A Visit to Michelle Clay’s Ecosystem Garden

Gabe's Garden Bowling Ball (c) Michelle Clay

(Editor’s note: This article is a guest post by Michelle Clay of The Clueless Gardeners. This is a wonderful example that we can share our outdoor living spaces with nature and wildlife. Nature really can be right outside our doors.)

Gabe’s Garden

In July of 2008 I had a son.  By the winter of that same year, desperate for something green and growing, I fixated on building a play-space for him.   I envisioned a mulched circle, free from ticks and poison ivy, surrounded by a ring of nature for Gabe to explore: a toddler garden.

The plants for this garden would need to be resistant to deer and would have to endure the parched growing conditions of my front yard, which is sand topped with a thin layer of soil.  In addition to that, I wanted the garden to include edibles, but I wanted it to be made up as far as possible with native plants, so that the space could be a haven for wildlife as well as for children.

Installing Gabe's Garden (c) Michelle Clay

After much trial and error, I settled on a system for choosing plants: first, learn the common name of a plant that caught my eye.  Next, use Google to track down the scientific name.  Third, use the USDA  plant database to determine if it was native to Massachusetts.  Last, use the Plants For A Future database to select edibles and to rule out poisonous plants.

When the ground thawed, I began digging up the topsoil where the mulch was to go, and heaping it in a circular raised bed.  I piled straw over the mounded soil to smother the grass roots and to prevent the soil from eroding.  My husband and a neighborhood teen helped move rocks, and for my birthday, we had a dump truck deposit playground-grade wood mulch directly into the circle.

Gabe's Garden in July (c) Michelle Clay

From seed, I started several native varieties of coneflower (which supposedly make a tasty tea), as well as native members of the mint and onion family.  (As I discovered, all members of the mint and onion families are safe to eat.)  I transplanted in many other natives, including blueberry and huckleberry, grasses, tower mustard (everything in the mustard family is safe to eat, too), violets (also edible!), bee balm (another member of the mint family), and spiderwort (yet another edible).  In the name of filling the space in time for Gabe’s birthday, I decided to include some non-native plants that I had on hand, so in between the rocks went strawberry runners.  I planted nasturtiums to provide some color and to be a living mulch until the native plants could fill in. With that I included my miscellaneous kitchen herbs and one poor, lost live Christmas tree.  A neighbor donated creeping thyme, and with it came a native “weed”, common cinquefoil, that has turned out to be an amazing ground cover.

Serviceberry (c) Michelle Clay

In addition to the plants, I included as many kid-friendly features as I could think of: a gravel pit, low stones for sitting, a tree limb dedicated to hanging flags, a birdbath at kid-level that wouldn’t topple, and a red bowling ball that I discovered behind the shed.  Grandma supplied a bag full of plastic dinosaurs which will be added to the garden in the Spring.  But the most important feature is a smaller circular space surrounded by ten serviceberry seedlings.  These will eventually grow into a living fortress for Gabe and his friends to play in.

Garden Frog (c) Michelle Clay

The bowling ball was one of the relics left by a previous owner.  Another such legacy is a young Norway maple that stands in the front lawn like a purple lollipop.  These trees are on the Massachusetts banned plant list.  Along with being a menace to local wild areas, Norway maples are known for killing plants beneath them by depriving them of light and water.  This one is slated to die.  However, this particular Norway maple looms over Gabe’s new garden and provides just enough shade to keep my vulnerable transplants alive.  So for the time being, the Norway maple stays.  But I should mention that among the transplants are two black mulberry seedlings that will be its successors.

Gabe's Garden in October (c) Michelle Clay

I didn’t expect this garden to come together so well so soon.  Already, in a stretch of yard where wildlife had not previously loitered, we are regularly getting visitors.  A chipmunk took up residence beneath one of the beds.  Frogs and toads have moved in to the moist areas beneath the plants.  (We even saw a tree frog on the front window of the house one recent evening.)  A hummingbird visited regularly while the bee-balm was in bloom, along with all sorts of insects.  In a nearby bush a catbird nested, and she scolded me whenever I gardened in “her” territory.

Bunny Food (c) Michelle Clay

The bunnies have repeatedly eaten the violets (which have repeatedly recovered).  And although some parents might find the idea of snakes around their children to be unthinkable, I have fond memories of catching garter snakes in my youth, so I am delighted to see that they have made a home among the garden’s rocks, too.

Cinquefoil Groundcover (c) Michelle Clay

Gabe is now a toddler.  He has shown his approval of the garden by ripping out thyme and strawberry runners – but that’s what they’re there for.  This year, the plants survived and grew.   Next year, I expect them to positively explode.  In five years, Gabe will likely get to eat serviceberries while playing in his fort, and in ten, he’ll have shade and fruit from the mulberry trees.  Perhaps when he is a teenager he’ll think his mother is crazy for being a gardener, but until then I think he is going to enjoy this gift.

Michelle and her husband write about gardening, parks, and environmental issues in their blog The Clueless Gardeners (http://thecluelessgardeners.blogspot.com/).

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