Regional Garden Gurus Site Launches

SUSTAINABLE = REGIONAL

Creating a sustainable garden requires gardening in a manner appropriate to that site--soil, temperature, precipitation,and light all impact what type of plants will or will not thrive. The best gardening advice is definitely local, which is the driving principle behind a new website called Regional Garden Gurus .

Guru, here, refers to writers, teachers, and designers providing sound regional gardening information, using articles, podcasts, videos, and interesting links for the region they write about.

THE FOUNDING GURUS

Don Engebretson (pictured above), the Renegade Gardener, is an award winning garden writer and designer hailing from the cold regions of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Don writes with humor about the trials and tribulations of gardening in USDA Zones 2-4.

Susan Harris, of Sustainable-Gardening, is also one of the guiding forces behind the award-winning blog, Garden Rant. You can also check out her sustainable gardening videos at MonkeySee for general information. She writes and lives in the muggy region of Washington, D.C., USDA hardiness Zones 4-7.

Ginny Stibolt is a horticulturist and writer in the northern reaches of Florida. Her new book, "Sustainable Gardening for Florida" is due out in 2009. Adventures of a Transplanted Gardener is her site where her naturalist commentary also includes podcasts of her radio show.

And last, but not least, there is me--working on the high plains of the Rocky Mountain region.

We're looking for more gurus, if you or someone you know is interested in writing about a region in the US, just drop me a line at dryideas at gmail dot com.

Need A Vacation? Flickr Geotagging Takes You Away

Been reaching the end of your rope? It's been mighty cold for weeks on end and it's just about time for the ice and snow to melt. But if you can't get away from the office right now you can still take a virtual break from our winter weather by using Flickr's geotagging feature.

Flickr is a photo sharing site that allows people to upload photos online so other people can view and use them. I use photos from Flickr for my blog and that is that is where I got this picture of a manatee. (Thanks, Talking Tree, for the use of your photo.)

Geotagging is the practice of labeling photos with geographic information--such as GPS data. At Flickr, photographers place photo locations on a map, which allows the viewer to search the map for a location and then be able to view the photos from that site. It is becoming quite popular with professional photographers as discussed here. I had a great break from the grind by just playing with the map.

So here's the part about vacationing--I am going on a trip soon to Florida and thought I'd check out where we were going to swim with the manatees. And since none of you can come with me, I thought I'd offer you the virtual option. So don your wet suits and take a dip in the Crystal River, but unlike me, you can rush off to Sao Paulo, Brazil if the manatees don't show.

A Tribute to MLK

My daughter has been studying Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech in school. Her assignment was to write her own speech about something about which she felt strongly. I want to share her words because they give me hope that the world will change for the better.

My Vision

I have a vision where we do not only respect all humans, but we respect animals, reptiles, and all living things.

I have a vision where we respect the earth, our only home and we see it as it is repaired from pollution--as a thing, not to rule, but to tend as a loved one.

I have a hope that all the future generations get to see a world without war or pollution. That they get to be judged, not by color, not by religion, not by type of family, but by what is in their hearts.

I have a hope that people of other counties and races do not have to put a boundary between them, but rush out to them.

I have a hope that no one's stomach keeps them awake because they are hungry. That no one shivers in the cold. That no one is sick because he or she is not protected. That no one can not afford to go to school because they do not have the money.

I have a vision where the ocean is clean and we share fish with ocean creatures. That we do not pour yucky water into the sea.

I have a dream where children can play hand-in-hand and not worry about the future.

So my friends, I would like you to help me with this vision, for I can not do it alone. I would like you to help me clean our beautiful home: earth.

Ana, Age 10

Book Sings Praises of Native Plants for Wildlife

As I slog through my electronic nightmare, I've been trying to get in some non-computer reading. While I have gotten a break from high tech, I haven't gotten a respite from discouraging information on the environmental front. According to a new book I'm reading, Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife In Our Gardens by Douglas W. Tallamy, only 3 to 5 percent of land in this country remains intact as habitat for plants and animals. Research has shown a 1:1 correlation between habitat loss and species extinction--suggesting a potential loss of over 95% of plant and animal species native to this country. If we don't find a way to provide adequate habitat for wildlife, we will loose the majority of species that exist today. Where there are now hundreds of plants and animals in danger of extinction in the United States, there will be thousands lost forever. Tallamy doesn't say how much time we have to turn things around, but he believes that gardeners can have a major role in whether we will be able to sustain the natural world in any recognizable form.

His premise is that native plants are by far more efficient in providing biomass to support the food chain that exists in nature than plants brought in from outside their native range, such as plants used in ornamental horticulture and food crops. As an entomologist, he knows that native flora supports native fauna and because plants and animals evolved together, most of the animals (mainly arthropods) cannot feed on these alien plants. He states that over ninety percent of animal species are specialists--leaving only ten percent able to feed on more than a few species of plants. Without the native plants to support wildlife, they will disappear--forever.

So what if we loose the majority of creepy-crawlies? Few humans would be upset by the loss of roaches, mosquitoes,and pill bugs. But those aren't the ones that would be lost because they are generalists that have adapted to life with humans. Instead, it means we loose all those specialists that feed on those creepy-crawly specialists--moving on up the food chain to the "charismatic animals" that we would miss,such as panda bears and zebras and bald eagles. Its the diversity of animal and plant life that keeps natural services--the ability to cleanse air, water and waste products--intact.

Tallamy's solution to diminished habitat is for gardeners to plant natives. This would be a positive move toward sustainability, but alone it won't come close to solving the problems associated with loss of habitat. Urban land use only accounts for 2.6% of the total 2.3 billion acres in the entire US. Adding rural residential to urban use brings the total potential area to only 7% of total acreage. Grazing accounts for 35% of all land use and two thirds of all agricultural use. Wildlife would be far better served if we drastically reduced our consumption of meat (my apologies to my ranching friends)and/or restored marginal agricultural land to support native wildlife. I do believe we need to make our landscapes productive and sustainable. Our goal should be to use land in a way that supports as many species as possible.

Bringing Nature Home does a good job of educating about the importance of arthropods and plants to the health of humans and the planet, but the information provided about wildlife and plants has a decidedly eastern US slant. Most of the horticultural information is based on the author's home turf in Pennsylvania and Delaware, and there is no information specific to the Rocky Mountain Region. But I recommend reading the book for it's eye-opening information on the state of habitat in this country--probably best borrowed from the library (it's the sustainable thing to do).

Alien Plants

One of the reason's I am passionate about changing the way we look at the natural world is because I don't think we should be leaving a broken world to future generations. I read a term the other day that institutionalized this problem: intergenerational justice. I had never heard the term before, though the old Native American saying about being responsible for future generations has certainly been popularized by Seventh Generation. My ten year old daughter cries when we watch shows like the BBC's Planet Earth because she's afraid so many of the animals will go extinct during her lifetime. It is a type of despair that I don't ever remember feeling--even when we were instructed as children to get under our desks in case of a nuclear explosion. So we decided Ana is going to help me write my blog by contributing to it every now and then. The first thing we want to share is a video entitled "Alien Plants", because sometimes when things seem really bleak with trying to save the natural world from utter destruction, we need to be able to experience a little wonder and chuckle a bit.




Note: I downloaded this video from YouTube, but do not know to whom to attribute it. I will try and ascertain the artist and the story behind the footage as soon as those aliens stop possessing my computer.

A Question for the New Year

I am at my wits end. You may have noticed (though I hope you were spending your holidays doing something fun loving instead sitting at your computer) that I have not posted for several weeks. Unfortunately, I was spending less time doing fun things with my family than I would have liked—instead I was in front (also behind, inside and all around) of my computers trying to put them back together again. After installing Norton 360 on all three of my computers, all three of them had hardware failures. Now according to Symantec, the software company that sells Norton products, their product does nothing to the hardware elements in a computer. I don’t believe them—and neither do the computer repair or computer sales personnel that I’ve talked with over the last two weeks—they don’t recommend Symantec products anymore because my experience is anything but unique. What are the odds that three computers of differing age, from three different manufacturers would all have hardware failures at the exact same time? I think the odds are better that I could win the lottery, but I’m not feeling very lucky quite now.

I’ve lived a love/hate relationship with my electronics for the past twenty years. On the one hand I am fascinated by electronic gadgets—especially the miniaturized ones—but the amount of time and pain required to keep them functioning has now gone over the top for me. Hasn’t the time come for technology to become a ubiquitous, functioning aspect in our lives? Instead, I find that we are more slaves to the electronic wonders in our lives instead of the reverse. After I get my computers up and running again, it will be time to tackle the incompatibilities between the video camera, the laptop, the cable company and the DVR. I may have it figured out by next summer.

So what does this have to do with gardening? One thing comes to mind—our culture seems confident that we will be able to solve our environmental problems through advanced technology. This is probably the largest act of hubris in mankind’s history—to put so much faith in our ability to replace the services provided by nature—things like purifying our air and water, processing our waste, and pollinating our food crops. Many of nature’s services can’t even be duplicated at all by science, let alone be duplicated economically (after all, what’s more economical than free). We are in a dangerous situation—as gardeners we know how well our efforts have been to make nature do our bidding—the evidence is right there in our borders: endless numbers of dead plants, memorialized by their plastic tombstone plant tags.

So, I have a question for you to ponder as we begin this New Year: If your life depended upon your ability to control nature through a desk top computer, how long would you last?

Photo: A computer after it was dragged at 50mph, by Bakkster_Man.