When we moved here, there was a single mound of oregano growing by one of the drainpipes. The rest of the three acres had been mown to the teeth every week for about 20 years. It was practical for the elderly couple that had owned the place. They had also abutted the asphalt driveway across the whole front of the house. The kids loved it as a place to jaunt about in little vehicles or draw chalk islands, but I’m a gardener. So, I set to work as any new homeowner does making a house their home, making a piece of land into their very own landscape.

I grew up with gardens, the kind that have been strewn about the country by elders, like the ones who’d built our home, though decades earlier. They were gardens full of mature cherries, filberts, grapes, and raspberries. Food was plentiful in every corner of the yard. Each plant provided some other special wonder— leafy tunnels, strong branches for tree houses, spring blossoms that wove their way into our play. My own version of teenage rebellion had even included a small garden of my own, mostly strawberries.

Here we were with our new house, the proverbial blank slate. It was a terribly wet season, not at all ideal for dragging a tiller through clay soil. But little by little we began to sink the plants that had traveled with us into the mud. Family members mailed us plastic-wrapped perennials, like heirlooms. When we dined with friends, we came home with buckets of transplants, and we scattered the seeds.

At the same time, we began a process of benign neglect. We stopped mowing vast swaths of the hillside. We dug a post for a bluebird box facing the south, and we began to call that ground “the meadow.” It was full of surprises—black eyed Susan, mullein, and Queen Anne ’s lace. The grasses were many colors. Some mornings we could see the hollows where deer had bedded for the night. We could often shift the children’s attention with a simple exclamation that the turkeys were out back, and did they want to take a look? Yes.

In early summer of this year, my son and I clipped a room into the spaces near a stand of locust, to create a place to hide, a place of adventure. Just this week, I set the last stone into a path out front which has already become a restaurant for my daughter. It is a habitat for all of us.

Some of my favorite garden writers talk about the choices we make in relationship with our land. This year I have been planting berries. From the new blackcurrant shrub, I have eaten three precious berries, and now they are gone. Next year, there will be more, and the year after, even more. I have been thinking about the kind of generosity that plants will give for years to come. I have been imagining the people who, like me, stole a few moments from the daily chores to cut a stem and root it, to carry it to a destination. But I have also been thinking about the birds that brought the wine berries to our shady spot, and how the earth offers up so many delicious things that we aren’t expecting.

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