Good things come in threes, and not just in the Jekyllian sense of planting drifts of perennials in threes, fives, and sevens. This week gave me three auspicious events: a chance to visit my newly vaccinated mother in Chicago; a trip to pick up our family’s newest member, an eight-week-old, yet-to-be-named beagle; and a visit to Aullwood, a beloved landscape outside of Dayton, Ohio.
The first two involved the usual amount of planning for such activities, but the visit to Aullwood came about simply because it was on my route, and I love visiting this garden at any time of year. I worked on an assessment of the landscape many years ago and its story inspired me greatly at the time. The property, now a part of the Audubon Society and the Dayton, Ohio, parks system, was the home of John and Marie Aull.
Marie Aull is considered one of the godmothers of the environmental movement in southwestern Ohio. She studied botany and had a deep love of the natural world, and in 1923, she and her husband John built an Arts and Crafts home along the Wile Creek with the idea that their home would provide a habitat for local flora and fauna. At various times of year, native redbuds, Virginia bluebells, and trillium brighten the woods, and a variety of regionally native meadow plants fill the meadow, along with the songbirds that they attract. However, at the time of my visit, early in the season as it was, the plants coming forth were drifts of daffodils, squill, hellebores, and winter aconite – none of which are native to the Americas. This naturalistic woodland garden told me a story of gardening in Marie’s time. Like so many battles of our time, the present and the past are in seeming conflict with one another in this garden.
Marie mixed native and non-native plants in her garden. Stands of winter aconite, native to Europe, and vinca cover the woodland floor of Aullwood, even up to the base of the pre-Columbian, twin-trunked native sycamore that sits at its center. Marie placed these plants in her garden along with hellebores and daffodils, and over the years, they have naturalized and made their way forward in the garden, a fact that some modern ecologists might find reprehensible. Her intention was to foster native plants and she is celebrated for using them in a time when most gardeners focused solely on plants from abroad. While the inclusion of such plants separated her from many of her peers, her inclusion of nonnative lilacs and boxwoods was in keeping with the garden traditions of her day. The end result is not what we today would consider an ecological restoration, but an ever-changing landscape where natives and nonnatives battle it out. I have loved this garden most when my visits coincided with the predomination of local trillium and bluebells, or when native redbuds or bee balm were in flower and supporting local fauna. But during this recent visit, I found myself seeing the garden through the lens of history.
The website maintained by the Friends of Aullwood includes a statement that condemns John James Audubon for his history “as slaveholder and trader and promoter of a white supremacist culture. The many positive contributions of John James Audubon to the world of birds and conservation in general cannot erase these inhumane actions and beliefs. This shall forever remain a piece of his legacy, not to be forgotten.” As I walked through this powerful landscape, I began to think about legacy and how we judge the past.
It occurred to me that this organization could some day come to condemn Marie Aull for her inclusion of nonnatives in the landscape. I hope, though, that they judge her legacy for her intentions, and not against our present-day vision of ecological purity. Her inclusion of natives in her garden made her an outlier in her time; she helped pave the path forward to our present-day appreciation of native plants. Her intentions, which were also reflected in the Friends’ statement about the legacy of John Audubon, reflected a goal that “positive growth and impact come from an ever-evolving awareness of the world … [and that] … this includes understanding the past and present and utilizing that knowledge to help form a better future.” This is a goal that perhaps could be embraced by all gardeners.
I am certain my highly adaptable and newly vaccinated mother and Marie Aull would agree on this point, and, as I drive on to pick up our family’s newest member, I am hopeful for a better future for us all.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
