Inside this edition of Natural Garden News

• A step into the wild
• If you want a Grounded garden…
• The gentle rebellion at the heart of natural gardens
• How to deter geese at your cottage
• Look at one of our designs!
• New here? Start with these articles
• Today’s recommended reading
• Today’s VIP (Very Important Plant)
• One of our designs, two months on
• Happy Monarchs at Lucas House

I hope you enjoy the newsletter! If you have any questions or feedback, please reply to this email.

Simon Payn
Grounded
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Email: hello@groundedgardens.ca​
Web: groundedgardens.ca​

A step into the wild

The Mountain Mint is blooming at Lucas House. And that means the garden is in top gear.

I don’t mean because of the flowers – although their misty blooms have charm – but because this plant attracts pollinators galore.

For the most part, however, you don’t see them until you step into the garden. When you do, grasshoppers, crickets, moths, butterflies and beetles jump out of the jungle.

Too often, we see our landscapes from the outside. We hurry between car and house and admire the flowers. We seldom step into the middle of it and engage with the plants at a deeper level.

I encourage you to take a walk on the wild side this month. Go right into the middle of your landscaping and see what’s there. You’ll discover a whole richness of life you never knew existed.

Simon
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I have a question for you!

I am considering adding a maintenance/management component to Grounded. As well as helping to tend landscapes I have installed, I might tend existing landscapes using natural strategies.

For example, maybe you get your lawn mowed but you would be interested in exploring a slow transition to a more natural way of managing your land.

If you have thoughts about this, I’d love to hear from you! Please reply to this message with anything you think I might be interested in hearing. Thank you.

S

If you want a Grounded garden… I’m currently booking garden and shoreline installs for 2025 and 2026. My pipeline is filling up, but I still have some space for fall installations and for spring 2026. We start by having a quick call to see if it makes sense for me to come look at your site. ​ Learn more To see some of my recent work, please see this page.

The gentle rebellion at the heart of natural gardens How “orderly frames” help us engage with the landscape and “messy middles” make it truly beautiful. Read more.​

How to deter geese at your cottage Native plants can be a useful tool if want to deter geese at your cottage. Here’s a comprehensive guide. Read more.​

Look at one of our designs!

We installed this garden on a septic bed just over a year ago… and it’s going gangbusters. The sunny site and loose soil helped it establish quickly.

As the years go on, the designed plants will take over, crowding out the weeds that are appearing.

The clients have done a fantastic job keeping weeds at bay and helping the landscape establish.

This is a multi-layered design, with Silverweed and Wild Strawberry among the groundcovers. Ohio Spiderwort has finished flowering now, but has some fantastic seed heads.

Narrowleaf Mountain Mint in the foreground (it’s deer resistant!) and Wild Bergamot in the background (deer don’t like its leaves, either.)

We sowed Plains Coreopsis as a colourful groundcover last year. This year they have reappeared thanks to last season’s plants spreading their seeds.

Wild Bergamot can be quite vigorous. Clumps of it are showing up where they should, according to the modular design of this site.

Butterfly Weed (a Milkweed) gives a zing of colour. The client already had some… we added more, planted away from the septic bed because of its deep roots.

New here? Start with these articles

Today’s recommended reading

Laying it on thick: Why American (and Canadian) gardens are full of mulch. And why plants are the best mulch there is. Amen to that! Read more.

Uh-oh… “Your garden is killing the Earth.” I wouldn’t put it so dramatically but, yeah, it’s better to garden for life instead. Read more.

Hot, innit? It’s been one of those summers: humid, hot but very little rain. If your plants are feeling the heat, check out this article. But note, for the most part, if you use native plants that are well suited to the conditions, they should be just fine once they’ve established. Read more.

Where’s the rain? Today’s eye-candy – a drought-resistant landscape in Ontario. Read more.​

Ticked off: More biodiversity in our yards = fewer ticks. And why the critters love our short lawns. Read more.

Soaking it up: More pictures (see a previous newsletter) of fantastic roadside bioswales. Read more.

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Today’s VIP (Very Important Plant)

I’ve put together some information “cards” about native plants. These are plants I use in my designs.

Today let’s look at Cyperus Sedge

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One of our designs, two months on

Here are some pictures of a septic bed planting we installed in early June.

We try to include what are known as ruderal plants – these are plants that live fast and die young… but they flower in the first year.

It’s another example of clients doing a fantastic job keeping weeds at bay so the rest of the planting can establish.

I expect this planting will look quite different next year… full of the plants we want to see and fewer weeds, which equals less maintenance.

Black-eyed Susans are flowering well. As ruderal plants, they live fast and die young (and then send out lots of seeds.)

Along with the Susans is a matrix of Rosy Sedge. You can also see Pearly Everlasting, Narrowleaf Mountain Mint and Wild Bergamot in this picture. Some of the Pearlys are flowering; the rest will flower next year.

Happy Monarchs at Lucas House

Thank you for reading!

Simon

Email: hello@groundedgardens.ca​
Web: groundedgardens.ca​
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