" covers the ecological processes that should inform the wildflower garden—or any garden. Nature's patterns are also a rich source of inspiration for garden design, and "Designing With Nature" explains how to capture the visual essence of a natural scene by understanding the spatial patterns, both vertical and horizontal, that exist in natural plant communities.
The gardens profiled in the "Portfolio" section are living proof that wildflower gardens can have many styles, from formal to wild. Finally, "The Best American Plants for Wildflower Gardens" profiles the stars of these beautiful landscapes—60 spectacular plants that are adapted to the widest range of garden conditions. For easy reference, the plants are grouped according to their light requirements: shade, partial shade, and sun.
The wildflower garden is evidence of a new garden aesthetic based on regional landscapes and plants, a blend of nature and nurture, and a partnership between a gardener and the forces of nature. Each home landscape is part of the system and each gardener has a part to play. Ecology can be beautiful.
C. Colston Burrell is a designer, writer, photographer and naturalist. A lifelong gardener and advocate for native plants, he has written and taught about design and plants for over 20 years. He has edited several Brooklyn Botanic Garden handbooks, including Ferns: Wild Things Make a Comeback in the Garden (1994, 1995), The Natural Water Garden: Pools, Ponds, Marshes & Bogs for Backyards Everywhere (1997), Woodland Gardens: Shade Gets Chic (1995), and The Shady r: Knockout Plants That Light up the Shadows (1998). He is the author of Perennial Combinations: Stunning Combinations That Make Your Garden Look Fantastic Right From the Start (Rodale Press, 1999) and the award-winning A Gardener's Encyclopedia of Wildflowers: An Organic Guide to Choosing and Growing Over 150 Beautiful Wildflowers (Rodale Press, 1997). He has graduate degrees in horticulture and landscape architecture. Cole recently moved his garden from Minneapolis to the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia.