Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Wildlife gardening is an exciting exploration of ecology and culture
October 3, 2010

Wildlife gardening is fun! Wildlife gardens are beautiful, full of life, always changing, and always engaging.  What is the newest bird, butterfly, dragonfly, or flower to be recorded in the garden. Wildlife gardens pull you outside to examine things closely, and while you are there the little garden chores become ecologically aesthetic interpretations. "Hmmmm,  I will deadhead the blue mist so the queen butterflies come back, and I will remove the espantes vaqueros so the tubetongue does not get shaded out  so the vesta crescent butterflies will lay some eggs. Aaah... the evergreen sumac has ripe fruit, so it is time to make the lemonade tasting tea."

The Sibley Nature Center completed the construction of a large wildlife garden in June. Two months of growth have resulted in hundreds (no, thousands) of blooms, plentiful butterflies, and constant bird activity.  A box turtle moved in (on its own, crawling under a gap in the cedar post fence). A person connects with the natural world in a myriad of life-affirming ways. One’s heart leaps in joyous admiration when watching a hummingbird pluck spider web for its nest, or when a skink slinks out of a rock wall crevice, or a box turtle wrestles a hornworm.. A world of neighbors live in the backyard, hundreds of life forms live out intricate lives. A wildlife gardener participates in a world that is much greater than the constructs of man.

A wildlife gardener is a builder. Many Midland gardeners have already constructed homes for the creatures of their yards. Turtle shelters constructed of bricks, boards, and leaves draw the builder closer to the lives of turtles. A tiny backyard water garden gives a great return to the physical labor of digging a hole. Pay comes in the form of every bird that comes to bathe or drink, and in the frog that slips quickly into the water as you interrupt its defense of the garden. A wildlife gardener celebrates the ecology of their home.

Gardening allows a person to experience the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life. Gardening helps a person to be alone with one's own self, quiet and listening and feeling. Spiritual teachings are revealed in the stillness of your quiet observation. Basho says, "Let go of your preoccupation with yourself. When you and the garden become one, poetry arises."

Wildlife gardeners honor their regional ecosystems and local culture by growing the most beautiful native plants of their bioregion and those imports that have stood the test of time. Plants are gateways to stories and a major part of culture. Think of the garden as a sandbox, and the plants, hardscaping, and ornamentation as the toys in the sandbox. Each of the “toys” will have stories associated with them. The “toys” stories transmit culture – in other words, stories of our experiences, our knowledge, and our traditions of our bioregion.

Two of the species growing in the Sibley garden bring special memories. The Mexican Oregano plants remind me that once one attracted a Calliope Hummingbird to my home. This tiny hummer, the smallest in North America, stayed at our house for over a week. I remember over a dozen birdwatchers sitting in lawn chairs thirty feet from the plant, oohing and aahing at each visit the bird imbibed a sip of nectar. Every time I look at the White Mist shrub, I remember my mother and JoAnn Merritt sitting ten feet from one, recording the thirty species and three hundred individuals of butterflies that visited it on a warm November morning.

We change the world by gardening. We change ourselves too. We enrich our own lives, for they are places of stories. Every garden contains not only the stories of all the visiting animals and bugs, but also the stories of the plants themselves. And here, we can also learn the stories of all the cultures of the people of the Llano Estacado. Pick out a favorite plant and then come ask me to tell you a story about the plant.

Come visit our wildlife garden. Sit in our wildlife garden observation room. Watch the many birds swarm around the feeders. Bring a camera and try to get a great photograph of a bird or butterfly or turtle.  Take the time to search for the queen honey bee in the observation beehive - she wears a green dot on her back! It is a lot of fun, and you will leave refreshed, rejuvenated, and maybe inspired to start your own wildlife garden.