Blogger Allen Bush has just published a fascinating exchange (“Time to ‘Rethink Pretty’ in the Garden”) he had with Benjamin Vogt, prairie garden designer, activist, and author of the book “A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future.” That book is now on my reading list!

I have been shrinking the size of my already small front and back lawns steadily over the years, although I’ve been doing that by expanding traditional flowerbeds, adding wildflowers, and creating small groves of understory trees that include native dogwoods. I do still love and plant non-natives, but I try also to plant consciously to attract and support birds, pollinators, butterflies. I inherited a garden full of old, well-established azaleas and have left them, but have started underplanting them with plants like pink evening primrose and native ferns, and adding native azaleas to their numbers. I am fortunate in that I live in an historic neighborhood where every house and garden looks different, and creative gardens are prized. I can think of more than one home where Benjamin’s prairie garden would fit right in!

I live in a Southeastern state that is not particularly progressive, but one thing it does very well is to use roadside plantings to cultivate meadow-like swathes of native wildflowers. I appreciate both the beauty and the effort.