Cultivated wilderness. (Endpaper).(creating a wild garden)(Brief Article)

Publication: Natural History

Publication Date: 01-JUN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Natural History Magazine, Inc.

Beside an old ice pond in the suburbs of Boston, I made a wild garden. It began as a vaguely naturalistic sprinkling of spring ephemerals among the ferns, blueberries, tupelos, oaks, and white pines spontaneously flourishing on abandoned farmland. In the course of two decades, my efforts have evolved into a deliberate attempt to encourage native plants and arrest the invasion of thuggish colonizers, such as the purple loosestrife and the common reed Phragmites australis volunteering at the pond's edge. This has become my idea of wild gardening....

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