When we tend to our gardens, we make decisions based on a kind of assumed permanence. We plan and plant as if the systems we see will remain. Gardens change through the seasons, but in the long term, we often treat them as stable.
Each spring, the thaw forms a seasonal creek that runs from the Niagara Escarpment towards Lake Ontario. It passes through the back of a Grimsby garden and floods the area.
Many years ago, the garden owner decided to shape this creek and turn it from a vague flood zone into an actual small trenched riverbed. The riverbed twisted and turned, and ornamental boulders were placed along its curves to shape and alter its path. This allowed the water to linger and to sink deeper into the soil, following the meandering path.
Trees were planted along its banks so they could enjoy the additional water in springtime. As they matured, they grew thicker than neighboring trees.
Kids played in this garden, and as the trees grew, they played along the riverbanks, sending little made-up boats down the water.
Recently, on nearby land, construction was done that diverted this seasonal creek. It was dug in under a berm to limit and control its flow. Even on a wet spring like this year’s, it no longer visits the garden where it used to flow.
The trees are mature now, but the summers are hot, and the lack of seasonal water may become felt over time. Trees speak in years.
In Grimsby, the Niagara Escarpment to the south and Lake Ontario to the north create a large geographical frame that deeply affects the ecology of the region.
In the spring, Lake Ontario remains cold for a long time, which cools the surrounding area. Between the lake and the escarpment, cool air pools, mitigating early seasonal temperature swings. This protects early crops from blooming too early, easing vulnerability to later frosts.
In the fall, the reverse happens: the lake retains warmth, which pools up to the Niagara Escarpment and protects crops from an early frost.
This is ideal for fruit trees such as cherries and peaches, and is one of the reasons why the Niagara region is known for those crops.
These patterns are dependent on the framing geography of the area. If that geography were to be changed, it would alter the movement of air temperature.
For example, if airflow were interrupted by a tall wall on the lakeside, it would shelter the inland portion from the cooling effects of the lake in the spring and the warming effects of the lake in the fall. Sensitive crops such as cherries would be more susceptible to damage, and crops could fail more often. The delicate balance that allows orchards to thrive would be disrupted.
This could be the case with lakeside construction, which would affect inland farmland and expose tender fruit trees to earlier frost and greater temperature swings in the spring. Farming, a practice already made difficult by many factors, may cease to be sustainable altogether. For a region that has cherries, peaches and other tender fruit at the core of its identity, this change would be substantial.
Our gardens may seem small and self-encompassed. It can be difficult to see how actions outside of their boundaries may affect them.
But understanding their place in the larger ecosystem, and the changes happening in the greater geography, can bring our attention to the flow changes affecting the plantings inside our gardens.
However large these neighbouring changes may appear to us once we see their effect on our plantings, these changes are also happening within a much greater context.
The Niagara region, and the Niagara Escarpment itself, has been shaped over hundreds of millions of years. This is why we can find fossils in the escarpment: remnants of a prehistoric sea that once thrived in this area. Cherries would not be possible in the Niagara if sediments had not settled into the Escarpment, seas retreated, ice thawed and Lake Ontario formed.
Change on a large scale can be very slow, but it is inevitable.
Ultimately, our gardens are impermanent.
Whether we acknowledge that change or not, it will happen. Sometimes, it is too slow for human lifespans to see, sometimes it happens abruptly and we see its effects in years, or even months. But an awareness that change may come from beyond what we can predict can inform more resilient plant choices, or a wider palette that allows our gardens to reset and rebound as conditions shift.