What if, just what if, every backyard in the city and suburb, every vacant lot and park and rooftop were farmed as a community of plants and animals, as an ecosystem?

The plant diversity gave a natural beauty to the garden and actually seemed to increase the resiliency of the already established plants.

In the natural world, most plants live in cooperative communities of canopy and understory plants in complex partnerships with the soil biota and the local animals.

Below the canopy of the tallest trees or plants is the understory: a complex mix of woody and herbaceous plants and ground covers of all types living together and, under them, in the soil, rhizomes and bulbs, roots and fungal hyphae, and distributed throughout these layers, the decomposing and the decomposers.

There is no one way of planting, no one list of plants and animals for all of us, even if we live in the same area.

As our climate grows more chaotic, I pay attention to which plants reseed more aggressively, which plants return earlier or later or are heavily laden with fruit.

We needed trees: to anchor the soil, to control erosion and regulate moisture, as windblocks and habitat, as well as food sources and nutrient transport systems to the plant community.