Desperate for affection from the sun, Ontarians are moving into the garden to touch, tend and make the most of our a short but sweet little spring.

Swelling buds, soft winds and the damp, dark earth inspire. Spring is a process of the inspiring alchemy, of new life from death!

As someone who gardens for a living, I’ve been thinking about what it means to ‘garden,’, and how local greenspaces are changing. We are moving from seeing the natural world as something beyond us to understanding we hold a position in an ecosystem.

Gardeners are letting go of the ‘control’ of plants and growth. Movements focused on “rewilding”, re- naturalizing the landscape.

Native plants —– plants growing here before European settlers arrived — have co- evolved with insects and wildlife that depend on only them for food, shelter and habitat. The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), for example, depends entirely on milkweed (Asclepias spp.) for its survival. Bumblebees, infected with an intestinal parasite, will seek out the native white turtlehead (Chelone glabra, pictured onplants.ca), whose flower contains a chemical that heals it.

I had never heard of this elegant plant until recently and after learning this immediately added this plant to my garden.

The relationship between native plants and insects is fascinating and complex. Most plant-eating insects are ‘specialists’, they depend on native plants for survival. Right now, birds are looking for insects for their new babies. One black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) nest of chicks in spring consumes as many as 9,000 caterpillars over a couple of weeks to feed their young, all from a 50-yard radius. An entire ecosystem supports that nest.

Native plants feed and shelter wildlife, support biodiversity, are highly resilient and mitigate soil and shoreline erosion. They’re also beautiful and attract beauty to them. As the naturalist John Muir said: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast, by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.” Our gardens extend who we are. As their caretakers, we have an opportunity to maintain the integrity of Muir’s ‘thousand invisible cords’ to encourage the entire ecosystem with our gardens. Some wildness, insects and some chewed leaves are good signs your garden is connected to the ecosystem.

This year I encourage us all to connect with our interconnectedness, get a little more creative and curious about our relationship to our garden and the lives it engenders.