In the past week, as my defenses went up under the assault of the news, it seemed like my instinct should have been to build walls, but a drive to Rhinebeck this morning for a meeting with the Partners for Climate Action of the Hudson Valley had me thinking the opposite. There I was, heading to a meeting about creating habitat for endangered pollinator species, and I started to consider how we can manage our own habitat to make us feel connected and part of a community. It is time to take walls and fences down—or to at least consider why we are building them.
In a month where talks of border crossings and building walls seem to be taking center stage, the endless lengths of stockade fences running along the roadside had me questioning what we think we are protecting with these frontline walls that merely separate a property from a road. Since they do not enclose a property, they are not containing our children or protecting our pets; they are simply saying stay away, this land is mine. Some fences, such as standard stockade forms, give this message more than other forms, while a split rail fence can almost be inviting, defining someone’s home without closing it off visually from the rest of the world.
Each form sends its own message to the public passing by. Along one road, I came across a house that made three separate statements about its occupants’ connection to the world. A low stone wall artfully framed the view of the mountains beyond. This was followed by an impenetrable 6-foot-tall cedar fence that blocked a view of the valley below. Then a third area was simply left open to the mountains beyond the property. Given that the house was set back on the property, it was hard for me to understand what motivated the owner to block the view of the mountains from a stretch of the road. On the other hand, the low drylaid stone wall contained the space while its cracks and crevices provided habitat for a variety of creatures.
As I drove further, I contemplated what makes us feel the need to create barriers. Is it fear, anxiety, or a desire for privacy—or did some fences have a purpose? The fences on horse farms in Dutchess County made sense to me. They contained animals but also had a transparency, somehow imposing order on the landscape without feeling unwelcoming. And I could understand the desire for houses close to the road to erect some barrier against traffic, but wouldn’t the owners of these homes prefer looking at a beautiful hedge rather than feeling contained by a stockade fence? Of course, there were many hedges along the way as well, often of a single variety of evergreen planted in large numbers. These seemed preferable to the fences, but they also conveyed a sense of containment from the inside that was, on some level, more imprisoning than comforting.
I continued to ponder what drove this desire for separation as I headed to the meeting and listened to the morning news. The meeting was about pollinators, and the creation of habitat that supports them. As we talked about the need for diverse plantings that shelter native insects and other pollinators, I was struck by the thought that old-fashioned hedgerows that once surrounded farms were the perfect way to define our space without closing us off from the rest of the world. Their penetrability allowed local fauna to traverse the landscape. Some of these hedgerows provided corridors of food and habitat for local bird and insect populations. Such plantings allowed for both openness and enclosure, defining boundaries and property while also sharing their bounty with the natural world around them.
In a moment where many of us may feel powerless to impact the world in the face of governmental action, this felt like one barrier we could all act on and create a more open and supportive community 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.
