Designing with Natives
NCJ: The design aspect of this is very interesting to me. There’s a photo in your book of a very boxy, modernist home with three very boxy terraces, and there’s just one grass planted over and over. It’s very sculptural, and it really seems to work with the house, but they’re using natives. I’m really drawn to that because it seems to say, “I meant to do this,” not “I’ve just stopped mowing my lawn.” In certain kinds of neighborhoods, I could see how this would be a good approach.
Middlebrook: The reason you’re drawn to that is that it’s very manipulated, very repetitive, very controlled. When you take a plant and repeat it over and over, that’s called a monoculture. We’re invited to monoculture because what we want to do as a species is we want to manipulate and control our environment. That’s modernism — you take a box, repeat it, and repeat that grid in the landscape. It has clean lines. You can see the shape and form of the house. It’s all one color and shape. That’s very contrary to the natural world, which is based on diversity.
I look at that photo and ask: I’m a bird. Would I find this attractive? Not all birds eat that Idaho fescue. How is that pollinated? So in the rest of the garden, I’d add a lot of diversity to create a balance and live lightly on the earth.
I don’t want to discourage diversity. I don’t want to be part of the generation that saw the demise of songbirds in the Midwest because everybody planted lawns and there wasn’t enough seed for birds to eat. I got into these plants because they are really beautiful, but now people are coming to native plants to restore diversity and conserve water. But the gardens are still really beautiful, too.
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Today
Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
Open Gardens
outdoors / 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Humboldt Botanical Gardens, College of the Redwoods, Eureka. Roam the 44-acre fully fenced property. $5. www.hbgf.org. 442-5139.
Organic Gardening Seminar
garden / 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Shafer's Ace Hardware and Garden Center, 2760 E St., Eureka. Free lecture by Duncan McNeill on how to create a healthy environment and healthy soils for your plant’s roots. E-mail shafers@sbcglobal.net. 442-5734.
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