Design Your Wild

Landscape by Sawyer Berson (photo: Joshua McHugh) Happy summer! While I’m traveling this week, I’m resharing this fan favorite guide to enjoying your yard. How much time do you spend in your yard? I’m truly curious, so please answer my poll below. (Respondents get to see how others answer, too.) The average American spends only 7.6 percent of their time outside—slightly more than the 5.5 percent of time we spend in enclosed vehicles.

Portland garden designer Darcy Daniels’ yard (adapted from Better Homes & Gardens Perennial Gardening) Dear Design Your Wild, How and where do you locate destinations and focal points?—Workshop participant Intentionally! As pioneering user experience designer Jared Spool famously said, Design is the rendering of intent.

I love a bright-colored door! In this asymmetric entry by designer Bella Mancini, the front door and screen door frame are Benjamin Moore Santa Clara. (Photo: Read McKendree; source: House Beautiful) Dear Design Your Wild, Have you done any articles on designing a foundation garden? I have a really long house with a large area to landscape. Do you design it like a garden room?

Woodland path in spring at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware with, left to right, native azaleas, phlox, flowering dogwood, and fothergilla (source: Mt. Cuba Center) Dear Design Your Wild, I am intrigued by the microforest idea. Can you tell us more? Also, how to improve existing woodlands?—Tracy Anyone can create a microforest—or pocket forest—in as small as a 10-by-10-foot area.

Wood fern fiddlehead (Thelypteris kunthii) (source: University of Texas) Dear Design Your Wild, I didn’t really understand the golden ratio. Were you talking about plant bed shapes?—Design workshop participant Nope. We recommend using the golden ratio—or a rough approximation—for sizing oval and rectangular garden “rooms,” not beds.

Hello, Yardeners! It’s Zoe, Heather’s daughter, and I’m jumping in to wish you HAPPY EARTH DAY and share something personal. (Don’t worry—my mom will be back next week with her regularly scheduled column!) As some of you know, I manage the Less Lawn More Lifechallenge: a free 12-week program helping people turn everyday yards into real habitat. It’s all new this year— new experts, new resources, new tools.

A rain garden at Mountaintop Arboretum in the Catskills by Jamie Purinton Landscape Architect Dear Design Your Wild, How do you take care of these large patches of plants?—Design workshop participant By thinking in terms of “patches of plants,” not individual plants or even “garden,” you’re halfway to the ecological care mindset: You are nurturing a community. It’s a light touch. Once roots have established after planting, your plant community will largely care for itself.

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Decomposed granite path (photo: Mimi Giboin; source: Gardenista) Quick note from Zoe: Happy Spring, everyone!!! Did you know that April is National Native Plant Month? I just love how much this movement is growing. šŸŒ± And if you know your native plants, I have a favor to askā€¦ The Less Lawn More Life challenge is back this May, now powered by a new tool weā€™ve been building at Wildr.

Migratory Kirtland’s warblers only breed in forests of young jack pines, a declining pioneer species in Wisconsin. (Source: Nature Conservancy; photo: ©Joel Trick) Dear Design Your Wild, I am helping my niece with her 1990s first home and backyard planning—not a single tree, on a hill, corner lot, terrible soil, not even grass grows.