Gardeners! What Does The Future Hold For Us?

The arrival of a new year often brings reflection, questions, and resolutions. While last year I shared an exercise I do every year about the things that interest me, this year I felt like making a poor Nostradamus of myself!

From what I read, hear, and see, what will change for gardeners? Everything that follows is not based on any rigorous scientific study. The only thing that fueled this exercise was my own inner voice. These are ideas that have been floating around in the air, words I’ve been constantly uttering in my lectures over the past year.

Resilience

Since the concept of climate change has been in the air, the word resilience has followed closely behind. And even though resilience isn’t new, it seems like this year I’ve been using it everywhere, more than usual. Without really remembering where this definition came from, here’s the one I commonly use:

The capacity of an ecosystem, habitat, population, or species to recover normal functioning and development after undergoing a major disturbance.

Thus, resilience is all about adaptation and the ability to adapt. For a gardener, what does that mean exactly? Basically, it means being able to modify one’s approach to gardening.

The best example I can give is irrigation. Resilience isn’t about putting a timer on your irrigation system or converting it to a drip irrigation system (which are already good practices). Resilience is about plants that are able to survive without relying on supplemental watering. Because, among the significant disruptions we are experiencing due to climate change, the increase in prolonged drought periods and weeks of intense heat will multiply. At some point, it will be essential to concentrate the use of drinking water on human consumption, and bans on watering ornamental plants are only going to increase in many cities. So, resilience means being well-prepared for this future in the field of water management.

Thus, if we examine each plant individually, we will discover that some recover better from climatic extremes than others. Each species therefore has its own resilience. Perhaps we will gradually abandon some of the more temperamental plants to focus on the most resilient ones.

Of course, resilience cannot be addressed without promoting biodiversity. The more habitat types, plant genetic diversity, or species are present in a landscape, the greater the chances of resilience!

Biodiversity

Personally, if I were asked what the buzzword of the year is, I would vote for “biodiversity”. In my opinion, the “Quebec Office of the French Language” provides the best definition of biodiversity, that I have freely translated here:

The totality of living organisms in a given region, considered in the plurality of species, the diversity of genes within each species and the variability of ecosystems.

I like this definition because it illustrates the complexity of biodiversity in just a few words. I often tell my students that there are three levels of biodiversity.

First, the biodiversity of ecosystems and habitats. This is why peat bogs and wetlands in southern Quebec must be protected. A forest, a mountainside, a wild meadow… each of these habitats has a unique flora, different from that of its neighbors. Ecosystem diversity ensures greater resilience (surprise, surprise!) for cities and regions to all the hazards of extreme weather.

Next, consider species diversity. This teaches us to avoid monocultures, which are so harmful in times of crisis. The emerald ash borer is a good example. In the 1990s and 2000s, many horticulturalists (myself included) planted thousands of ash trees along streets in urban areas and in parks. Often, the same variety of ash was planted for the entire street. As a result, when the emerald ash borer arrived, everything was wiped out. Entire streets of trees had to be cut down. You’ll see this clearly now: most cities have adopted plantings that include several different tree species for street plantings. This gives them a better chance of survival if one or more species dies.

In your garden, this means not hesitating to plant a wide variety of different plants. It’s time to create mixed gardens!

Finally, biodiversity concerns the genetic diversity of plants. Essentially, this means favoring plants propagated from seed over those produced by cuttings.

A few years ago, I participated in a collaborative activity called the Biodiversity Fresco. It was a very interesting exercise that greatly helped me refine my understanding of biodiversity and, above all, to grasp its links to social and economic issues, as well as human health. In doing so, I learned to discover and appreciate forgotten vacant lots and brownfields, these abandoned lots left on their own, which are often the most biodiverse places in the city! One day, I’ll compose an ode to vacant lots!

The End Of The Berberis?

And finally, recently, last October, the Quebec government published a draft regulation on invasive plant species that will prohibit the cultivation and sale of nearly thirty plants, including the “pure” species of Berberis. thunbergii. Although the regulation seems to exempt cultivars, except ‘Emerald Carousel’ and ‘Jade Carousel’, it is highly likely that some cultivars currently on the market have something to be wary of: the ability to self-seed easily.

So, for my part, I’ve noticed that my beautiful golden barberry, which I started from seed, is self-seeding. I therefore plan to eradicate it from my garden and give it a proper burial. This is to be prepared (and resilient) for what’s to come. Anyway, it will make more room for a new shrub!

On this blacklist of future bans are some obvious choices, such as common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) or the Swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum sp.). But you can also find some ornamental plants that have been cultivated for ages, such as goutweed (Aegopodium. podagraria) and the glandular impatiens (Impatiens glandulifera). And as you know, I would also personally add the giant butterbur (Petasites japonicus) to the list of pests.

While some might think that the future is bleak for gardeners, I see instead great opportunities to garden differently and slowly modify our gardens, its look and its composition to be more in tune with what is in front of us.