Fern Glen Essays
A Visitor in the Doghouse
by Judy Sullivan

This morning, the Visitor Center at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies extended its hospitality to a most interesting guest. A tall, distinguished gentleman of advanced years browsed the lobby before sidling up to the counter to inquire about our programs and our original benefactress Mary Flagler Cary. His questions answered in the polite, engaging manner typical of our Visitor Services staff, he launched a lengthy philippic encompassing science, scientists and, especially, the sad state of gardening in this modern age.

"Those scientists," he fumed, "do nothing but sit at their computer terminals all day" and "never contribute anything to the real world." This news certainly came as a surprise to our staff member, who often sees IES scientists ruggedly clad and adorned with bits of the natural environment resulting from labor in their fields of research. IES director Dr. Gene Likens identified the relationship between fossil fuel use and acid rain, a discovery that influenced national policy and human health. IES scientist Dr. Valerie Eviner's research explains the roles of different plant species and plant communities in ecosystems, toward a goal of enhancing land use efficiency and minimizing the use of practices harmful to people and their environment. There are zounderkites in every profession. However, these are but two projects among a host of such that strive to understand and explain the intricacies of our wonderfully complex environment before we render it, and ourselves, extinct.

Our energetic visitor forged ahead with a fulmination on the topic of gardens. "You should plant a row of pine trees to hide this place from the road!" he snorted. "Mary Cary would turn over in her grave if she could see this place!" It could be argued that she might welcome the change of position. However, I am most certain that she would approve of the way in which her land is used. Her trust fund was established to ensure the maintenance and preservation of her property and to foster scientific, educational purposes by a charitable organization "engaged in the conservation, maintenance, and preservation of natural resources." IES does this admirably.

Of most interest to me was this gentleman's strongly expressed sentiment that the use of native plants in the landscape was an insult and that this tendency toward "native plant gardening" was...oh my...I'll draw a quiet curtain on the syntax (or perhaps plant a row of pines...). As a self-described "true horticulturist" with an unswerving focus on "true gardening" in the style of formal landscapes, our guest trumpeted to his audience (now expanded to include a somewhat bewildered family seeking visitor passes) that this native plant trend was a travesty, nothing but a "Nazi, post-war Bauhaus" movement. Certainly an entertaining, albeit self-contradictory, theory. Our febrile friend concluded his tirade by announcing that "...this back to nature thing is just wilderness nonsense and we don't live in the wilderness!"

It is true that the Nazi regime, as part of an effort to develop its frightening nationalistic identity, dictated the use of native plants in public landscapes. Also true is that the Bauhaus movement was post-war...the First World War, that is. Bauhaus was a German school of art and architecture founded for the purpose of creating a new architectural style. From it originated the well-known phrase "form follows function." The Nazi's hated Bauhaus, finding it sehr "un-German" And so, any native plant movement cannot be simultaneously "Nazi" and "Bauhaus." Still, it's intriguing to apply this "form follows function" concept to both ecology and to landscape design. As far as arbors and asters are concerned, form does follow function. This could mean that even formal gardens are...gasp...tainted by Bauhaus influence.

Secondly, many of those despised natives have long been an integral part of "traditional" gardens. The aforementioned asters merited an entire celebratory border to themselves in the garden of that redoubtable English designer, Gertrude Jekyll. Harebell, bluebell, foamflower, gentian. Chokecherry, inkberry, too many to mention. Ironically, it is often English gardeners who inspire Americans to appreciate their own unique flora.

Why then, this hostility? This garden goosestep? In the history of earth, are not native plants a far older tradition than the hyped-up hybrids of the modern landscape? Then, of course, there's the Garden of Eden. Good enough for God, perhaps, but not a "traditional gardener." Pleached pear trees and delphiniums bound to stakes like so many martyrs awaiting execution - could these be more "real world" than research on tick borne diseases or miles of mysterious mycorrhizae, or prettier than a buttery bellwort in bloom? Our poor benighted visitor has missed unimaginable joys. Still, I can't believe him beyond redemption. He left with coattails flapping to beat wilderness into submission. Naught but a nyargle is he, and I shall relegate his theories to the Bau(wow)haus.

Questions, comments, or other feedback to Judy Sullivan.