Abundance

Fulbourne Fen, Cambridge

We want a garden that is beautiful. At the moment it looks scruffy.

Last month, Stephen sent me an article published in the New York Times about ecological abundance - “as in brimming with color and texture, yes, but also brimming with life”. The article describes the work of Mr. Norris, founder of The Public Horticulture Company and author of “Your Natural Garden: A Practical Guide for Caring for an Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden.”

Mr Norris says that for each season, there should be one plant that dominates and is “charismatically everywhere.” These plants should be chosen because they’re beautiful, and also because of their roles as floral resources or host plants.

He goes on to describe a prototype for just about any ecological system: matrix, structure and vignettes. The matrix is the foundational layer — the “green mulch.” In our case, I think that’s our grasses, although we could probably do with more pots of them.

The canopy is our trees and shrubs. He describes this layer as the “scaffold to hold the rest of it together”.

The vignettes are the plants that within a given season are naturally “kind of everywhere”.

Our selection of vignettes is limited because our terrace is west-facing, but some plants seem like obvious candidates - such as foxgloves and champions. I’ve yet to learn what other plants would be good vignettes, but visits to nature reserves, such as Fulbourn Fen, (which we visited this week) might give us ideas.