JoJo -- Plant habitat selection

Blueberries!

Finding myself with a patio full of plants, I set about the process of determining where each plant should go.

The first choice I made with my head. Spot and I planted the persimmon with the other fruit trees in a place that had the most room for tree roots and access to sun.

The second, third, and fourth choices I made with a combination of mental planning -using what I knew about what conditions the plants liked -, and aesthetic planning - according to what I thought would look attractive as the plants flourished. We planted the serciveberry on the hill below the alder to create an understory that framed the stream, and we planted the gooseberry just below and in front of the serviceberry.

The next choice I made by closing my eyes and asking the plant to guide me where it wanted to go. With this method, the red-flowering currant was placed by the fence in the space that I had originally chosen for the elusive pacific wax myrtle.
I also did this for the Vine Maple and the Hemlock, which we haven't planted yet. I may ruminate some more on the placements for these.


Red flowering current

The last 3 plants - trillium, wild ginger, and wood sorrel - I did by intuition. I had originally selected a location based on soil and light requirements, but it didn't feel good. It felt like I was imposing my opinion on the yard. Not knowing what else to do, I stood there just staring at the ground for a while. After a while, the sense of trying to control the yard disappated. I started to get the feeling that the wild ginger wouldn't survive where I wanted to put it and a new location appeared. I don't know if it was a good choice at all. Though the placement met the soil and light conditions for the ginger, it's not a place that I would have chosen for mental or aesthic reasons or for easy access. Something just told me that it would be happy there, so that's where I put it.
There was a little more thought put in to the trillium and wood sorrel, but not much.

I'm not sure which method I prefer for choosing a location for a plant. The last method, intuition, felt the most solid. The sense of knowing that the ginger wouldn't survive where I wanted to put it was particularly strong, whereas asking the plant where it wanted to go felt less inclusive of the needs of the whole system. It's possible, though that I just wasn't aware of the system's input in to the sensory reply.

Maybe each method was appropriate for the type of plant that I was choosing for. I'll experiment more with this in the future and see what happens.

In the ground so far this year:

1 persimmon tree
1 serviceberry tree
1 red-osier dogwood
2 gooseberry
1 red flowering currant
2 wild ginger
2 western trillium
2 wood sorrel
Lots of crimson clover
Maybe some buckwheat? (not sure if Moe got around to this).


Crimson clover