Wild Ones Capital Region NY offers tours of two Saratoga County gardens on Saturday, June 6. Learn more about Cybill C’s Mechanicville garden below and read about Nancy W’s “Mostly Native Plant Property” in Rexford here.
Register here to attend.
Cybill writes: My love of gardening didn’t begin in a traditional way with positive experiences. My earliest gardening memories are from my grandparents’ house, where I spent most of my childhood with my cousins and brother. My Poppy had a small, shaded garden where he grew tomatoes and peppers, ripening them on the porch windowsills and eating them with salt over the sink, much to my Babu’s frustration, as the tomatoes attracted groundhogs and raccoons. She preferred her flowers: poppies with their wild, fuzzy heads, marigolds from seeds passed down through her family, and geraniums. Babu even tried to spark my interest with a rock garden of Hens and Chicks, but chipmunks had other plans for it and munched it to nothing. At the time, I didn’t see these as inspiring moments. Gardening looked like frustration: failed plants, struggling with pests, constant disappointment. I didn’t think gardening was for me.
Everything changed when I moved to a barn apartment on a huge farm right before Covid. With the landlord’s permission to use some of the land, I built massive raised beds with fencing to keep out the sheep and chickens. That first year, I didn’t have to buy groceries for six months. I was hooked. For four years, I grew vegetables, then decided to experiment with flowers, planting bulbs in the shade (apparently, I’m a slow learner). They didn’t produce, but the bug had bitten.
After getting my dream job in Clifton Park, I moved from my spacious barn and landed in Mechanicsville with a front bed choked with three-foot-tall weeds and half-dead boxwood shrubs buried beneath them and a back “yard” I couldn’t see due to the tree sized weeds that had overtaken it. The first summer there, I decided to tackle the front. The soil was grey, dry as dust, and rocky. I pulled everything out, roots and all, sifting out rocks, sawing down root balls and building up the soil. My friend Avery at Collar City Mushrooms let me take spent mushroom grow blocks. I broke them up, added organic fertilizer and compost, and transformed that bed into a thriving garden. That first year was a great harvest, and I’ve been experimenting ever since, playing with interplanting and pushing the limits of spacing beyond what seed packets suggest.
The following year, I built a raised bed on my back deck using logs, compost, newspaper, veggie scraps, mushroom blocks, and more compost. It became my experimental space, though rodents were relentless. Now it’s an herb and strawberry bed. The perennial herbs keep the small visitors away while keeping the strawberries contained.
Year three brought the biggest challenge: the back “yard” was a disaster. Japanese Knotweed, Tree of Heaven, and various vines completely covered the space. It was blackout shade, no place to sit, and an endless cycle of regrowth. It took months of backbreaking work: cutting, digging, pulling by hand through rocks (from the railroad tracks) and broken glass.
When I finally started planting, I wasn’t strategic, just whatever my favorite nurseries had on sale. But then Instagram’s algorithm introduced me to Wild Ones, and everything clicked. I started learning about native plants and why they matter. I’ve been slowly replacing invasive species, though the Japanese Knotweed still pops up in two spots where I didn’t dig deep enough.
My planting style is organic and unplanned. Things go in when plants go on sale, when friends share cuttings, or when seeds I’ve germinated are ready. It’s a beautiful mish-mosh, and I love it that way. My back garden is my sanctuary. It’s where I take a breath from my intense job and just watch bumblebees. I recently added bug houses, and ground bees are already plugging up the holes. Butterflies visit: Swallowtails, Eight Spotted Foresters. The space feels alive.
I’m planning to add a bluebird house in the back, a wren house in the front, and a bat box on the side. This winter, I set up an indoor grow setup for vegetables and flowers as well as starting a worm composting system in my kitchen. It helped with the winter blues and gave me something to look forward to.
I won’t pretend I don’t sometimes feel cramped by my small space. Land and housing are expensive, and I could easily feel disappointed. But I’ve realized that I can do my part for the environment and myself right here, in this little corner of Mechanicsville. That makes me feel genuinely good about where I am in life.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on native plant suggestions, design ideas, or local sources for more native plants for my place, my parents’, or my school. Thank you for being part of this journey!
Ms. Cybill Cunningham
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