Step Aside, Mulch. I Want a Wild English Garden.

The yard kind, not the Victoria's Secret kind.

Coneflowers, aka echinacea, they’re the native plants the bees and I both adore. Plant ‘em and leave ‘em and watch them spread.

Growing up, my parents were always outside “doing the lawn.” And while they sweat away in the heat, I just laid around watching people cook on TV with no desire to help.

Fast forward thirty years, and I’m outside here pulling all sorts of shit out of the ground while my son watches God knows what on TV.

And I actually enjoy it. 

One thing I do not enjoy about gardening is mulch. It’s so formal looking, heavy, and oppressive. You have to buy it, haul it, and spread it in places where you don’t want things to grow, but they grow anyway. It’s supposed to protect your plants’ roots from the cold, but don’t use too much, as with a mulch volcano, or it’ll rot your roots (a great name for a bluegrass-metal mash-up album).

Instead of a tidy yard, I want an English cottage garden where flowers, leaves, and grasses are all mashed together and there are so many bugs. And I think this English-type garden is the #gardengoals of the moment, whether or not the internet knows it yet.

Bees are in and mulch is out.

Planting these zinnias was the best thing I did all year. They’re annuals, but they really filled out the space and covered up my ugly fence.

Mulch is apparently a billion dollar industry in the U.S. and not terrible for the environment, generally. But it can’t be that good either since it’s packaged in plastic, you have to drive to get it, and then you have to make sure you’re buying organic, naturally dyed mulch. Why not just cut this step out of your life entirely and see what your yard delivers?

As you probably know from your most-hated neighbor on Nextdoor, the one who has a jungle instead of a front lawn, there’s a huge native plant effort going on out there with a goal of helping pollinators thrive. My garden ideal is totally aligned with this kind of yard chaos, but it’s lazier.

Just showing off my native blueberries. The birds ate every single blueberry before we got to them.

The Washington Post points out that that plant maximalism is on the rise as an aesthetic. The article notes that “bulkier gardens” are partly a result of “[t]he trend toward native plants and the recent movement of converting lawns into gardens and mini-meadows.” Bring on that bulk, I say! It makes gardening less backbreaking and more breathtaking.

I live in Maryland where everything is or looks dead for most of the year. So, the ground cover that I’d be fighting with mulch — stuff like violets and clover — it’ll all be gone in a few months, anyway. It just makes sense to let the greenery grow freely, unless it’s an invasive, non-edible plant that’s suffocating the natives.

The one place that I do actively try to keep orderly is my vegetable garden. But even there, as long as the plants are living in harmony, I leave them be.

These beautiful, aggressive bastards grow in abundance in one corner of our yard and try to strangle my camellias. I rip them off then let them grow at the base of our driveway since I know they’ll be dried branches soon enough.

I’m also learning how to garden in an environment that’s newer to me, so I’ve got a lot on my plate without adding mulch and orderliness to my to-do list.

I grew up in the subtropics and 100% cannot wrap my head around how perennials work. Why are they so damn smart? They look dead but they’re not dead? Like how do my hydrangeas, which are usually a pile of sticks, grow lush with leaves year after year? And because my hydrangeas' buds grow on “old wood” — which is a great name for a 50+, all-male Aerosmith cover band — I’m also not sure when I can even touch them without killing next year’s flowers. My brain is already full.

I will admit, I’ll likely cave and get one bag of mulch to put around the trees we planted a couple years ago. I’m really rooting (ahem) for them to survive the mood swings of a climate change winter. Otherwise, I’m done trying to wrestle the yard into submission. I’m letting the plants and bugs have their way.

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I’d love to know your garden goals in the comments below!