A trip to the Texas Hill Country, the LBJ Presidential Library, Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and an election brought me home to an unexpectedly changing landscape here in the Berkshires, where more than a thousand acres of woodland hills were devasted by a wildfire. The more I thought about these seemingly unrelated things, the more they felt connected, as they all involved the idea of succession, and the fears and hopes it inspires. The Wildflower Center, created by the former First Lady, is centered around the glory of our native landscape, and reflects Lady Bird’s foresight in preserving and seeing the beauty of native plants.
Inspired by Texas bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and an array of sages that do well in the arid Hill Country, Lady Bird worked to restore landscapes alongside highways across the nation, and her legacy has only been burnished by the passing years, as gardeners embrace the beauty and ecological value of these plants. But as we toured the center and visited some of the ecologically planted areas of the property (and coveted a few nonhardy plants for containers back home), I saw something else—many of these prairie landscapes were dependent on destruction and wildfire in order to maintain the ecosystem that they inhabited. Throughout the property, signs stated when a landscape might be burned (or mown) and how that impacted what came up in the years to come.
There was a starkness and a beauty to these fields, even late in the season. I thought little of it as it related to home —I was not planning on burning my back field anytime soon—but was intrigued that the timing of such fires impacted the succeeding landscape. Winter burns tended to favor grasses, fall burns favor a broad array of wildflowers as the landscape regenerates, and summer burns often effectively help remove invasives. In such a world, woodlands—and meadows—come and go in the landscape, often taking generations to develop, only to burn and begin the cycle again. And both the flora and the fauna that inhabit them are accordingly in flux. Each of these landscapes, marked by a sign stating in which season it was burned, was unique and, despite the seeming devastation of the fire, came to support a community of animals and plants in the years to come.
I could not resist thinking of the election and the concerns of many friends about the change of leadership in our country. People’s concerns about changing administrations and policies, how they would impact the world that we knew, and how some of the programs of the past might disappear or be set aflame. I thought of this as we headed next to the LBJ library at the University of Texas, where the legacy of Lady Bird’s husband and the Great Society was celebrated. From Voting Rights to Medicare, LBJ created programs that are engrained in how we see ourselves as Americans—and there are concerns about what the next administration will do with such programs and laws. Outside of the library was a planting, inspired by Lady Bird’s love of the Texas landscape, that countered the landscape we saw at the Wildflower Center. Many of the same plants on display at the Wildflower Center sat carefully planted in a bed set into the travertine plaza designed by Gordon Bunshaft. The plants had a beauty and majesty that are the result of careful manicuring and care; the virtues of each plant in the composition were clear, but somehow they still sat in isolation. I felt like this mimicked our hopes for the legislation that LBJ managed to pass into law, hoping to protect us from poverty, inequality, and sickness. It matched my own belief that such basic rights and tenets will always be upheld, a concept dashed by the election cycle that left many feeling burned. But, in reality, the law is always in flux, at risk, and occasionally destroyed with the hope of later regeneration.
When I arrived home and the fires began, I despaired at the devastation and loss, grateful that homes and people were not hurt, but saddened by the loss of precious habitat that had felt familiar and permanent. As time passes, I know that the landscape will move forward. Wildflowers and native grasses sitting in the seedbank that sat beneath these trees will germinate, flower and set seed again after ages of sitting dormant. Fire-resistant pines and oaks will resprout from deep-set roots that will push forward new growth. And for some species, such as Jack pines, the fires will trigger the germination of their seeds which are dormant until exposed to fire. And as hard as it may seem, we too will move forward along with it. While we feel the burn of these moments, we must have faith in our ability to regenerate along with the world around us, and care about and fight for what we want the future to hold.
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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.
