As we come to the end of the growing season, and sit with what we have done and have not done this summer, it’s a good time to reflect upon how we approach the landscapes we care for: As Drudgery, or as Connection?

In my profession as a garden writer, I meet and talk to a lot of people who work as groundskeepers. Except I’m not talking about paid professionals. These are normal everyday people who feel forced to maintain a ‘yard’ with an uninspiring selection of basic foundation shrubs, a large lawn, and hundreds of linear feet of beds, paths and driveway to edge.

And they hate their job.

I hate it for them. But what I hate most is that they confuse this excruciatingly tedious work with what others rightly call "gardening." As a gardener, I experience my share of tedious jobs, certainly; but as such work is integral to the overall stewardship of the landscape, the sting of that tedium is lessened by its value. Thus, mowing is not mowing – it is a framing of paintings I have created with plants. Clearing invasive brambles is not clearing invasive brambles, it is thoughtful editing to allow desired saplings and spring ephemerals to carpet the woodland.

When you fail to cultivate connection to your outside space, you cheat yourself of experiencing a profound sense of purpose as steward and caretaker for your little part of planet Earth. You become enslaved to something that doesn’t excite you.

Worse, it’s something that never ever stops growing – yet never grows into something remotely inspiring. A landscape that doesn’t pay you, doesn’t look any different from year to year, and continues to take a toll on your back, your hands, and your life energy.

To dominate that landscape and make the hated job easier, unwilling groundskeepers tend to rely on pesticides and herbicides as weapons, not tools, and are likely to spend thousands on anything and everything that promises relief from never-ending toil. The herbicides end up in the Bay, the newest effort-saver ends up in the landfill, and they still end up staring at the same scene next year.

There is another way. Many years ago I attended The Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council’s annual Turning a New Leaf Conference and had the pleasure of hearing Rick Darke, keynote speaker at the conference and author of numerous books on the aesthetics of living landscapes. He urged the audience to think in terms of ‘creative dynamic stewardship’ – challenging home owners to re-vitalize their landscapes by visualizing them as a haven for wildlife and the natural processes of decay and regeneration.

"When we see something is beautiful," he pointed out, "we are more likely to conserve it."

I would add, we are also more likely to become connected to it. His rephrasing of maintenance as stewardship has since had a profound effect on how I view my own landscape, and urge others to view theirs.

But how do we make that shift? Perhaps it is as simple as surveying our property while pondering the words of Alexander Pope:

"Consult the genius of the place in all…"
"To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;
In all, let Nature never be forgot..."

Here on my own property, I am exquisitely aware that if I could do little but edit the woodland, mow around stately trees and shapely ones, keep the invasive brambles at bay and set up bird feeding stations and toad houses, I would have a landscape that invigorated and inspired me. The ornamental and vegetable gardens I obsessively tend are just gravy.

It feels good to be a caretaker of that land, just as it felt good twenty years ago to open the windows on a busy city street and tend to humble window boxes where springtime songbirds would make nests. Whatever your landscape happens to be – patio or potager – stewardship of that landscape gives you purpose. It provides something constant within the fleeting gimmicks of a modern life. Thanksgiving is every day.

If your landscape isn’t flipping that switch inside of you, it’s time to change it.

This may be as easy as adding native berrying shrubs like winterberry or beautyberry, planting a small dogwood or stewartia outside a kitchen window for nesting sites, or working with groundcovers and grasses to cut down on weeding. Planting living landscapes to which you feel united – landscapes that make you smile each time you tend them.

As Beth Ginter, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Landscape Council said that day, "It’s making maintenance sexy again." After all, what’s sexier than an intimate connection?