20 January

One of the things I like to try to do in the garden is to tap the ecology that will happen by itself. Far too much gardening in my view is about control, about imposing a form on the landscape, that then takes a huge amount of energy, resources and work to maintain. An example is the grass at the back of our backyard. A plumber had to dig a 4m deep ditch in the back half of the yard. It left us with bare ground there, the topsoil got buried when he filled the hole again. Traditionally gardening advice would be to top-dress or even completely re-seed or turf the area. Instead I decided to use ecological succession ideas. Weeds will usually colonise the ground automatically as the first responders. They have deeper, much stronger roots and will tend to open up the soil beneath them. They also bring deeper nutrients to the surface. Grasses will follow the weeds, and you can see below how that process is playing out after only a few months (it was bare dirt before). Looks a bit messy for a while, but the work is being done for us, free of charge. If we left it eventually shrubs and trees would follow the grasses, most lawns are just interrupted succession states towards canopy plants.