My #1 Yard Design Priority

Plus, vole control and how constraints drive creativity

Dear Yardener,

Can you guess my first purchase for the yard at our new Gainesville house?

Right! I imagine the photograph gave her away: A statue — a vintage, three-quarter size woman, with nude torso and severed head. I am not a big fan of yard art, so why?

I was scouring LiveAuctioneers.com for vintage and antique furniture for the house’s Bloomsbury-inspired interior when I found her and realized the classical pose would extend the decorative motif into the garden while the white marble would brighten a dismal corner of the yard seen from our bedroom and office/guest room. And views from inside are SO important! (See “Why?” below.) Plus, siting a sensuous statue where it is visible only to us and our house guests seemed mildly naughty.

Now, months later, I just placed my first major plant order and views from the inside remain my priority.

That’s not to say I haven’t thought through the overall layout. (Perish the thought!) My daughter and teaching partner Zoe visited last week, walked the 13,000 square foot property with me several times, and sketched a rough plan — the sort you’ll make if you join our free workshop on December 5. Then we assessed the views, not standing at windows, but as we experienced them in the course of our days — walking through rooms, sitting in our favorite chairs, and so on.

For example: “Mom, I’ve noticed we both sit sideways in these club chairs,” said Zoe, doing just that. “And from here I’m looking toward the mailbox. I think you need a tree in between, on this side of the driveway.” So we tested out and then marked with flags a place for a spring-flowering tree with a “pupation station” underneath.

Meanwhile, leaning into the mysteriousness of the nude woman in our backyard, I placed her detached head on a copper plinth in the entry, as you see above.

— Heather

Dear Heather, How do I stop voles from killing my shrubs? I’ve lost two red twig dogwoods, a hydrangea and a rhodo and numerous small plants. I tried letting nature balance itself: stopped trapping, made some stick hideaways away from the house, got an owl box, etc. They are just as destructive this year. I will not use poison, I stamp the trails like a crazy person and put down nasty smelling stuff and have planted 70 alliums. Voles continue to proliferate. Ideas Please?! — Joan, Lake George, NY

You have stumped me! You’ve done everything I know. (We have voles but they have not been much of a problem.) My suggestion is that you continue to aim for natural balance as you’ve been doing, starting with moving or changing out your owl boxes, following the instructions from Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Right Bird, Right House. Make sure you’re attempting to attract raptors that thrive in your region and habitat with the right box in the right place. People often hang owl boxes too low, for example.

While you wait for raptors to control your vole population, you can cage young shrubs and trees in hardware cloth:

Use exclusion barriers to keep voles out by placing ¼ inch mesh hardware cloth cylinders large enough to accommodate 5 years growth around the base of young trees. Bury the mesh 3 inches below ground level [some sites say 6] to prevent voles from burrowing underneath. Make cylinders higher than the typical snow-line level and pinch closed at top to avoid trapping birds. — Cornell Cooperative Extension, Putnam County

Finally, Fred Breglia, arborist and executive director of the Landis Arboretum near you, suggested mouse traps:

My best advice for voles is to use mouse traps baited with peanut butter. I recommend putting the traps inside sections of PVC pipe with a large enough diameter for the traps to snap.

This lethal solution goes against the Zen, learn-to-be-thankful solutions I strive to apply and recommend (see Why Managing Gophers Wisely Matters), but I believe killing wildlife can be necessary, for example to safeguard ecosystems from deer overpopulation. Mouse traps are certainly a much better solution than rodenticides, which harm owls and other natural vole predators.

Vole populations tend to ebb and flow, so here’s wishing you an ebbing vole population!

— Heather

Moles and voles both tunnel, but only voles kill plants by eating roots, stems, bulbs, and bark. Carnivorous moles, which eat earthworms and insects like grubs, beetle larvae, and ants, are often falsely accused of harming plants. Learn more at Northern Woodlands. (Illustration: Adelaide Tyrol)

Why, How, Wow!

Why? Viewing nature through a window improves human health.

Even if you spend a lot of time outside, as I hope you do, you will probably see your yard most often from your windows and as you move between your car (or the sidewalk) and your door. So improving the view of your yard from inside can significantly increase your connection to nature. A recent meta-analysis confirms you can experience the health benefits of nature by viewing it through windows. In addition, an attractive view will draw you out into your yard to experience nature directly.

This meta-analysis synthesizes findings from 28 studies encompassing 104 results to examine the relationship between window views of nature and human health. Improvements were reported across various physiological, psychological, and physical health measures, with most studies focused on psychological outcomes. The meta-analytic results indicate consistently positive effects, with particularly strong benefits in studies using physiological health measures and focusing on nature in urban settings. Although some publication bias was detected, correcting for it did not change the overall conclusions. — Bioscience

My morning view of the gorgeous but invasive Chinese tallow, soon to be replaced with a native white fringe tree

How: Simple steps to bring nature inside

Putting views first means seeing your garden from inside, not from the street. I encourage you to spend time this week noticing your views. To give you some ideas, here’s what I’m doing in Gainesville. Note that all the new plants will support wildlife — and add movement — by attracting birds, butterflies, and/or bees.

• Removing foundation plantings and invasives. Rangy, exotic foundation plantings reach the tops of the north-facing living and bed room windows. And the gorgeous Chinese tallow seen from my seat in the dining room is designated a Category 1 invasive in Florida — one of only 18 in this invasive hotspot. I’ve hired a team from Bee Good Landscape to remove unwanted exotics and all invasives throughout the property, before I start planting. By hiring pros and working alongside them, I hope to learn the local invasives so I can cut them as they reappear (and avoid removing rare natives, as I’ve done in the past).

• Siting small decorative trees 15 to 30 feet in front of windows as focal points. I’m replacing the tallow with white fringe tree. In the front yard where they’ll be seen from the living and bed rooms, I’m planting another fringe tree and two flatwoods plums. Their white flowers in spring and yellow leaves in fall will brighten the dappled shade of huge live oaks, while supplying pollinators with early nectar and songbirds with fruit.

• Installing trellises and vines on either side of one dining room window. I hope we’ll see hummingbirds sipping from coral honeysuckle as we eat breakfast. (In Rhode Island, we draw birds into the view with perennials that reach just above sill level and a highbush blueberry along the side of a window.)

• Softening a fence with tall shrubs. The other dining room window looks onto a fence, so I’m screening it with three white-flowering Walter’s viburnums on one side of a gate and a Henry’s garnet Virginia sweetspire in the shade on the other side.

• Arranging outdoor furniture to look inviting from indoors. Because seating is so important to a sense of comfort in a landscape, I bought wonderful used, bright white Brown Jordan aluminum sets on Facebook Marketplace before I bought any plants. (Read my article on The Dirty Downside of Outdoor Furniture.)

• Placing features as focal points. The marble woman will sit in front of evergreen Southern magnolias (transplanted from closer to the house) among wild coffee shrubs and Southern shield ferns. Two cast-stone whippets, also bought at auction, now sit on either side of the path that leads from the kitchen door through the patio into the backyard. (A grassy path between taller plants can similarly make a view.)

Left, view of the statue from the bedroom now, with little vegetation around her, mostly native, some invasive; right, as I imagine the view after upcoming planting

Wow! Limits drive creativity in plant selection (and everything else).

I love to create challenges for myself, and one of them is not to plant anything in the new garden that I’m growing elsewhere. Another is inventing a new color palette — in this case, white, pink, coral, orange-red, and blue, a palette that will continue inside. There will be no yellow and little purple, the two most common native plant colors. Of course, limiting myself to mostly pure-species native plants is a major constraint, as well. (Note: Fortunately, our lot already has dozens of native trees, many of them keystones — live oaks, Florida maples, Carolina cherry laurels, hackberry, Southern magnolia, winged sumac, American holly, and yaupon holly.)

Zoe and my husband and gardening partner Pete give me a hard time about all these arbitrary rules, but as Orson Welles said,

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. — Orson Welles

The upshot of planting only species I have no experience with — crazy right? — is that I’m doing lots of plant research, visiting wild areas, poring over books, scrutinizing native nurseries online and IRL, and searching national (wildlflower.org/plants) and state (fnps.org/plants) databases. I started my plant spreadsheet several months ago (see it here), but only started ordering once I had a plan. When I plant again next fall, I’ll double down on the ones that perform well.

Below are pictures of the plants we’ll be installing soon to improve the entry area and the views. All tolerate part to mostly shade and are native to the south, some to the entire eastern U.S. For your reference, I’ve put links to species information, including native range. If you have experience with these plants, please do tell!

Palette around the entry, also viewed from dining room (clockwise from top): coral honeysuckle, Walter’s viburnum ‘Select’, sweetspire ‘Henry’s garnet,’ pink scarlet sage, blackberry lily (an existing, non-invasive exotic)

Focal point understory trees: left, flatwoods plum flowers and fruits; right, white fringe tree, fall leaf color, flower close-up (photos right: Mt. Cuba Center)

Groundcovers for shade, clockwise from top: wild plumbago, wild coffee (Florida endemic), blue mistflower, Southern shield fern, inland sea oats

Miscellany

• Did you know that only one percent of the earth has been developed into suburbs and cities and a whopping 40 percent is now devoted to agriculture?!? I did not, until I heard Michael Grunwald speak about his new book, We Are Eating the Earth. I am questioning all my beliefs about agricultural policy and look forward to reading it to become informed.

• Rusty pruning shears? Here’s a step-by-step guide to clean and sharpen pruners.