Gardens (and gardeners) in the northeast might need a rest come August. I do, anyway. Much of the garden, especially the spring/early summer perennials, have lost their vigor, some having been cut back for a September rebloom. The ephemerals have altogether disappeared as they must, and the gardener is himself dissipated by heat and humidity. A few of the late summer perennials – those that are most at home on the prairie – are coming into their own but they are limited in my garden, decidedly not a prairie. Retreat is my solution: full abandonment. Wonderful Jenny Weber, my loyal and all-knowing assistant in the garden, takes over fully, freeing me from care or worry (unless a rare hurricane lurks or, as yesterday, an SOS text comes: the disgusting dogwood sawfly larvae, a caterpillar-like munching machine, by the hundreds are devouring the Cornus sericea…what to do?). The north woods of Michigan (upper part of lower peninsula) offer many opposites to the banana belt of the Connecticut shoreline: cool nights/warm days, less humidity, and… most compellingly, a forest of white pines, once the largest such stand in the world before mid-nineteenth century lumbermen discovered them, decimated them, and moved on to the Pacific northwest. During their generation-long reign, these lumbermen discovered a large crystal-clear spring-fed sandy-bottomed lake with adjacent acreage that was deemed too magnificent to cut. So, the next summer (1876), four of these men (one, my wife’s forbearer) from boomtown Saginaw brought their families to camp in the forest, swim in the lake, and enjoy the brief north Michigan summer. Thus, was formed Lakeside Camp. Their descendants, six generations later, do the same to this day, however, trading the original tents for commodious cottages and the communal dining tent for a century-old Dining Hall where three meals a day are served to us “campers.” Canoes and sailboats were gradually replaced by woody inboard speedboats (Chris-Crafts were made near Detroit) which are now gradually being replaced (sadly) by jet-skis and pontoon boats. “The Caribbean of the North” is how many describe Higgins Lake, whose azure waters are lined with pines, not palms. 

Enough. Back to our theme of forests vs. gardens, the subject of my musings these days as I take long walks in these woods. A garden, of course, is no more “natural” than a house, both being human-made contraptions.  Houses, made of inert materials, remain static (we hope) whereas gardens change daily and use natural, living elements. We manipulate nature to make gardens in all manner of ways and have since the Persians and Egytpians created the first ones. The forests are what we cleared (manipulated) to grow crops and eventually…to make gardens. Surely, that act of clearing was not proto-gardening. But what of the charming century-old path I use to navigate through the forest daily along the shoreline of Higgins Lake? A conscious manipulation of nature – but surely not an act of gardening, yes? The steps of railroad ties I laid down twenty-five years ago through the forest to the beach… a garden element? Maybe… Raking the daily forest debris from around the firepit, keeping nature at bay, and allowing the moss patch to proliferate…surely this is a nascent gardening impulse. This continuum can go on and on…until we have a bona fide, recognizable ornamental garden. These opposites – the well-tended garden and the virgin forest – are part of an interconnected whole that we gardeners (at least this one) may overlook. The implications are profound.

Our neighboring camp, Cottage Grove, founded only a few years after Lakeside and with many interlocking families, has decided to “manage” their significant forest acreage. Felling about 20% of all trees over nearly 500 acres, both coniferous and deciduous, the logs are left in place to rot among the bracken and lowboy blueberry undergrowth. It leaves a visual mess initially, but they are working with “Michigan’s top forestry expert” to create a healthier forest. With more light falling on the remaining trees, those saved will certainly continue to thrive. Recently, about 50 of us campers answered the alarm about a missing dog (still dangerously tethered to his leash, chasing a deer) and, as a result, we saw this managed forest “up close and personal” when, spread out in a long line on 50’ centers, we marched in a long parallel line through this thicket, hopping over the newly cut logs, as necessary. (The dog, by the way, was found safe but scared). However, is this human manipulation of the forest the right way to deal with this little bit of second growth forest? (Remember: the great majority of the majestic white pines – Pinus strobus – were cleared in the lumbering bonanza of the mid-late 19^th century.) Is this a better approach than simply allowing nature to take its own course and, over the centuries ahead, to grow back to the density of what Alexis de Tocqueville was so advised against attempting to penetrate in 1830 in his determination to see the American wilderness firsthand and reach Saginaw on horseback?

All this led me to ponder, as I walk through the forest (almost) primeval the stories within the novel The Overstory by Richard Powers and the interconnectedness of trees – and with us. It also made me think about a recent essay by Peter Dale in Hortus, the English quarterly literary garden journal, opining on sound in the garden: “It follows that different trees sing at different pitches and – broadly – that that pitch rises and falls according to how open or closed the texture of the tree may be. The denser the texture of the leaves and branches, the higher the pitch.” Count me as interested… but hard of hearing, at least so far. And all this brings me back to the riveting exhibition and series of programs, “Power of Trees,” currently at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, organized by Adrian Benepe and his enlightened team at BBG. From their website: “Trees are at the center of our ecosystem and help safeguard us from the effects of climate change, but those same effects put them at risk. What can people do to protect the trees that protect us?”

Forests and gardens occupy different positions on the same ecological spectrum, mediated only by the degree of our human interventions.