Beautiful flowerbeds rarely last long, Gause's principle

Why do flower beds, especially those made up of different species, especially with dense plantings, lose their decorative appeal so quickly and require so much work?

It turns out there is a special law of nature at play: the principle of competitive exclusion, also known as the Gause principle.

The essence of the Gause principle is simple: if several species compete for the same resources in one ecological niche, the system will be statically unstable. Eventually, only one will remain on the stage. The rest will perish, losing the competitive battle to the leader.

You can see examples of this in your garden every time you weed. Just a few, and often just one type of weed easily destroys (wins in fair competition) all the biodiversity that you have painstakingly and lovingly planted in your flower beds.

Fortunately, with a conscious approach, it is possible to organize several ecological niches even in one square meter, and to separate potential competitors into “separate apartments.”

Experienced gardeners know perfectly well how to do this:

• Tall plants do not grow well in their own shade — there is a separate ecological niche there and it can be filled with separate species
• Snowdrops and many bulbous plants manage to “get their share” early in spring. This is also a separate niche, these plants are not competitors to later flowers
• A separate topic is relief. Even a simple stone in a clearing creates at least two different ecological niches — on the north side and on the south side.

Well, and so on, there are dozens of similar techniques, just dig around on the internet. It is also extremely desirable to have a decade or so of experience under your belt to apply all this book knowledge correctly.

In conclusion. What are the practical implications of the Gause principle?

There are at least two:

1. You will save a lot of energy and time if you understand how to provide each new plant in the garden with its own, original, comfortable ecological niche at the planning stage. In my opinion, external climate sensors can greatly help with this. But it’s all individual, some may find it easier to work in the old-fashioned way.
2. Planting similar species together is possible, but it’s better not to overdo it. Otherwise, the lion’s share of your time will be spent on pruning the stronger ones and fertilizing the weaker ones. The balance in such systems will always be statically unstable, as it is a law of nature that unfortunately no one can repeal.