(Letter to Martha Part II)
I took a drive a drive along a country road the other day, west into the hills. It was autumn in sonoma
county, cool and overcast. The land was starting to green again and the valley oaks spread out across
the hills. Muted tones, somber shrubs and a subtle yellow flash of fall color gave a sense of peace to my
inner soul until I turned a bend and there, in our California Mediterranean landscape, was a large Cape cod
house with all it’s frilly east coast trappings. The glare of the pink impatients alone almost drove me off the road. Now I want to tell you, I don’t have any trouble with a Cape cod house, I’ve spent a few wonderful
summers in Sandwhich and I find the sea-worn gray color of the beach houses natural and calming but I
don’t understand why people from the east coast who come to Sonoma county (or the Bay Area in general)
and find it so beautiful that they want to move here and the first thing they do is want to build house and
landscape it exactly like where they came from. We are not in England anymore! This is a Mediterranean
climate. Hasn’t anyone read “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. If not, I suggest you do. A lot of ideas that the
native landscape movement has been talking about for years are summed up rather nicely, first of all that it is folly to
come to a new land and then try to stubbornly impose your own cultural practises on that place. Look at
Australia and it’s plaque of rabbits. This is California! It does not rain here that much. The soils are heavy
and hard. It makes no sense to remodel a house on a rural property, that is surrounded by rolling hills,
native shrubs, oaks, redwoods, vineyards (which have their own set of problems) and then landscape with a bunch of showy, high maintenance, moisture-needy plants. You’re just throwing $$$ money away. And you
complain in the middle of summer, when you just planted a bunch of trees, that things don’t look so good.
Arghhhhhhhhhh! Would you send your sensitive, artsy kid to military school? Only if you want him to fail
miserably. If you want your garden to thrive , create an environment where they will do so or even better,
plant things that will thrive in the environment that is already present. Plants have a much more difficult time adapting than people do. or do they? sometime I’m not so sure
