Climate change is forcing us to rethink our approach to gardening, our relationship with plants and how we belong to place. Our weather is becoming more variable with wetter springs, drier summers, colder winters and more extreme storms. Let’s adapt our gardening style for a changing climate, drawing inspiration from local landscapes and indigenous flora to create sustainable, resilient gardens that welcome wild beings into our cities.

1. break up with your lawn, invite in the wild

2. pesticides
emissions
of mowers,
blowers,
trimmers
water
waste &
runoff
fertilizer
polluting
waterways
noise
pollution
biodiversity
loss
Our century long quest for the perfect lawn
contributes to our climate emergency

4. Where in the world am I?

5. Wildscaping isn’t about what you “should” do (curb
appeal)

6. Wildscaping is about what brings you & your land
alive (soul appeal)

7. Wildscaping taps into self-renewing processes
that create the conditions for the flourishing of life

8. A traditional “lawn” is really about signs and symbols and status. What
we’re really talking about is whether you admit life onto your property or
decide to kill it off… Somehow the whole world is now more alive than
before, which is, to be honest, also painful, because suddenly I’m aware
that even yards that seem green and healthy are actually sterile spaces.
~Jeff VanderMeer
& habit

10. I see rewilding not as a new fad or the latest environmental thing, but
the next step for sustainability and a logical final step in making
American and Texas cities unique from our European & colonial
predecessors. Rewilding offers an opportunity for Dallas to become
one of the world's largest projects for habitat reconstruction.
~Kevin Sloan, Landscape Architect

11. Wildscaping is “gardening with wild species in a
natural mosaic”

12. Wildscaping allows the land to speak, reflecting
the spirit of place
Rotten grass becomes fireflies 腐草為螢

13. Wildscaping reduce emissions, stores carbon &
increases biodiversity

14. Wildscaping helps us heal our relationship with the
living beings with whom we share our city

15. Wildscaping promotes the well being of current &
future generations
84%

16. Wildscaping provides homes for endangered
beings
78%

20. Wildscaping offers local resilience in the face of
climate change

21. What can we do?

22. wildscape our homes

23. wildscape our lawns

24. wildscape our boulevards

25. wildscape our roadside plantings

26. wildscape our farms

27. wildscape our food

28. wildscape our cities

29. wildscape our apartments

30. wildscape our businesses

31. wildscape our campuses

32. wildscape our balconies

34. In Kingston, citizens are beginning to wildscape
their yards

41. Chickens doing final preparation of a front yard
almost ready for meadowscaping

42. What am I doing?

43. I live in a typical suburban neighbourhood

44. My home was originally landscaped with asphalt,
grass & cookie cutter foundation plantings

45. I’ve been wildscaping (with a little help from
some friends!)

46. Now I share my home with a forest being

47. Wildscaping allow the land to express herself
Walnut hickory oak maple forest this being is

48. As an activist, I’m working to change how our city
defines proper landscaping

49. As a master gardener, I’m helping citizens wildscape

50. As an advocate for delicious, nutritious local food I’m
helping create food forests in parks

51. As a citizen scientist, I’m building a relationship
with local plant communities

52. As a human grateful for all the gifts trees share
with us, I’m helping forest beings migrate
(Butternuts take 450 years to migrate 90 km)

53. becoming a wildscaper
begins with learning to see wild beings &
their many gifts

54. I’ve struggled with weedy patios and “rank” lawns for a few years but I now
see “tidy” gardens as they are for every other living species: desolate and
hostile, stripped of the natural abundance and vigour that our soils and
climate naturally serve up, even in the heart of a city.
~Patrick Barkham

55. The ash tree was a living thing, but the more I looked at it, the more I
saw it as a place, a habitat as well as an individual, bearing the traces of
other lives, and tracing its own life through them.
~Daisy Hildyard

56. Look at a seed. Perhaps an acorn. It has an entire oak tree enfolded
within it. This one seed can start a tree. Perhaps a whole forest.

57. Who is this water body, how does it provide for us, what do they need
from us?
~Great Lakes Commons

58. One way to stop seeing trees, or
rivers, or hills, only as “natural
resources” is to class them as
fellow beings—kinfolk. I guess
I’m trying to subjectify the
universe, because look where
objectifying it has gotten us. To
subjectify is not necessarily to
co-opt, colonize, exploit. Rather,
it may involve a great reach
outward of the mind and
imagination.
~Ursula K. Le Guin

59. At Village Farm we’ve returned to agriculture’s old understanding and
view our farm as a living, breathing ecosystem.
~Rebecca Hosking, Village Farm

60. Envision a city whose residents treasure their daily encounters
with the remarkable and inspiring work of nature, and the variety
of plants and animals who share this world.
~Toronto Biodiversity Series, 2011

61. Go to a nearby natural area where indigenous plants flourish in relationship with all the
non-human species proper to that place... Just sit, perhaps by a stream or pond, and look
at the lay of the land. Observe the shapes of the trees and how the ground layer plants
grow; listen to the birds, the water, and the breeze, letting the “thusness” flow into to your
awareness. Keep going to this place, regularly. Keep practicing. It’s as good a way as any
to begin learning where you really are.
~ Adrian Ayres Fisher

62. wildscapes to try

63. Foodscape

65. Atlanta is striving to grow healthy food within half a
mile of 85% of Atlanta residents by 2022

66. Forestscape

69. Paris is covering 50% of the city with porous, planted
areas, encouraging ‘citizen-gardeners’

70. Meadowscape

75. Rainscape: sink, slow, spread rainwater in the
landscape

76. Sedgescape

78. From the very beginning of the world, the other species
were a lifeboat for the people.
Now, we must be theirs.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer

79. Restoring habitat for insects like fireflies & native
pollinators who face extinction

83. This is ecological aesthetics: the ability to perceive beauty through sustained, embodied
relationship within a particular part of the community of life. The community includes
humans in our various modes of being within the biological network, as watchers,
hunters, loggers, farmers, eaters, story singers, and habitat for microbial killers and
mutualists alike. Ecological aesthetics is not a retreat into an imagined wilderness where
humans have no place but step toward belonging in all dimensions.”
~David Haskell, The Songs of Trees

84. grow wild
our gardens play a vital ecological role

85. Go slowly. Listen to the land.
It will tell you what to do.
~Indigenous elder, quoted by Robin Wall Kimmerer