Philosophy & Approach

Pawpaw Cloud Forest extends the tropical characteristics of our native pawpaw trees to their broader, growing affect on the Appalachian understory. It's a celebration of our common landscape for what it is: remarkable, unique, at risk, and worthy of an intentional ecological recovery. Pawpaw Cloud Forests are the semi-mythical Appalachian woodlands of our childhood, our pre-industrial past, and our ecologically re-claimed future — mountainous and green, covered by clouds, and related to tropical Cloud Forests. They can be found covering distant hazy mountains, in our regional parks, and in backyards. Unsurprisingly, a portion of East-Central West Virginia is climatically characterized as Appalachian Temperate Rainforest or Appalachian Cloud Forest. The name is also a nod to the future, asking us to consider how our landscape is changing; heavily shaped by suburban sprawl, highways, Whitetail Deer overbrowsing, introduced species, and a warming climate, as tropical looking shrubs like Pawpaw and Ohio Buckeye are starting to noticeably expand in recent years — even taking over hillsides in striking fashion where dense deer populations have reduced numbers of maples, oaks, and other historically abundant saplings. I expect our native Pawpaw patches to continue to be prolific in a hotter, more humid, and potentially wetter climate while also continuing to inspire the growing adoption of native landscaping in Appalachia through the full suite of botanical experiences — being delicious, nutritious, visually impressive, fragrant, deer resistant, teachable, and forming critical and regenerative habitat for the conservation of native pollinators, wildlife, and people. Pawpaw Cloud Forest didn't occur to me merely as a fun novel ecosystem catchphrase, but after observing the uphill expansion of the historically lowland Pawpaw understory, as outlined in the NPS article on the previous page.

Ecological Rehabilitation as the future of Landscape Architecture

We re-create authentic, Unapologetically Native Landscapes

using exclusively regionally sourced, conservation-grade native plants. Most good landscape architects in 2025 are essentially trying to do some form of vague ecological restoration, to copy ecological restoration in a manner that's tamed-down enough and re-branded to fit within the prevailing norms and boxes of landscape architecture & polite society. There is no future for landscape architects who don't take regional ecology seriously, and hire people who are actually skilled and educated in ecological restoration. Most landscape architects fail to grasp that there is an academic discipline of ecological restoration, with an advanced theory and philosophy, which is the future of ecology-based landscape planning and creation, just as modern Medicine developed after centuries of major advances in theory and practice. There is a philosophy, there is a strategy, there are considerations like cost-benefit analysis and various methods of applying the science of Ecology/ Conservation Biology to prescribe a treatment — to create a natural area of plants adapted to a given landscape context, which mature to become a living entity that's more than a plant-list, more than a garden of native plants. Good ecological restoration is a creative process that unfolds over time, and is not suited to the traditional construction-oriented process of status-quo landscape architecture. The approach, timeline, and outcomes are fundamentally different, and it's impractical to approach restoration with graphic design and the norms of traditional site development. Regenerative landscapes are living entities, not static drawings of bushes in rows. Landscape Architects, in general, have no business claiming they are ecological restoration professionals, unless they're actually educated in the field of ecology to the extent they're able to effectively apply ecology to rejuvenate the living landscape — most aren't. In other words, there is a trend of landscape architects charging premium prices to do what is effectively less than average quality restoration, creating vaguely naturalistic landscapes 'featuring native plants'. That is not what we do, that's not what authentic ecological restoration, as endorsed by the Society for Ecological Restoration, is about. Other than those landscape architects who actually have degrees and experience in environmental science, ecology, and ecological restoration/ conservation biology, there are lots of landscape architects and horticulturalists thinking they can co-opt the field of ecological restoration without actually being educated in this field. In fact, there are all kinds of wholly uneducated so called 'native plant' professionals out there who shamelessly have promoted gardening with 'native cultivars' and other horticultural industry bullshit for their own gains, and to the detriment of advancing the authentic ecological landscaping movement. There are all kinds of native plant 'gardeners' who aren't really trying to recreate healthy ecosystems. Don't hire them, hire Pawpaw Cloud Forest. We approach sites holistically, from the discipline of ecological restoration.

We create functional landscapes intended to support people and wildlife

not static native landscapes as natural history museums. We expect our nearby natures to, in fact, be trammeled to some extent, by man, woman, dog, child, and society. We expect people to interact with the site, maybe even to pick fruits from mature sites, or pick some leaves to make tea with. This goal ties in with modern concepts in environmental philosophy, such as Bill Cronon's The Trouble with Wilderness, and the work of other scholars who've pointed out the problematic human/ nature divide; a divide that's especially visible and problematic in our landscape planning and suburban development norms. We think most people managing well-known conservation landscapes at arboretums and botanical gardens are living in a fully outdated paradigm, about to be broadsided by some form of ecological realism — potentially in the form of unyielding Pawpaw Cloud Forests — as a necessity for advancing, or rather, sustaining our society. And we want our landscapes to speak to that realism. As long as developers are bulldozing forests in Appalachia to put up McMansion housing developments, it's fair to say government and policy makers are fully asleep at the wheel and not internalizing our broader ecological situation and taking the need for environmental security seriously. We not only need to create fundamentally different forms of housing and development, we need to retrofit the lifeless, suburban sprawlstrosity we've created. Such retrofitting should involve agro-forestry type landscapes which support both people and wildlife; people in nature, as opposed to strict landscape boundaries between human development and wild nature.

We don't use herbicides or pesticides

we're 100% organic, unlike the majority of restoration firms, out of genuine concern for our personal, public, and environmental health. Actually, we're fanatically opposed to the widespread, common use of toxic herbicides and pesticides — especially in residential and public-green space settings, both for our own health reasons, and out of consideration for human and non-human health. We acknowledge their utility, but we're not willing to work with herbicides, at all. We're not set-up to work with herbicides. Please don't invite me to work in your ChemLawn, I really, honestly don't want to be exposed to herbicides for personal health reasons. We feel glyphosate and other herbicides should be banned for residential use, as they are in some countries. We think creating meadows in public corridors that are sprayed with glyphosate is a problem. We think killing a lawn by drenching it with glyphosate has a real, negative environmental impact that's not easy to calculate. We're not willing to serve clients currently using TruGREEN or comparable toxic lawn treatments, nor properties that have been recently sprayed with pesticides of any type, such as mosquito treatments. Our approach is synonymous with fully organic, chemical free yards, as a prerequisite for hiring Pawpaw Cloud Forest. Also, I don't have any interest in creating conservation landscapes that will attract Monarchs, hummingbirds, and other prized wildlife to properties where they could be poisoned by herbicide and especially pesticide use.

We're trying to create landscapes continuous with our ecological history, while having a healthy dose of ecological realism

which acknowledges the need for ecological resilience and adaption to both climate change, and other broad 'background' environmental realities. We don't believe a strict, inflexible re-creation of pre-settlement landscapes and plant lists is exactly the best, most philosophically defensible target for ecological rehabilitation; we think the theoretically perfectly targeted outcome of ecological restoration is inherently moving over time, in relation to a changing landscape context and a pragmatic consideration of Ecology. We try to produce the best localized conservation outcomes possible per costs/ efforts/ resources. We're intentionally trying not to focus too much effort on recreating an exact, inflexible copy of a historic landscape, nor are we trying to exactly model the future or going out of our way to engage in things like assisted migration; we're trying to use historic ecology as a basis or invaluable reference, as well as considering environmental change and the future, to create landscapes that are healthier and have more conservation value, in general, and which will inevitably change over time. We want to create landscapes that are ecologically regenerative; forming plant assemblages that are resilient and self-sustaining is inherent to that goal.

We focus on everything simultaneously

We're thinking about environmental change and the future, we're thinking about ecological history and place-based conservation outcomes. We're thinking about costs and what makes sense for a wide range of clients and project-types; it may make sense for a client to spend relatively more or less, depending on the project goals, scale, timeline, and other factors. We're thinking about peoples' reactions and landscape ordinances. We're thinking about balancing natural processes with the right degree of management, at the right time.

Our consideration goes beyond a native/ invasive taxonomy of nature

Nature (used here to denote the desired, healthy, self-sustaining, long-term outcome of restoration efforts) is constantly evolving, and there are some common, introduced weeds which are beautiful, are already widespread everywhere in Eastern North America, and which are important pollen and food sources, and even host plants for native pollinators which find themselves broadly threatened and facing significant, sudden population declines in recent decades. So there are occasionally going to be some common weeds that are welcomed in our work and not counter to our regenerative, bioregional landscaping goals. As for aggressive, native old-field meadow plants characteristic of the Upper Ohio Valley, such as Canada goldenrod, we don't automatically consider them problematic or counter to the goals of long-term meadow establishment, depending on the site and project goals, budget, and timeline.

Acknowledgment of Native People: Inseparable from Native Landscapes

We acknowledge the reality that the indigenous landscapes of the Upper Ohio Valley we want to rehabilitate were, until recently, those shaped by Native Americans, including but not limited to the Mingo (Iroquois), Shawnee, and Osage people. It's unreasonable to talk about our native Western Allegheny landscapes as if they weren't heavily shaped by the agro-ecological practices of indigenous people who were displaced from the area by federal law, less than 200 years ago. Many of the old growth trees remaining in our forests today started their lives in a pre-modern, indigenous land, and even those mature oaks planted by early landscape architects in our public parks, grew up in a pre-suburban, pre-ChemLawn, pre-Global Warming, and pre-overgrazing by Whitetail Deer era. Even the Pawpaw Cloud Forests of our Appalachian past and present are fully a product of Indigenous Americans' agroforestry practices. It's somewhat ridiculous to talk about restoring the sanctity and ecological integrity of a pre-European American landscape, while somehow thinking it's beyond the scope of conservation biology to mention the fact that Native Ecosystems were shaped in reciprocation with large populations of Native People, over thousands of years, who were, fairly recently, displaced by European colonizers who had a shocking lack of respect for the environment, and who saw wilderness (or rather, a landscape that was left by recently displaced people) as something to be cleared strategically for European agriculture and security. It's unfathomable to look at our hillsides today, as historical ecologists, and realize they had virtually all been clear-cut by the late 1800s. It's ill-advisable to adopt native landscapes as a 21st century mode of landscape planning without some attempt to acknowledge, respect, and to continue to learn from the multi-generational local knowledge held by Indigenous People. We think Indigenous landscapes and agroforestry, and creating useful landscapes that serve human utility and ecological sustainability, are landscapes of the future, and we think Indigenous People have an ongoing, vital role in this endeavor.

Assisted Ecological Recovery: Working with Ecological Succession in a minimally invasive manner as a pragmatic approach to restoration

Over the years, restoration professionals have realized the best outcomes, within a given landscape context, don't necessarily start with the most physically intensive restoration actions such as bulldozing/ plowing, soil replacement, etc. We seek to strike a thoughtful and efficient balance of passive vs. active restoration work, and we intentionally use methods on the spectrum of assisted natural regeneration when and where it makes sense. For instance, if we're working on a site with poor clay soils, it may make sense to allow common 'aggressive' or 'weedy' native species, such as goldenrod, to be a major part of the landscape for years, as it can also be part of a celebrated and beautiful meadow landscape, as opposed to the alternative of putting in a lot of effort to battle against the proliferation of certain common native plants. In other words, we're not allergic to the idea of letting goldenrod, asters, and other of the most common meadow plants of the Upper Ohio Valley replace mowed lawns that are devoid of life, and in many cases, it might be a sensible prescription to let a species like goldenrod condition the soil for years, before actively trying to increase species diversity. This is also to say, we always want to be working with the actual, observable, real process of ecological succession; not a fake version (as adopted by most landscape architects today) which seeks to vaguely mimic ecological processes through intensive gardening. Also, there's good reason our reference communities/ targets for native meadows are different than they are in the Midwest; Canada Goldenrod, for instance, was historically a common meadow-forming plant in the Ohio River Valley, so it's dishonest to treat it as an "invasive weed" for the sake of conforming to Midwestern norms. Common Milkweed and its relative Hemp Dogbane, and various asters have a similar story of being aggressive, yet potentially welcome in some landscape prescriptions. And there are various common weeds that aren't native, but which are widespread in our landscape today, have been naturalized for hundreds of years, and offer important habitat value to native pollinators: plants like common teasel and Queene Anne's Lace. We don't necessiarily consider such common 'volunteers' problematic invasive species that are counter to our goals of recreating a self-sustaining "native", landscape, rather, we see such species as "practically native" or functionally native for the purposes of our work; they're part of our landscape now and don't need to be removed simply because they are a relatively recent addition to the landscape. Also, one of the reasons such plants are so prolific and widespread, is because they're so widely pollinated — they are loved by (native) pollinators. So yes, a few Common Teasel plants are acceptable in our vision of a prescriptive, successional nature. But we will of course try to manage to prevent the establishment of invasive introduced species, those which are both non-native and have a tendency to dominate landscapes and prevent native plants from establishing and regenerating; an abandoned field full of Cleveland Pear Trees, Autumn Olive, and Multiflora Rose comes to mind.

What We Don't Do

Use mass-produced, horticultural industry aesthetically-bred cultivars and or nativars which pose a direct risk to the gene pool of native, endemic plant populations, and which are a direct threat to the authentic native-plant conservation and ecological landscaping movement, in general.
Plant large, nursery-grown trees and shrubs, in straight lines, on mowed lawns, which will always have stunted growth, and be unoriginal in the landscape — we plant younger trees, plugs, and seeds, which take several years to mature and organically grow in relationship to each other and the site (regeneratively). We don't see planting large trees and shrubs as a feasible, cost effective strategy for most restoration sites, as a general rule with some flexibility. Native trees can only be grown in a pot for a maximum of a few years before they become root-bound and of inferior quality.
Pretend that all impacts of non-native species are always a net negative on environmental outcomes (the ecological and environmental role of introduced species is often more complex and more quickly-evolving than traditionally portrayed, with many introduced plants having a profound ecosystem services role on large scales, such as cleaning urban watersheds and stabilizing highly disturbed stream banks and roadsides). While we do not discount the serious, even somewhat dire impact of invasive species in the broader landscape, we also don't think the Science of 'invasion biology' will age as simplistically as it started; we think a native/ invasive lens is an extremely valuable theory and tool for restoration, but we don't think the actual science of Ecology and net ecological impacts of invasive species, over broader spatiotemporal scales, are as black and white as described in most of the literature to date. Introduced species now make-up a common part of our landscape, which is all the more reason we need to broadly re-establish native landscapes now, wherever and however we can, as our regional ecosystem ultimately derives it's health and ecological stability through scale. For example, it's much easier to replace a large mowed lawn with a regenerative native plant landscape than to effectively bulldoze an established patch of Japanese Knotweed. Like running a marathon, the efficiency of ecological restoration is something that conserves energy on uphill stretches, and sprints downhill, necessarily, to win the broader race at the marathon scale —engaging 'flows' and going with the momentum of ecological succession is central to our philosophy. (Many of the concepts on this site came from my unpublished/ unfinished Master's Thesis work in restoration philosophy, so please do not copy them without citing me. SER 2013, Ruggiero, D. Contextual Ecological Realities and a Practically Restored Nature: An Evolutionary Framework Suggests a Minimally Invasive Restoration Ecology).
Pretend that common 'weedy' native species like Canada Goldenrod, Black Locust, and Black Walnut are not some of the most common, beautiful, native, habitat-generating plants of the Upper Ohio River Valley (such species are often considered unwelcome weeds in Midwestern restoration circles).
Strictly conform to the norms and goals of prairie restoration as it's traditionally practiced in the Midwest, but we do borrow heavily from it and seek to create healthy meadows as a starting point for regenerative landscapes.
Traditional landscaping with native plants, such that we constrain native plants in boxes of traditional lawn & garden design.

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