Digging In: An Unsightly Reminder

By Jennifer Smith

There comes a point when you can no longer ignore the signs. Your knee won’t support your weight as you climb the steps, the car sputters as it runs on old oil and the near monoculture landscape becomes a wasteland of dead boxwoods, punctuated with a crispy lawn and tidy rows of liriope.

For decades we’ve relied on a limited palette of plants to design our landscapes. Our lazy interpretation of what we thought a formal, tidy, perhaps even regal landscape should look like saddled us with blinders, making it nearly impossible to consider more than a handful of plants in our designs. Our narrow interpretation of what a good landscape looks like regressed to laziness coupled with a dearth of creativity. Unimaginative landscapes beget more unimaginative landscapes, anchored by boxwoods and a handful of other plants deemed worthy, and for some unknown reason it became mandatory to plant them along the foundation of a home. I’ve said it before; seldom do I see a house with a foundation that demands hiding. If anything, most homes are lovely, and a complementary plant offering would accentuate the home and enhance its welcoming feel.

With great stubbornness we’ve held firm to overusing a few plants in the landscape, and now we are seeing the ugly results. Dead and dying boxwoods dominate many landscapes, even entire streets. The boxwood tree moth has arrived and is making a mess of our landscapes. Within a few days, an otherwise healthy boxwood can be defoliated by this invasive pest. The shrub, if not treated in time, may not recover from the infestation of the ravenous caterpillars. Even if the shrub can be saved, with at least a third of its foliage persisting, waiting for a line of boxwoods to recover from a judicious pruning will call upon a well of patience many homeowners lack. What shall we do?

Diversity in the landscape is the answer. We don’t want to repeat the errors of our ways and swap out one overused shrub with another.  We must aspire to create landscapes with a more diverse plant selection. The more diverse your landscape the more resilient it will be, capable of surviving a new pest, disease or weather event with minimal negative impact. You may lose a plant here or there, but the entire landscape will not be lost. The impetus to improving plant diversity is more than creating beautiful landscapes, it’s about doing our part to help the health of the planet, or at least your street.

Mother nature is giving us many signs that how we design landscapes has to change. Where are all the fireflies? Why do we cheer and stand in awe when we see a butterfly? Why do we spend so much on birdseed to attract birds to our yards? If we planted with a more diverse plant offering, selected plants more in line with nature, and ditched the chemicals, birds would be a constant in our gardens, even in winter. Not seeing a butterfly would give us pause, and children would spend summer evenings catching fireflies to house in mason jars overnight on the bedside tables.

If creating an attractive, resilient landscape or supporting nature doesn’t inspire you to employ a more diverse plant selection, perhaps economics will. Many homeowners will be faced with removing most, if not all their shrubs and replanting the entire landscape. For many, that will be no small undertaking, and it will not be a task to put off to another day. Losing 90 percent of one’s landscape needs to be addressed now.  But those that used boxwoods as an accent plant, a supporting role in the landscape rather than the main star, will only have a few dead shrubs to contend with. There is an amazing selection of shrubs, grasses and perennials at our disposal. Why fall back into the old habit of planting a mass of one shrub?

Jennifer Smith is an award-winning pollinator garden designer with Wimberg Landscaping.