The Key To Diversity: Opposites Attract

Formal Gardens

Pollinator Garden

Hornbeam Allee Trimming

Potager Garden

Compost at the end

Mezzacello When Winter Has Come

The most important aspect of any ecosystem is diversity. It’s Not convenience, or beauty, or even difference; it’s systems that blend gradually and whose existence makes another system thrive until that system is ready to return the favor in 18 months. This 18 months — spring, summer, winter, fall, spring to summer stretch is the key.

Why 18 Months?

Mezzacello is built around an 18 month growing season on purpose. 18 moths is an important marker. It’s two summers and one winter, and to paraphrase George R. R. Martin, “Winter is ALWAYS coming.”

A lot happens in nature over those 18 months. The land and biomass dies back and freezes and two springs and summers pass. This allows that water to percolate and adapt — IF the ecosystem is designed to keep and use it wisely. That is where diversity matters. It ensures that every organism, insect, animal, plant, and ecology has a role to play.

What Diversity Looks Like

In The gallery above you can see the late summer early fall images of Mezzacello and the East facing formal gardens. They were designed for beauty, peace, diversity, ease of upkeep, interest to pollinators and easily gathered biomass. At the end of their season they are cut, gathered, processed, composted, treated, amended and returned. In that process they grow soil, microclimates, feed microbiomes and create soil.

The bio products are returned to those gardens from the nitrogen setting parts of Mezzacello to the west. There is precious little that is brought in from the outside. The sun, the soil, the microclimates and microbiomes as well as the diverse enclosed ecosystems do all of the heavy lifting here. As it should be.

The Human Role in Diversity

The humans are just traffic police and guides. Yes, we produce biomass and resources for this garden. But it is the billions of other life forms that turn our systems into ecosystems. One of the side benefits of the formal gardens is peace. Beauty is almost always peaceful. That is important in life. If you find beauty in things that lack grace, charm and kindness.

This diversity has not evolved for convenience, but for sustainability. Sustainability is the driving force of nature. There is most definitely a disturbance in the force — Life is never really easy. Diversity is how nature evens the playing field, not convenience.

There will be work, dedication, and sacrifice. But there should always be grace and beauty and if you are you are doing it right; there should be Pride.