Entrance gardens Part 3–The Finished Product

Front entrance view

The small entrance garden is now finished.  (See Posts 1 and 2)   I moved around several existing plants.  I used the existing Mondo grass as fillers and bought 20 more one gallon plants, which we divided to fill even more space.  The garden look good even though it was just installed.  Within a few years the Yuletide Camellia by the front door view will grow upright and hide the fence but not block the beautiful Sangu Kaku maple.

Looking towards the owners side

View from front door. Maple will leaf out; Camellia will grow upright to cover the fence

The trick with the side above was not to have plants look like they are marching in a line against the fence.  There is not much depth there, but enough.  The Daphne at the base of the tree is set forward to the Camellia, as are the red-leafed azaleas.  The art features also help break it up.  Its hard to see, but there are some dabs here and there of different textural low plants to break up the monotony of the mondo grass groundcover.  Some of these are variegated white, other are red leafed oaxalis.  But don’t get too busy or you risk just a confusing mass that the eye doesn’t know how to integrate.

The tenants side next to the fence is more constraining as its very narrow.  I used a Camellia s. that has more flexible branches and is easily espaliered.  We’ll guide that over time to grow against the fence and outward.  One way to achieve that is to use eye screws with thin wire into the fence (more invisible) so you have something to tie the branches to rather than a loud visible trellis.  Over time the branches thicken up and will hold their position naturally.

Tree to the front right will eventually be removed

Fountain interrupts small wall for an artistic break

Always scope around, use what you can on the property, be creative.   You might find some old garden art you can use, good looking boulders, or useable plants.   Here’s how we used a rotten stump.  Eventually the plants in front will spill over and a 3′ variegated Ligularia is planting in a pocket behind that will peek around.  A Japanese Felt Fern at the base (Pyrrosia) will enjoy climbing up the tree ferns stump.  Tree ferns like their trunk wet so we’ll spray this area.

We moved the mature tree fern into this existing rotting stump

We moved the mature tree fern into this existing rotting stump

Fountain interrupts small wall for an artistic break

California natives Part 3 Groundcovers…Manzanitas and Ceanothus

In this small series of posts on California natives for the garden, remember I’m trying to keep it simple and successful for the home gardener.  Most of the time when a homeowner asks for a low or no-water garden and I give them what they want, they always over water regardless.  Therefore, in general, unless you know what you’re doing, its better to incorporate natives that will tolerate or even thrive with occasional additional watering.

One of the main tips for growing any kind of native, and most Mediterranean plants in general, is good drainage.  When you go to a nursery to purchase your plant, those plants are in pots that have been watered every day.  How can a low water plant tolerate so much water?  Perfect drainage is the key.

California natives are adapted to cool wet winters and dry summers.  When planting natives in general, especially Manzanitas and Ceanothus, the main thing you want to watch for is planting the crown of the plant too low.  The crown is where the rubber meets the road or the part of the plant that touches the soil.  A brilliant idea for helping drainage along is to plant that crown on a little hump, maybe 6″ high.  When the crown of these plants stays constantly damp, then rot sets in.  Planting on a slight mound insures some run-off.  Also, don’t put your drip emitter right on top of the crown, and move that emitter every year farther and farther out to encourage roots to grow outward.  Eventually, you may be able to eliminate watering once established.

Both Manzanitas (Arctostaphylos sp.) and Ceanothus are sensitive to over watering, especially true with Ceanothus.  Many Manzanitas on the market have been cultivated to be more forgiving and accept landscape watering.  Two groundcovers I like are Arctostaphylos uva-ursi ‘Woods Compact’ and Arctostaphylos edmundsii ‘Carmel Sur’.  From my personal experience, I have found that the uva-ursi sp., though touted to be more acceptable of hotter weather, are more sensitive than the edmundsii.  I find the Carmel Sur variety to be easy and forgiving.

This was an example of a small front yard right after installation.  I did very little soil amending on the thick clay soil.  Instead I brought in about 10 yards of no animal manures (these harbor fungus as they break down as well as heat) composted soil and planted directly in that.  Manzanitas are very susceptible to fungus dieback, and especially the groundcover varieties.  I don’t recommend over head watering for that reason in the summer.  I also don’t recommend a bark or natural mulch as any splashing water can cause fungus on the stems to grow.  So instead here I experimented with a decorative rock mulch.Here is the yard one year later.  Unfortunately, several years later, this Arctostaphylos ‘Woods Compact’ did experience some major fungal dieback, probably after an El Nino year, and needed some new plants to fill in.

Seeing that I was having more than usual dieback with uva-ursi plants, I switched to ‘Carmel Sur’ and have had more success, although these plants are about 10″ instead of 6″ high.  But the Carmel Sur can take a bit of shade as well as sun, and some summer watering if desired.

A note on some of the larger Manzanitas;  In general, I think the larger Manzanitas are easier to grow with less problems than the ground covers. I have had occasional deaths with no warnings, but planted on a hillside, they can take sun or dappled shade with no problem.  One of my favorites, easiest and most beautiful is Arctostaphylos densiflora x ‘Sentinel’

Word to the wise:  Don’t forget Manzanitas are browsed by deer!

Ceanothus is the quintessential California native.  There are many beautiful Ceanothus, or California Lilacs, from tiny to tree-like, able to be grown as ground covers or espaliered against a wall.  In general, they are all sensitive to excessive water and crown rot.  Whole books have been written on Ceanothus and I couldn’t begin to cover them here.

I’d been looking for a good alternative to Ceanothus g. horizontalis, the large leafed Ceanothus that tends to hump up to 3′ feet over time (plant at least 5′ feet apart initially to help prevent this).  I’d installed Ceanothus g.’Anchor Bay’ in a large scale Condo entrance.  This is really an easy and deer proof, fool proof Ceanothus.  But I wanted a much smaller, lower, deer proof Ceanothus. My solution was Ceanothus g. ‘Hearts Desire’, another gloriosus variety.  Planted 3′ on center, this low growing Ceanothus is deer proof and very attractive.  I’d used in on a small scale with success, but decided to take my chances on a very large hillside installation.  I order over 400 and we began digging the holes.  The unexpected happened: for some reason, this very steep hillside didn’t drain well, probably because of the way they’d cut the hill up for the road and homes up above.  After a drainage test where the holes were still filled with water days later, we decided to install a drain for each planting hole.  We dug the holes extra deep, filled them with drain rock and added a drain pipe out of each hole.  I crossed my fingers, planted my drought tolerant hillside, and waited  to see what happened.  After two winters, the Ceanothus is filling in quickly and nicely.

This will eventually be 'off' the water. After only one year.

Planted 3' on center Ceanothus Hearts Desire

See how large and steep this hillside yet poor drainage. Ceanothus filling in nicely

Below is Ceanothus Hearts Desire in a small yard

Here is another hillside example I used with mixed perennials.  This slope filled in quickly as well and is large scale.

Ceanothus Diamond Hts. right of fountain. Now it has covered pebbles

Below is an unusual newer Ceanothus horizontalis ‘Diamond Heights’.  Use it for accent or in pots and not in the hottest of areas.  This area is irrigated with good drainage.  The Ceanothus is the yellow in front, although now it has filled in completely.

Good luck and be willing to try out some of the new great varieties on the market.

For Gaia lovers

For all you Global Warming non-believers, environmentalists, politicians, city dwellers, pet lovers, gas guzzlers, consumers, cheese eaters, gardeners, youngsters, oldsters, or hipsters, I only have one recommendation for todays’ post:  Read James Lovelock’s new book The Vanishing Face of Gaia.  A Final Warning. Too little, too late, a new hot world is coming, sooner than we think, and we can’t solar or wind-proof our way out of it.  Lovelock says to prepare the lifeboats and come to agreement who will be in them, if that is even possible.  There will be islands of refuge, tiny places, where only at best 100 million of us can survive.

Lovelock’s point is, of course, Gaia; that we’ve failed to take her into account.  That our scientists measure and analyze her like she’s just a predictable rock, rather than a living force that fights back.  That Gaia needs her forests and entire biosphere to keep her running and healthy, and that as humans, our main fault has been overpopulation and therefore overuse.  It’s not that fossil fuels themselves are bad, its that we burn more than She can make.  He makes the point that between all the humans, their pets and livestock, and the engine it takes to feed us, that’s almost half of all the CO2 produced!  We are the sorcerer’s apprentice unable to solve the spell of technology and overpopulation we’ve unleashed.

Lovelock himself is an optimist by nature.  So he looks for hope in the new world we might create while we live in a hotter place, with far less people.

I hope that all he says does not come true, that his calculations are off, that we’ll be able to come together to reduce our numbers, that breakthroughs will occur in practical science to help us.  But his book strangely echoes the words from over 10 years ago of biology teachers  I had.  And it is quite obvious to those who see, that our small gestures of recycling, green goods, wind farms, ’sustainable living’, or our grand conferences with promises for future reductions in 2050 cannot steer us much off course, if at all.  Lovelock’s metaphor:  “but are these, however well meant, any more than the posturing of tribal animals bravely wielding symbols against the menace of an ineluctable force they do not understand?”

Not a book for the fainthearted.

Entrance Gardens Part 2

 

The demo is completed.  The new soil has been worked in and the area is clean and ready for designing.  Most important, all my plants have arrived.  I always gather all my plants on site before I begin.  You wouldn’t want to paint a picture without all your colors to chose from?

First I must have my anchors in place in order to work my design.  In addition, I am going to use boulders in the beds, so they are all laid out, ready to select from.

My first anchor is obviously my tree.  The guys plant that first.  I also have them plant my backdrop, which are the plants I’ve selected for the well.  These are 15 gallon Azara dentata, a shade tolerant large leafed fast growing plant that is upright–perfect for this location.  Remember, I will keep the Maytens tree for now, with the intention of removing it when the Azaras fill in.

I place my edging of basalt bricks and then begin placing the boulders, as they will determine how and where I place my larger plants. 

This photo shows my basalt bricks of two different sizes (randomly placed) and my boulders.  Ignore the irrigation hose as we have not yet reworked the irrigation.  There was existing irrigation which, at the very end, we will rework.

Here is my Sangu Kaku Maple.  I am standing at the doorway and looking out.  This area is not at all finished, but you can see how much cleaner it looks already, with the Maple, a Daphne at its base, and a wonderful Yuletide Camellia to the right.  The Camellia is an upright variety that will fill that fence wall without obstructing the view of the maple from down the walkway.  It also blooms in the winter around Christmas.

With the tree anchored, I need to move that Tree Fern (see photos previous post) or it will be in the way of the view of my Maple.  We dig it up carefully, and I have an idea it might just fit in an old tree stump with enough room to walk underneath. If it works it will frame our front doorway nicely.  Let’s try it.

It works great.  Now I have a framework to the left and the right of the entrance to the front door.  And I have anchors for my new design on both sides.  Remember, we’re just beginning the design process on this side of the walk.  We’ll plant ferns and other spillers below the tree fern later.  We’re just getting our large plants laid out and our framework in for now.

Now for the entrance gate.  I needed something to frame the other side.  I had a Podocarpus that wasn’t pruned too badly on the one side, but the left side was empty.  I am not an advocate of same thing both sides, but I am an advocate for balance.  The doorway to the duplex needed framing and needed balance.  Below was my solution with color that popped the plants out.

The ‘Icee Blue’ Podocarpus will eventually grow up and frame the doorway.  While the Pieris is much slower growing and will simply cover the fence.  Remember, I haven’t added any ground cover or finished this bed yet.

On the other side, the tenants’ side, the guys have finished installing the Azaras and we’ve planted the bed.

This is a small bed so designing was quicker.  Also, remember, it was completely demo’d so we didn’t have to move plants around.  The Azaras hide the foundation immediately; I placed the boulders than filled in with variegated Daphne, a purple dwarf Rhododendron and some evergreen Hellebores, with ferns and vinca for accent.  Right away it looks cleaner.  Ignore the hose in the background.  Since the irrigation is not yet connected, we will hand water till the installation is completed.  It is important to keep these new plants irrigated for the first few weeks till they are established.

One last photo will show the line of basalt stones. 

At first I was going to use this edging only part way.  But now I decided to pick up some more stones and continue the edging.  A small Japanese stone fountain will interrupt the line, like it is part of the edging.  I’ll complete this next week.  When finished, the stone water basin will have a tiny drip line going into it so it will stay filled with fresh water for birds.  The new White Camellia will be espaliered over time by the gardener–a new gardener that understands plant material.  The variegated Abelia at its base will recover from its balled haircut and form a low umbrella-like edging.  The Preziosa Hydrangea beyond will grow taller and provide that red accent.

Small gardens–Reviving an entrance garden step by step Part 1

I thought I’d do a series of posts as I work to revive a tired garden in Sausalito.  Portions of this entrance I’d worked on over 10 years ago, but because the owner’s gardener had no idea had to do real maintenance, the garden had disintegrated into disrepair.  Portions of the design were still intact, much of the original plant material still useful, but a total rehaul was necessary.

A word to the wise:  I find the most common mistake is a homeowner who’s willing to pay between $20K and $100K to install a garden, yet they’re cheap on the maintenance.  Gardens are not kitchens–you don’t install them and then they stay exactly the same.  Gardens are alive, and a design slowly grows to maturity.  If your maintenance gardener doesn’t 1. have any idea how to care for specific plants i.e. water, fertilizers, 2.  know how a plant grows i.e. prunes everything into a ball and 3. has no artistic sensibility–then don’t hire them.  Spend the extra money on maintenance and your garden will grow into what the designer imagined.  In addition, my best gardens either have me come back every so often or hire my skilled and personally trained maintenance crew.

This entrance garden is a duplex.  I did the owners’ side a dozen years ago and left the tenants side alone.  Now I am re-designing both sides.  Redos are different than blank slate installations.  I usually consider the plant material I want with only an idea of where it will go, then I purchase my plants with the intention of them being like a painters’ palette.  Because there are existing plants that I can move around and reuse, I am ‘designing on the fly’.  So here’s how you can do this at home.  Here are the before photos.

This is the tenants side which hasn’t been touched in years.  Spider plants dominate (they are really an indoor plant and very invasive in warmer climates such as here).  The top photo has some plants in pots, a tired Nandina that will be removed, and two Podocarpus side by side.  We’ll remove one of them and leave the other to frame the doorway.  In the second photo you can see there is a deep well behind the planting bed where the foundation of the house is visible.  That needs to be covered and used as a backdrop for the planted material in the beds.  These are very small beds and, since they are in an entranceway, they can take detail plant material and focal points.

Not easily visible here, there is an old ornamental pear on the other side of this gate.  We’ll remove that.  Once removed there will be additional light, and also the ugly backdrop disappears.  Sky is better than old tree limbs that are dying.Here’s another view of the well behind the spider plants.  We will clean up down below.  There are two different kinds of trees.  The one on the right is a Maytens.  It is stunted, not correctly pruned, and doesn’t fit the space.  The one on the left is an ornamental Evergreen Pear.  Allowed to grow up and correctly pruned, this fits our Japanese look better.  I’ll plant this area with the intention of removing the Maytens as soon as the new plant cover grows up.  Not visible is a very large Monterey Pine and a Live Oak.  These provide a canopy of dappled shade for our new plants.

As you can see by the above view, its crowded.  Your eye doesn’t know where to go, so everything just becomes a ‘mush’.  We’ll create an intimate and more focused space, with more ‘room’ in between the plant material.

This is the owners side that I worked on a dozen years ago.  A large existing tree used to be in the corner behind the fern.  That was taken out several years ago by the owner.  The variegated Pittosporums I installed were never pruned and are now too large and leggy.  We’ll have to remove them completely now.  Much of the finer ground cover like the Luzula aurea in the foreground has been allowed to take over, and the Rhododendrons were not properly pruned and are now large and leggy.  We’ll discard some of the material and use others.

My first consideration in choosing plant material is texture and color of leaf.  In a shady garden, there won’t be a lot of color in the blooms, so I’m going to make choices in leaf color.  I have learned not to mix yellow and white variegation, so choose one or the other.  I’m going to go for white here, with red in places to pop things out.

In looking at the last photo of the owners side, I want to place something at the very end to pop things out, so I chose a Sangu Kaku Japanese Maple, or Coral Bark Maple.  This maple has a red bark year round and is highly attractive in leaf.  But in order to see the maple, I’m going to have to move that large tree fern.  I know this, but haven’t yet figured out where it will go.  That will happen on site, during the design process.

On the tenants’ side, I’ll remove all the plants, except the white flowering Azalea and one of the Podocarpus’.  Since this is a contained bed, here’s our chance to totally revamp the soil.  We’ll remove up to 8″ of soil and replace it with a good Rhododendron/acid mix.  In addition, if you notice in photo 1, the tenant’s side of the fence has a very small bed, much smaller than the owners’ side.  The soil is rocky there with a lot of roots from trees.  We’ll give ourselves extra room by shoring up the bed with some Japanese looking basalt ‘bricks’.

I chose a palette of Daphnes, variegate Pieris, ‘Icee Blue’ Podocarpus, Ophiopogons, Rhodies, red leafed Kurume azaleas, Preziosa Hydrangea (they have red leaves), variegated Abelia, variegated Vinca minor, some Rubus, purple-leafed Oaxalis, Japanese painted ferns and native Blechnum spicant ferns.

In my next post I will show you the installation in progress.

“We were home”

In her book When the Land was Young, Sharman Russell works a sensitive exploration of North American archaeology today.  She visits and talks with archaeologists on site.  The book is written more as poetic prose than dry hard science.  Here is one of my favorite excerpts:

Vance Haynes is here today mapping a well he thinks was dug by the Clovis people. ‘They had the same gray matter as you or me’, he says.  ‘They were at a different stage in their technology, that’s all.’

The second question is like hitting a bruise, the pain of our postindustrial angst. Was it better?  In the last two centuries we have had small but diverse groups of hunters and gatherers to study.  Some had lots of leisure time; some didn’t.  Some starved  on occasion; some hardly ever.  Much depended on the physical environment.  Still this doesn’t touch the heart of the question, which is about spirit not matter.  Was it better emotionally?  Were we better?  Were we more alive, more human, more engaged?

Anthropologist Robin Fox says yes.  He mourns the ‘Paleoterrific’ not because it was better but because it is where we belong.  There we reached ‘the limits of our evolutionary adaptation’.  We were few in number, tribal, creative, dependent on nature, in awe, in touch, in our natural setting.  We were home.

 

California natives part 2- Ribes sp.

One of my favorite native flowering three season plant is Ribes or Gooseberry.  You may have read my post on White Blister Rust on our native white bark pines.  Ribes are a host for this European fungus.  Extensive attempts to eradicate western Ribes sp. in the early 20th century was the method of control, but luckily it failed.

Ribes sp. are very beautiful and diverse.  In general the berries are edible, although some species are better tasting than others.  Gooseberry fruits were extensively used by Native Americans.

There are three species of Ribes native to California that I use extensively.  The first is Ribes sanguineum.  There are many varieties out on the market, with colors ranging fro white to pink to red.  R. sanguineum needs a bit of water in the summer and does better in either a cool sunny location or, in hot areas, a little shade in the hottest time of the day.  Flowers in the spring, berries in the fall that the birds love, and beautiful fall color makes this plant have 3 season interest.  A shrub, it grows anywhere from 6′ to 10′, depending usually on the amount of water and the site.  Prune it after flowering.

When correctly sited, this plant is very tough and easy to grow.  One of my favorites in the garden.

Another Ribes rarely used is Ribes speciosum.  This unusual California native flowers in the dead of winter and goes dormant (leafless) in the summer, making it perfect for planting under oaks.  It likes shade or cool sun.  You can keep it green all year by watering it in the summer, but why bother.  One note is that it does have thorns so keep it away from walkways.  Many of my clients say this is one of their favorite plants because it flowers in the winter when there is little color.

Lastly is a Ribes that forms colonies and blooms yellow.

Ribes aureum is from the foothills of California.  It tends to sucker and form thickets, when happy.  It does best in shade with moderate water in the summer.

There are several other more obscure Ribes on the market, but these three are my favorites and all are reliable and attractive.  These are very easy native additions to your dry garden.

California natives. Part 1 Aesculus california, California Buckeye

Since I’m in Northern California for a few months, I thought I’d do a few posts on some of my favorite, most useful, and underused natives for the garden.

First, the debate about ‘What is a Native?’

I was asked to be in a garden tour a few years back centering around California natives.  The organizer asked me what natives were in my featured garden.  When I mentioned Prunus lyonii, Catalina Cherry, a shrub native to the Catalina Islands, she said “That’s not a native…to this area!”

True, it’s a native to the Catalina Islands off the coast of Southern California, but not to the bay area of northern California.  So where do we draw the line?  Is it the northern coast line, or the dry climate of the Western United States and those ‘natives’ that will grow in our climate zone?

Frankly, I feel that as long as the plant isn’t an invasive, it adapts to your Sunset zone, it doesn’t need additional water once established, and it is ‘native’ to the Western United States, it can be called a native.

The other misnomer is that all natives are drought tolerant.  California has a wide variety of climates, from Redwood forests receiving the equivalent of 100-150″ of rainfall a year in the form of fog drip, to deserts that receive less than a few inches.  When people say to me “I don’t want to water so plant natives”, they clearly don’t understand the diversity of natives we have.  Many of our natives need additional water, so choose carefully.

If I’m asked to design a drought tolerant yard, I use a mix of California natives and other Mediterraneans.  By definition, there are only five areas in the world with a Mediterranean climate, that is, mild wet winters and dry summers.  They are parts of Australia, Chile, South Africa, California and the Mediterranean.  On a world map it’s a very small area,  but there’s a wide diversity of plant material to choose from.  When sited and chosen properly, all these plants will mix happily together and require similar watering conditions.  In fact, since our deer eat natives (deer are taught what to eat by their mothers), growing plants from other Mediterranean zones many times escape being eaten.

With that introduction, my first underused plant in the series is the wonderful California Buckeye. 

Its a common sight here in the Bay Area.  It has a drought strategy of being the first tree to leaf out in the winter, and the first to loose its leaves, sometime around mid summer (August).  The long panicles of flowers are a sight, ranging in color from white to pinkish.  After its leaves fall, the large fruits hang on the tree ornamentally.

Here is the wonderful thing about the Buckeye:  with some water, the leaves can stay on till October.  At the Berkeley Botanic Native Garden, there’s a Buckeye planted in a lawn.  The tree keeps its leaves through fall and is one of the very few drought tolerant natives that responds well to watering; therefore you can mix it with your other plants with only more benefits.

This incredibly adaptable native is almost never used in garden designs.  It should be used more and will adapt to any of our changing water needs.  If you plant it in a lawn now, then change your mind about the lawn in years to come, the Buckeye will do just fine either way.

The Golden Bear of California

View from the pass of Half Dome

Driving through Tioga Pass, I couldn’t help but think of California’s state flag…the great Golden  Bear, a sub-species of our Grizzly, now extinct.

Black bears are ubiquitous in the Sierras.  I’ve heard from friends that back country hikers are now required to carry their food in bear containers when backpacking, adding lots of extra weight to their packs.  Last time I camped in Yosemite Valley, bears walked continually through our campground which was shared with dozens of other campsites.

So my question is…Why not introduce the great Grizzly back to California?  Hey, people are getting used to living with black bears.  It’s just a little jump from the Black to the Grizzly.  Besides, there won’t be so many black bears with a few grizzlies around as they don’t share territory easily.  A little bit of googling and it seems others are asking the same question.  Not many others though, but a few.

As opposed to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem which is higher, colder, and food scarcer, California is warm with abundant food.  Apparently, a hundred and fifty years ago, grizzlies were everywhere, gathering even in ‘herds’, unusual for the usually solitary beast.  Salmon, acorns, abundant wildlife, washed up whales…food was easy.  Seems like California harbored 20 percent of the 50,000 grizzlies that roamed the continent long ago.  Its a shame to waste all the protected spaces of Californias’ Federal and State Parks and Forests.

In addition, it might give pause to the growing population of California.  When I was growing up here, California had an already bulging population of about 12 million.  Now its pushing 37 million, too many people for the space.  Many of these newcomers are easterners and mid-westerners, looking for climate change, in denial of the natural dryness of the west.  I watched California grow in the 80’s and 90’s, developers building out-of-place Cape Cod style McMansions, tearing down ancient oaks to put in home vineyards with private labels for Christmas gifts, lawns and golf courses erected where there should be Manzanitas.  I suggest the only thing that might put a stop to all this madness is the great, top of the food chain predator–the California Golden Bear.

Now, in all seriousness, Californians have the room for a few bears.  Biologist Carlos Carroll maintains that the Siskiyou Mountains could maintain around 300 Grizzlies.  I’ve been to these remote mountains on the Oregon Border.  They would make nice habitat.  I’m thinking so would Yosemite, and Tahoe for that matter.  Wolves in California might be just too big a jump, but Grizzlies are actually easier to live with, tend to be solitary, populate slowly and are omnivorous.

I like having Grizzlies in my valley in Wyoming.  They make me aware.  They make me remember that life is wild and that I too am a child of the wild.  We humans tend to eliminate everything that threatens us.  But really, we can never fully eliminate all threats.  In trying to cheat death, we only cheat ourselves of our natural woolly wildness and loose touch with an important part of our soul.

Mountain Lions, Pumas, and Cougars

I’ve just finished a read that really got me thinking.  The book, The Beast in the Garden by David Baron, I bought from Jim Halfpenny.  That’s because Jim is featured prominently in the story as an independent tracker and researcher who forewarned of the dangers that were coming.

In detective style, Baron weaves the true story of Boulder, CO in the late ‘80’s, a rapidly developing community impinging upon mountain lion territory, while at the same time a ban on deer hunting exploded their prey population.  Deer were wandering city streets and suburban backyards.  Naïve ex-city folks encouraged their tameness by feeding them.  And the mountain lions followed the deer, as they’re known to do.  Soon they were killing deer in people’s yards on the outskirts of town.  Before long, the lions, stalking deer in suburbia, had studied the people as well, and knew their habits and routines.

Interestingly enough, Baron explains that the natural enemy of mountain lions are wolves—cats and dogs.  With wolves so long out of the picture, lions no longer had the natural instincts to fear dogs aka ‘tame’ wolves (mountain lions are hunted with dogs but these hunting dogs are highly trained to focus on running down just lions, not other types of prey).  So it wasn’t unusual that the first aberrant sign began with lions killing and eating dogs left in outside fenced runs, or running free.

People started seeing lions not just occasionally at dusk or dawn, but during daylight hours, and sightings increased.  The lions  soon roamed city streets at night.  One policeman came across a lion late at night on a city street eating a deer.  The old tried and true method of ‘look big, wave your arms and yell’ only elicited yawns at best, and more often snarls and growls.  It was only a matter of time before there was a human attack.  When a high school student was killed and eaten while training for a track meet running in the hills near his school, the Colorado Wildlife agency took action by relocating problem cougars, or using rubber bullets and other measures.

Why did I find this book so compelling?

The book highlights a lot of questions and new situations we face (more incredible cat stories in the news).  We have lost our wilds, our wilderness areas.   All wilderness is surrounded or encroached upon by civilization in some fashion or another, whether it be farmlands, suburbs or town.  In nature there are no empty lots that wildlife can move into.  Expand your footprint, buy some acreage in the Oak woodlands and the wildlife are still there.  Take down the old Oaks and put in your personal vineyard, the wildlife now lurks in the background, but are still around.

This situation just happened to me in an amusing way the other day.  While camping in the redwoods on the weekend, all the campgrounds around me were full.  People had their coolers, lights, etc.  They seem to have brought the suburbs with them.  I could hear growling in the shadows by the creek below.  The dog kept running in the brush.  What was there?  After all the campers went to bed and the fires had died down, a family of raccoons started marauding the area.  They knew exactly what these humans habits were.  But the following night, on a Sunday, I was the lone camper and the raccoons had retreated, only to be heard squabbling over some leftovers in a distant campground.

Jim Halfpenny, the book states, worries that the next predator/prey aberration will be with the wolves.  In the quote from James Schultz, he says that Native Americans were never bothered by wolves; they never feared when they heard wolves around, which was all the time, every night.  But he also says that there was plenty of prey, so there was no need to be afraid.  And, what he doesn’t need to say in the 1880’s, is that there was plenty of habitat.

We need to think through exactly what we are doing in our wild lands.  Most recently I read an article in Scientific America proposing growing our foods in high rise buildings in our cities, saying it would be more economical and efficient.  We could use all our grey water that way.

Of course, I added in my mind, leave all the rest of the land to the ancient wilds, restore the Bison, jam the GPS units, and live or visit there at your own risk.  As one of my friends in Cody says, when hiking in wolf and grizzly country, with a dog, you take certain risks and just live with that knowledge and be prepared.

All in all, the score is still in favor of the bipedals–66,665 cougars killed by humans in the last 50 years to 15 humans killed in the entire last century (100 years) by the big cats.  Obviously we are still the deadlier of the two species.