First step is to stop mowing your lawn, or at least most of it, especially early in the season. Let the plants grow, see what comes up. You literally have an abundant landscape, you’re just not letting it grow. And let those “weeds” grow too. We want to learn from them as well.

Second step is to observe what grows. To begin relating with the plants and habitat. What niches arrive? Which plants are thriving, which are struggling? What’s the sequence of bloom times? What are the plants communicating about the conditions they’re growing in?  

Third step is to add and subtract. To actively steward. We are choosing to intervene with the landscape so as to guide it toward the conditioning which we seek. This can be as easy as scattering a handful of seeds. It can be purposely burying walnuts, hazelnuts and chestnuts, or serviceberries, hawthorns, and golden currants. It can be planting live cuttings of Willow, Cottonwood, and Dogwood in riparian meadows. It can sometimes be removing certain plants. It can be pruning to change the shape of certain plants. It can be adjusting the “architecture” of the “shelter”, i.e. moving rocks around, building pergolas or trellises, sheet mulching, etc.