Comox Valley Naturalists Society

June, 2003
Ruth Masters

You can make your landscaping chores lighter, and save time later on if you keep as many native trees and plants as possible, before sending in the heavy equipment to prepare your home-site.

In 1956, when I built my little VLA home, I faced half an acre of bulldozed brown dirt, which I hastily planted into lawn. Then I rushed in twenty little non-native cypress trees, which prospered beautifully until about five years ago, when they all started deteriorating; several have died since and been turned into firewood. The rest are on their way out. Getting rid of most of my big dumb lawn has been time-consuming.

Commencing six years ago, I started planting native trees and plants. Sword ferns are my favourite, with nearly a 100% success rate in transplanting. Dozens have come from the big swath cut by the Inland Island Highway, and other areas being destroyed, like the big Wal-Mart clearing.

Thirty-five years ago, when I rescued a dozen tiny yellow cedars from being slashed on the ski-hill, I could jump over them all. Today, they are large trees some sixty feet high that provide a pleasant screen along the road and line my driveway.

When planting sword ferns into my lawn, I ring each plant close up with a heavy layer of newspaper, then spread on Chinook Forest Products bark mulch. Ferns quickly adapt. Each spring, I shear off the previous year’s dead fronds down to ground level, and throw a handful of Brent Garstin’s fish compost on the centre of the plant to encourage the new growth, which takes about a month to re-establish.

I am getting good results with lady ferns, miner’s lettuce, bleeding hearts, vanilla leaf, false Solomon’s-seal, wild lily of the valley, and the little starflower.

For trees, I get fair results with Douglas fir, red and yellow cedar, red osier dogwood, alder, grand fir, hemlock, maple and cascara. I have had poor results with trembling aspen, salal and oregon grape.
Streamside Native Plants on Grant Road near Cumberland has a large selection of native plants and trees which can save you much foraging in the wild.

Several dumb mistakes I made before catching on to the native plant solution include planting English ivy, periwinkle and morning glory. These are aggressive invaders that take over and are almost impossible to get rid of.

Years ago, I planted ten holly trees, planning to clean up on the Christmas trade. To date, I haven’t sold a single berry, while the nuisance of holly seedlings spreading around my property will be with me forever. I get only one benefit. Just before Christmas each year, I take two five-gallon pails of holly springs to Sandwick Cemetery, where I make a random tour. The marker stone of everyone I come across who was nice to me receives a remembrance holly sprig, a sort of a belated appreciation.

No pesticides are ever used on my ranch. The safety of 2,4-D is increasingly becoming a public issue. It is forbidden in Sweden and the tide is turning in Canada as well. The city of Halifax and the province of Quebec recently banned the use of pesticides in urban areas. Just three weeks ago, Toronto City Council voted to adopt a new bylaw restricting the use of pesticides on private property.

Pampering my septic field (my only patch of lawn), I bail the dishwater to pour on my trees and plants. Those near my house are thriving on nutrients from the soup pot and cat-food cans.

Recently I read that in America their precious immaculate lawns and landscaped areas consume more oceans of water and tons of fertilizer and pesticides than their agricultural industry.

Moss in lawns on which over the years people have spent fortunes poisoning, apparently is being re-evaluated and people like me appreciate it.

So, good-bye to neat flowerbeds, and there will be no hanging baskets for this girl. The bugs, slugs, grass and deer beat me, ending my big vegetable garden where I slaved for years, and you know what ¯ most people admire my natural landscaping park-like job, so GO FOR IT.

Click on a link below to view the CVNS newspaper column.