What direction is your land going in?

Before you decide what your cottage landscape should become, it helps to notice what it’s already becoming.

Most people skip this step. When they buy a cottage, they come with plans, ideas, improvements, and fixes. They see what’s wrong and what’s missing, looking through the lens of what they want.
But the land isn’t a blank canvas. It’s got things going on already.

Ecologists call this succession. Left alone, land moves from bare to covered, from simple to complex, and from open to closed. Disturbed ground gets colonized by fast-growing pioneers. These give way to shrubs and raspberry thickets. Then shrubs give way to trees, especially around here where the land just wants to become forest.

This process might take years, even decades, but it is still a process.

You can see it happening everywhere. Along hydro cuts shrubs get bigger and then trees grow taller before they have to be cut down again. There’s the maple seedlings that keep appearing on your septic. Even the yarrow that pops up on stony, sandy soil left over from construction.

None of this is random; it’s just what nature does. And all of these things are signals about where the land wants to go. That maple seedling is the first sign of a forest.

Reading this direction is important because it tells you what the land will support without having to fight it.

Let’s start with water. Where does it pool after rain, and where does it quickly drain away? The plants that thrive in each zone are different, and if you decide to fight that, you’re going to be spending money and time. A spot that stays wet wants wetland species, so if you try to put dry-loving species there, you’re going to have to water them.

Let’s look at light. That south-facing slope and the shaded north side of the cottage are completely different conditions. What’s already growing there will tell you about what belongs there, and it will help you decide what to put there next.

And then there’s the soil. Here in the Highlands, our soils are generally thin, sandy, and a little acidic. Plants adapted to these conditions have spent millennia figuring out how to thrive here. Plants from richer soils will struggle unless you amend year after year after year.

Pay attention to the areas around the cottage you’ve ignored. What shows up when you’re not fighting? That’s the land revealing its direction.

This is why ecological landscaping is different. Instead of imposing a vision and forcing the land to comply, you’re joining something already underway. You choose plants that fit the conditions you actually have. That volunteer plant that shows up isn’t necessarily a weed; it’s just the land telling you what’s next.

This is the difference between imposition and alignment. In both cases you’re planting and tending to what’s there, but imposition fights the site’s tendencies, while alignment works with them.

Here’s how to tell what you’re doing: If after the first year, the plants you add require constant intervention to survive—you have to keep watering them and enhancing the soil—you’re probably imposing. If after a year or two they settle in and start doing their own thing, you’re probably aligned.

Guesswork dressed up as design

This doesn’t mean you just have to go along with what the land wants. You can guide, steer, accelerate, or slow it down. You can choose which native species you like, and you can keep places open instead of letting them becoming forests.

Before you make these choices, it’s a good idea to start with seeing what’s there.

Everything else is guesswork dressed up as design.

Your cottage landscape is going somewhere. The question is whether you notice where it’s going and whether you work with that direction or against it.