How “benign Neglect” Can Actually Improve Your Garden
If you love the idea of a lush garden but are less interested in all the watering, fertilizing, and maintenance involved, I can share a gardening philosophy with you: it’s called ” soft neglect .” The idea is to create favorable conditions for the plants that grow in the area and just let them do their thing while you sit and drink Mai Tai. It sounds trite, but the mild neglect is the opposite of a centuries-old tradition of garden design, where “successful” landscapes are filled with specific, exotic, and often labor-intensive flora.
The Key to Benign Gardening Neglect
Native plants are the ones that would grow in your area if people didn’t cover the ground with streets and office parks, and hometown plant heroes have tons of benefits. They may not be as pretty as some rock star plants, but they have evolved over millions of years to live in exactly the environment someone built your home in, so they will thrive in a way that tulips can’t.
Not only will native plants grow better than non-native ones, but they won’t get out of control either. Plants don’t care where your property line goes, and without the natural “checks and balances” of their native biome, some plants go wild. (Plant some bamboo to see what I mean. Wait, don’t actually plant bamboo.)
You may not know where the greens growing in your yard come from. Both home and civilian gardeners have chosen plants many years ago and probably did not consider the local ecosystem, so you may need to do a bit of research. You can use an app like iNaturalist to instantly identify any plant and then eradicate as many foreign invaders as you want to get rid of.
To find out which plants are native to your home, you can use the National Wildlife Fund’s Native Plant Finder , which provides zip code by zip code for trees, shrubs, flowers, and herbs in the United States. From there, you just need to track the bushes and seedlings and plant a new garden.
Benevolent neglect of gardening encourages insects and birds (in a good way)
To paraphrase Tony Montana in the Scarface movie, “First you get the native plants. Then you get pollinators. Then you get women. Well, birds anyway.
The insects and birds that live in your area have evolved with plants, so they are designed to live in, eat and pollinate them. On the other hand, non-native plants can create a food desert for native crawling and flying insects, as they are often unable or unwilling to eat them. So the idea is to get a good crop of native plants so that the beetles will appear.
You may be thinking, “But I don’t really want to have a lot of insects in my backyard.” It’s an understandable concern—the relationship between man and insect is strained at best—but you have to think about the good mistakes that come with the bad ones. You like caterpillars, ladybugs, bees and butterflies, right? One of the ultimate goals of carefree gardening is to attract beneficial insects and pollinators so that flowers and vegetables stay healthy without you having to lift a finger. They are like your little servants. In addition, bugs will attract hungry birds, and everyone loves birds. The native garden is also more resistant to invasive species , and you know what that means? Less weeding.
Studies have shown that suburban landscaping with native plants supports significantly greater numbers of “caterpillars and caterpillar species, as well as significantly greater numbers, diversity, species richness, biomass and breeding pairs of native species”, and the number of bird species causing “regional conservation concern , was eight times more . more numerous in areas with native plants.
Neglecting your garden can save you money (and help save the world)
We use about nine billion gallons of water a day in the US to keep our lawns and gardens growing, and the average American family spends $1,100 a year on water . If your garden gets all or most of its water from rain and moisture, you can significantly reduce these costs. In addition, all this water must be treated and pumped, and this requires energy, which often requires burning fossil fuels.
So by benevolently neglecting your garden, you don’t just save a dollar, you save the planet— and you become lazy.