Did you catch the news about a native-plant gardener on Long Island fined $2,000 because her front yard was too wild-looking? Here’s the story in the New York Post, which prompted a lively discussion when Benjamin Vogt posted it on July 30 to his Facebook page Prairie Up. There he took a brave stand, surprising some of his followers by saying “We absolutely need to push the envelope, and we need more examples of nature for people to see, accept, and interact with. However, this garden fits the definition of ‘weedy’ looking.”
His suggestions for this garden include: “Shorter species. Lower sociability species. Repeating patterns and forms. A new fence or no fence. A clear and unifying grass to tie it all together. A sculpture, fountain, or bench that’s easily seen and accessible.”
- I’m with you. We’re not winning anyone over with the “screw the neighbors” approach to gardening in the front yard. Doesn’t work when folks call code on you or report you to the evil HOA.
- It is fascinating to me the pushback you are getting on this point. I think it is indicative of a larger problem the left has in that it never can gauge how to actually win a fight. Hint – it’s not by alienating the majority against your cause. Middle fingers and indignation hurt the cause, they don’t help it.
Seating in front yards. (L) Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. photo by author. (R) Winnipeg, Manitoba, photo by Linda Dietrick.
About those cues to care…
Paths with low plantings along edge. (L) Seattle, Washington; photo by author. (R) Goleta, California, garden design and photo by Billy Goodnick.
Benjamin’s suggestions for the garden are examples of “cues to care,” which he describes as “signals to other folks that the landscape is intentional and being cared for and is open to humans being in it (aka it’s physically and aesthetically accessible).” Source.
I soon discovered that cues to care have been written about for 30 years, and there are dozens of articles online about them online. Here’s a list of the cues to care (and intentionality) most mentioned: Pathways, seating, plants in drifts, shorter plants, hardscapes, path edging, yard decorations, pots, trellises, arbors, rain barrels, habitat support elements like bird baths, shrubs and trees, evergreens, and yard certification signs.
More paths and low plantings along them. (L) Nova Scotia. Garden and photo by Jenn Telesky. (R) Centreville, VA. Garden and photo by Lillibeth Duria Brooks.
The most important function of these elements, it seems to me, is to show that the yard (and home) is cared for, that the house isn’t abandoned. And any realtor can tell you that that matters, and not JUST when neighbors are trying to sell their house.
Here I’ll assert that pervasive or not (and really the only cue that IS pervasive is the use of short plants, like mown turfgrass), I think they reflect normal human responses. Our preference for short plants around our homes, so we can see danger approaching, is well documented.
And we’re pattern-seeking animals, with some calling it a “core human tendency.” Source. So when I look at the Joe Pye weed and wood aster that I intermingled in a border, my eyes struggle to find a pattern in them, and I scheme to fix that problem. Similarly, when we see a path or border shape that’s jagged or busy, we can’t help but notice and want to correct it. Is that subjectivity or just how we think?
And I’m so glad Benjamin mentioned the value of making gardens look “open to humans being in it,” with paths and seating, for instance. Those are cues that are (sadly) not pervasive at all but do respond to pervasive human feelings.
Not that all humans think alike, of course. We all know people who have no desire to spend time outdoors, no matter how welcoming the garden furniture.
Lots more cues in these front yards! Clockwise from upper left: Central Ohio garden and photo by Shely Evans; Severna Park, MD garden and photo by Susan Minnemeyer; Denver, CO. garden and photo by Glinda North on Reddit; Nova Scotia garden and photo by Jenn Telesky.
Let’s return to the Long Island garden that got me started on this topic – for proof that signage ALONE ain’t gonna cut it. Sadly, it tells people what’s to blame – natives. Not helping!
Per the NY Post article the case was resolved, fine removed, with the gardener making one change – moving tall plants to the rear.
Here’s what I don’t understand. She spent $4,000 on the garden, got rebates for starting a garden and “worked with the specialists from the town to put a garden plan together,” and this is the result?
Counting the cues in my front yard
While we’re at it…notice that my own front yard, as seen yesterday from the upstairs window, has cues galore! There’s hardscape (flagstone patio, and 11 poles to support vines), chairs, two bird baths, evergreens, shrubs, winding path (painted turquoise), short plants along the path, drifts of plants, color, ornaments (beads and metal wall hangings), and pots. Plus one not on the list – the umbrella. Now let’s hope the garden passes my co-op’s yearly yard inspection, which is coming to my neighborhood next week.
When I’m in this garden I can barely see cars in the parking lot, thanks to vertically trained vines (crossvine, coral honeysuckle and a couple of clematis), now in their fourth year. The vines replaced the Arborvitae hedge I hated.
A very useful article. Grounding (pun intended) for fervent native plant fans and gardeners in general.
“Here’s a list of the cues to care (and intentionality) most mentioned: … yard decorations,”
So lots of garden gnomes?
In my humble opinion, garden gnomes are more offensive than a front yard meadow full of native plants!
A very interesting article. I was unfamiliar with the “cue to care” concept.
A clear and tidy edge can mitigate a lot of the negative feelings about the *mess* within. I use this approach in cleanups inside my house as well
And as Ed Snodgrass of green roof fame has reminded me, human enjoyment and interaction with the garden is an ecosystem service too. It should be considered when creating and maintaining a landscape.
Indeed. Apparently human needs and desires are considered now should be eco-services. I’m a fan of Ed also! (you can search on Garden rant for several posts about him)
I’m so glad you said that. Humans are living beings too, and gardens should be pleasing to us as well. Think of it as giving people a green space to enjoy, if only by looking at it.
first problem: if you bought into a HOA and read the rules, how can you now complain? Secondly: yes there is in fact a distinction between a weed lot and a cultivated wild flower garden. One is a garden meaning human manipulation vs a weed lot that is ignored. I have a wild flower garden which is MAINTAINED with an eye to sidewalk encroachment, a violation of the local ordinance. I have a neighbor whose “wild flowers” sprawl all over the sidewalk..the sharp seedpods scratch the legs of pedestrians; .sorry that is not acceptable in an urban environment. My analogy: washing and waxing an operable vehicle in your drive is not the same as having a rusting junker up on cement blocks in said driveway.
About the first problem, cues to care are also helpful to people who value good neighbor relations, despite any rule or local law requiring them to care.
Spiffing up the chain link fence (it immediately evokes the subconscious impression of dereliction) which is obviously must be grandfathered in.
So, by easily painting the poles and cross pieces black or a deep green with Rustolium spray paint will help.
She could also put a low narrow evergreen hedge inside her fence.
As well as have a couple of empty spaces in the border for a sculpture or birdbath.
I love the idea of painting the fence — which can be so useful, if ugly.
Can Mailman get to mailbox on front door?
No litter no trash no used syringes ?
No man eating beasts?
No loud lawn services weekends before 10am?
Think county should pay for wildflower seeds if above conditions met!
I looked at the street view of residential areas in New Hyde Park. One after another yard with short lawns, maybe a few bushes trimmed into meatball shapes and nothing else. Zhang’s exuberant and messy yard is probably the most interesting, lively place for blocks around. Yet you are joining in the smackdown (though in a more gentle way than the vile NY Post commenters). I thought you’d be on the gardener’s side, but am disappointed to see you don’t approve of a little patch of untamed wildness in a sterile suburb. Sure, a tasteful path or charming lawn furniture and more traditional design to contain these big floppy beautiful weeds might be more acceptable to your eyes, but that is style, not substance. Please support this outlier gardener.
The substance comes from the fact that we cannot restore much of nature’s balance with just a few thousand people scattered across the entire country.
I commend Benjamin Voght for advocating for a more ‘organized’ native gardening aesthetic.
It is a relief to see Benjamin Voght explaining that we need to keep our pollinator and host plant landscapes in a reasonable level of neatness.
Our stated goal is to encourage others to join us in creating more native habitat for the birds, native bees, butterflies and other insects. (not ticks or mosquitoes)
We can do that most effectively by keeping the yards looking nice with beautiful native plants that also support the most pollinators. We need both plants as host plants and as pretty and useful flowers and shrubs with berries (for migrating birds).
We need more than a few thousand of us doing this to make a meaningful impact!
The easiest way to encourage other’s participation is to use native plants in a much more traditional landscaping pattern. Edging, setbacks of a few feet of grass near the sidewalks. Not using herbicides on your small areas of turf grass. Planting schemes with smaller plants in front ramping up to larger plants in back. You can still do a phenomenal traditional perennial border using only natives!
“Chaos gardening”, also known as “Random sh!t show” as an aesthetic is getting a lot of pushback. (Deservedly so!) We need to be encouraging other people to follow our example of planting mostly native plants in a pleasing more familiar pattern.
We need more than just a few thousand yards scattered across the entire country to make a difference in nature’s balance!
And frankly, I think the hill worth dying on is zero chemicals in the yard.
Everything balances out nicely within just a few years if you stop using death chemicals throughout your entire property.
My neighbors on both sides use herbicides and insecticides. I use neither. Tj neighbors on the south hires it out. The neighbor on the north pulls out the tank sprayer every time he sees a weed. Yesterday he sprayed his entire lawn then the cracks in the middle of the street. He doesn’t use a guard/shield on his spray wand so of course it o repays to my garden.
He moved here 3 years ago and is very irritated about my garden and I’ve been working in it for 25 years. It’s a mix of natives and near natives and mannerly grasses. I remove anything that doesn’t behave. I repeat plants throughout to tame it a bit. I pull my weeds and water sparingly with drip. Why would he purchase that house if he hates my garden so much? I have garden clubs and garden tours who enjoy visiting. He’s the 2nd person in this house in a row who has behaved this way. Previous owners loved my gardens ( I miss them so much!). It is frustrating and can be pretty depressing at times.
Sorry about my typos. Fat fingers.
My sympathies!! How horrible.
Love everything about this comment Matt. —MW
Please comment on all my posts from now on!
I agree. The chemicals are the big issue. I get so angry that a large part of this conversation is always about tiptoeing around the pristine and fragile sensibilities of people who are nuking their entire yards without any consequence or stigma attached to their actions.
Thanks for putting it so well, reiterating and developing Susan’s remarks (that seemed super clear to me, but obviously not to everyone) so that hopefully anyone who can read can understand the importance of WIDESPREAD private gardens that can make a real difference to species struggling with the lack of supporting landscapes. Further, I could not agree with you more regarding the sprays — In this day and age! I’ve heard of people suing for spray damage to their own yards but I bet it’s pretty hard to win. And of course, much better to lead neighbors by example than take them to court. Hopefully the positive influence on less ignorant (most charitable word I can think of) neighbors makes up for the chemical-spraying neighbor in the larger scheme of things.
Are those bearded iris in front? Those aren’t native are they? The plants are contained, not flopping in the sidewalk. Rather have this than large never stop barking dogs!
I’m playing the devil’s advocate: Not everyone is born knowing “Cues to Care” in a garden. Not everyone has the money or the help to add Cues to Care. I see Ms. Zhang’s garden looks disorderly, but let’s step back a bit.
1. I don’t hear mention of a Mr. Zhang, so is she doing this garden on one income and raising two kids on her own? If so, that may mean her funds and time are limited. Even if there is a Mr. Zhang, her funds and time may still come up short.
2. Mention was made of taking down the fence or replacing it, adding sculpture, a fountain, and a bench. In the examples of the “pretty” native gardens, I see an expensive flagstone walkway, an expensive white picket fence, nice outdoor patio sets, etc.
3. Who will help Ms. Zhang take down her fence or install a new one? Who will buy and transport a sculpture or fountain to move it into place? By the way, benches aren’t that cheap. Who will pay for and lay those expensive flagstones that might make it look better? Should she add plastic gnomes instead if that is what she can afford? Should she recognize automatically that her garden isn’t up to snuff by other people’s standards if this is her first garden? I know with my first garden, I was just happy that anything grew.
All of these things, other than painting her fence, are expensive. Maybe she didn’t think of painting it.
I’ve priced fencing, stones, and sculpture recently for my new-to-me home and am left scratching my head. I was quoted $1,250 this month to install a 50″ chain link gate in an existing fence. Bricks here are $3./brick at the Habitat for Humanity Store.–I priced them yesterday. (This is why I moved all of my scavenged and broken bricks one by one in the trunk of my old Toyota from my old house.) Flagstones and landscaping stones are outrageous so I’m scouring my neighborhood as I walk my dogs looking for any large stones on the edge of the road or on the edge of empty lots.
Maybe Zhang’s disorderly garden was the best she could do in her circumstances. Do we know? Could it be better? Yes. Are you going to help her? She was trying. She even worked with a specialist to put in a garden plan.
I don’t agree with those who are critical. She’s trying. You aren’t there to help.
I’m also not there having any effect on her, for or against enforcement action. It may be arguments like yours that led to the citation being dismissed, as I understand it. Sorry I can’t find any confirmation of that online.
She can edge weed and tidy at no cost. With hand tools.15 minutes a day of weeding can do wonders. When the kids were tiny and I worked full time plus evening meetings with a $100 yearly budget for gardening I kept it cated for. I suppose that would be ,$500 with inflation.
It helped having a spouse that worked for the city and would bring me old brick pavers anytime a road was torn up.i savaged a lot the night before trash day. Amazing what people pitch. Concrete bench, tomato cages, heavy metal lawn chairs. Plants, too. Yeah, I embarrassed the kids
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And paths and seating areas can be of woodchip mulch, usually free. I’m all about creating gardens on the cheap.
I so appreciate your comment, Laura. Thank you for making these very important, and all-too-often dismissed points about whoever is the subject of critique.
I gardened in a shoestring for decades, and my specialty is low cost garden design. I have no knowledge of Ms Zhang’s circumstances or finances, but I can unequivocally tell you that it is possible to have something recognizable as a garden on an extremely low budget (as in practically nonexistent) if you are willing to take the time for plants to grow rather than buying large ones. Which brings me to my favorite hardscaping material: did you know that class I (as in the letter “I”) sand/paver base costs on the order of $30/ton? Sometimes less? It is the ideal path material, especially when laid over newspaper or cardboard or brown builders paper. Happy to elaborate if you want to know more 🙂
Very helpful comment and yes tell us more about this product! I’ll email you.
Many of the yards in my neighborhood in California look much like this. However, since it hasn’t rained here since April, they are brown not green…therefore uglier, in my opinion. They are also sparsely vegetated for much the same reason. Some look like that because a native plant fan lives there and the landscape is intentional. But most look like that because the home is occupied by people who either aren’t physically capable of gardenning or don’t want to garden. As far as I know, no one hastles these folks with overgrown, dead-looking gardens, but if anyone complains, they can just post a sign in the yard that claims the plants are native. Would anyone know the difference? I doubt it. Is there a difference? Not really.
I’ll testify to that — walked past those gardens with you Mary and thought precisely that!! —MW
I’m internally divided here. Part of me agrees, it looks a little “too” wild, not unlike a garden bed of my own I’ve been neglecting far too long (and which is a current source of embarrassment), but yet the angel or devil on the opposite shoulder is whispering in my ear to remind me that I dislike any authoritarian opinions and control by outsiders. The concept of Cues to Care, while useful for my own garden, does violate the sanctity of individual freedoms. Where does one draw the line?
I’m not familiar with the sanctity of which you speak. The last place I lived, had historic preservation rules I had to abide by. Now I’m living in a co-op with a big thick rulebook. The more dense the housing, the more rules there are because the more they’re needed. That’s just reality.
I understand the internal conflict. It’s why I’ve never lived in an HOA, but then I’ve always instinctively understood the cues too…. —MW
In my neighborhood many of the homes being sold are to buyers that don’t give a dam about garden aesthetics. Increasingly there are unkept properties that looked un-lived in and I overlook a disaster of one of them. I am in no way a garden snob, but I don’t appreciate all the insidious plants that make their way to my property or the view of nothing but crap (including scrap metal etc).
I just realized we know the resolution of the Long Island garden citation, right there in the NY Post article. It says the case was resolved, fine removed, with her making one change – moving tall plants to the rear.
I found more details in rereading the article: she spent $4,000 on the garden, got rebates for starting a garden and “worked with the specialists from the town to put a garden plan together.” Plus she says she’s done a lot of research. So I’m wondering why the garden looks like it does, I guess.
Aah, Specialists from the town! And their background is?? $4,000 for this? Who gave out the rebates!
And what pollinators are being drawn in? There don’t seem to be many flowering plants. Even a wild natural garden seems to have flowers for all the seasons.
I guess the town had to leave well enough alone, with the exception of moving the tall plants back, since they were the ones really responsible for the way it turned out…right?
Great post Susan, and I agree, Benjamin Vogt should be a commended for making a very reasonable point. The fact that she paid $4000 for this design AND got grants is one of the reasons I am cynical over grant programs that can be co-opted by clever people that sniff free (and virtuous) money. Terrible plant choices for the site. My last garden which was four times that size cost a quarter of that — creativity encouraged by very difficult financial times. —MW
This is the cautionary tale to would be naturalistic style gardeners- they aren’t maintenance free! That’s apparently a poor design but you gotta get out there and make changes, especially with the unpredictability of native plants. Anyone who’s seen a rattlesnake master or milkweed of monstrous proportions and thought ‘uh oh’ knows what I mean. They’re highly variable. I regularly get questions from passerbys about weeding and spreading issues and have to inform them that it’s a no fussing style of gardening, but not a no work style of gardening, which by the way is probably another ‘cue to care.’ Being visible and working in the garden regularly seems to earn the respect of neighbors even if they aren’t gardeners. But mainly I guess it’s a form follows function case; if you’re out there often it’s likely to look better.
Helpful, but I think you can have all the listed “cues of care” (i.e. Pathways, seating, plants in drifts, shorter plants, hardscapes, path edging, yard decorations, pots, trellises, arbors, rain barrels, habitat support elements like bird baths, shrubs and trees, evergreens, and yard certification signs) and STILL be a citation candidate.
I may be badly ironic here but the best cue of care is… “care”: is there any evidence that someone has come work in – or even just use and enjoy – this yard regularly?
You can take most of the “good examples”, leave it unattended for several months, and it is likely to be a “mess” of some sort.
I also did laugh hard at the mention of the chain-link fence being part of the problem. Those horrible fences are everywhere and do not raise eyebrows in general. The complaining neighbors probably have them too.