Field

This field, on a sandy hillside outside Oxford, Mississippi, spills down from the front of a new house recently built. A traditional American landscaping approach would be to bring in soil and lay sod to create a lawn. The sandy soil would require tremendous quantities of water to keep the lawn alive. Fortunately, this has not happened.

The field is beautiful in itself, and an ornament to the house. The question is, can the field be maintained  always to look this good?

The plant community we see here is in part a result of disturbance during construction of the new house. Some of the most significant and beautiful plants are ruderals, pioneer plants that quickly come in to  colonize open ground, and thus likely to be replaced by other species over time in a natural process of succession.

The first and second photos show feathery dogfennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) in bloom with broomsedge (Andropogon virginicus), the predominating plant in the field. Broomsedge is a keeper and is likely to stay a long time. It's a beautiful field grass, especially in the fall and winter, common throughout the area, well adapted to local conditions. But the dogfennel is a pioneer plant, and is likely to disappear as other, more stable plant communities establish over time. Though it's considered a highly undesirable weed by agriculturalists, it's a striking perennial, with delicate, feathery foliage that captures and reflects light and a flexible structure that allows it to move about in the breeze. It's an animating plant, taller than broomsedge, providing vertical accent, aesthetic interest, and tactile pleasure. If touched, it has a distinctive, highly aromatic odor I find pleasant.

It may be possible to manage the field to retain its ruderal species but that would probably require repeated disturbance of the land surface, perhaps by rough mowing in the late winter, just enough to break the ground surface and expose seeding area for the ruderals to take hold anew each year.

Another option might be to let plant succession occur with minimal intervention (mowing once a year to clear the field for regrowth and prevent its reversion to forest). A third option might be strategic planting of cultivated species appropriate to the environment, actually managing the landscape, almost like a garden.

A fountain of dogfennel laden with seed.

Dogfennel and wooly croton contrast with the thin verticals of broomsedge.

Above, in front of the dogfennel, is another ruderal that adds textural and color interest. Known by various common names such as hogweed and wooly croton (Croton capitatus), this plant is an annual with grayish foliage and distinctive gray flowers and seed heads. Here it appears to be growing in linear patches that follow the wheel tracks of heavy equipment.

Below you can see a "river" of wolly croton running up the hill from the road.

A river of wooly croton running up the hill.

Here, a close up of wooly croton. It's a very attractive plant though not likely to be used widely if it has to be seeded every year. Some experimentation may be in order.

If this were my field, I'd roughly mow it once in the spring, making sure to break up the soil surface where I want the ruderals to reproduce, and watch what develops over the next two or three years. On second thought, I recommend that to the owners. I'd probably start by adding one or two large, distinctive perennials right away.

That's just my inclination.