More than pretty

It’s the accepted wisdom: You can’t have it all. Or can you? When it comes to gardens, C. Colston Burrell thinks maybe you can—and he’s spent a lifetime considering this very question.

A noted horticulturist, garden designer, and author, Burrell will offer his thoughts at Beauty, Integrity and Resilience: Can a Garden Have Everything? The online March 3 session is the first of four weekly lectures presented by the Piedmont Master Gardeners.

A self-described “chlorophyll addict,” Burrell says what crystallized his thinking was a widely quoted comment from well-known entomologist, ecologist, and author Doug Tallamy at a 2015 conference. Tallamy said it was no longer enough for gardens just to be pretty.

That comment, Burrell says, got him thinking about why we make gardens. “Without beauty, we wouldn’t bother,” he says. “Face it—even low-impact gardening is a lot of work! So beauty is first, but then we have to consider the [ecological] impact of our work. And then the garden has integrity, and it becomes more resilient.”

As part of that, Burrell says, “We have to get away from the idea of growing one perfect plant—whether it’s a trillium or a bluebell or whatever. [As a gardener], I’m trying to form a population of plants in a community—that’s not possible with a garden of specimens.” In fact, he sees gardening as the creation of “novel plant communities.”

Great white trillium. File photo

While he supports the increasing interest in native plants, Burrell, a founding member of the Virginia Native Plant Society, says the definition of native can be unclear: Does it mean local? Common in the state? Here before Europeans arrived? One example is the great white trillium (very popular with gardeners in this area), which has a range covering the eastern U.S., including Virginia, but it didn’t grow in Albemarle County because the mesic soil it prefers doesn’t occur naturally here. Another example is the purple cornflower, “a pollinator gardener’s dream plant, butterflies love it, but it’s not native to Virginia,” according to Burrell.

His third factor, resilience, is a term Burrell prefers to sustainability. He’s not a purist. At the novel plant communities he has been creating over 20 years at Bird Hill, his nine-acre property in Free Union, he curates what is important to him. “I grow plants under trees, I water in the summer, I have plants from all over the world,” he says. Including a banana tree, a reflection of his lifelong interest in tropical plants. But Burrell is careful to keep an expert eye on plants that could be aggressive or invasive. As an avid bird-watcher, he also plants to provide habitat, cover, and food for birds, as well as insects, frogs, salamanders, and other welcome visitors. Whitetail deer, however, are discouraged by a 10-foot fence.

The Bird Hill garden started with three acres around Burrell’s house, situated on a south- and east-facing hillside. “I love sun-loving plants,” he says, “but I looked at the site and asked, ‘What kind of garden does this want to be?’” So he designed shade beds close to the house, as well as full-sun areas further down the hill. He found that many of his plants started to seed and spread downhill and out into the surrounding forest edges, and so he created plant communities there as well.

“If you listen to your garden,” he says, “it will tell you what it needs.”

More information and registration for Burrell’s lecture and the four-part series is at piedmontmastergardeners.org/events.