Garden Rant

The bees are worth it

Have you seen Häagen Dazs’s help the honey bees site? Do visit, if not. It’s a charming and I would think effective awareness-raising project. The company explains why they care—many of their ingredients are dependent on bee pollination—explains how they’re donating to research on the bee problem, and offers some fun interactive features and a store.

Sadly, ice cream has been on my list of forbidden foods for some time now, but maybe my thin slim husband would like some of the bee-dependent flavors, the purchase of which will help support Penn State and UC Davis research. In fact, it was he who found the site and, after reading it, asked me if I was growing any of the plants they list as attracting bees. It’s the most interested I’ve seen him in plant types, ever. (He’s in charge of hardscaping, lighting, and the watering system.)

Their bee-friendly plant list is actually kind of strange, but I believe is meant to reach across a wide range of zones. Anyway, even though this is the brainchild of a General Mills subsidiary, I like the website. I can’t help but think it will succeed in making more people care about honeybees.

You can personalize your own bee and email it; above is the one I made.

Big box resists invasion

Though we can’t expect our Home Depots to be pulling pesticides from their shelves anytime soon (as Canada’s are) there is some consciousness-raising going on among U.S. chains. Meijer stores in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan have started a program with The Nature Conservancy, where they are starting to remove invasive species from the shelves and adding 42 perennial and 21 tree species that are recommended by the Conservancy. These will be given special tags: “plant for a better earth.” Many, but by no means all, are natives.

Some of the invasives that are being pulled include privet (lingustrum), which escapes and grows along riverbanks, where it crowds out native sedges, grasses, and ferns; and Norway maples, which they list as potentially invasive, but which I list as “just plain suck.”

Well, we know from our discussions how sticky the whole invasive issue can be, but for a big box to be working with a nonprofit like the Conservancy seems encouraging to me.

Though I must say it sounds kinda tame in comparison with the Canada ban. Too bad about the privet; I kind of like privet.

Is No Progress Possible?

Dear Earthlovers,

The news is not good.  Not only are we facing a shortage of petroleum that is sending gas prices soaring, but also, as the The New York Times reported today, a shortage of fossil fuel-based fertilizers.

You'd think that we'd use this moment of scarcity to seek out better, cleaner alternatives.  Sadly, America is led by ingenious types who spend their day trying to move us back to yesterday.  We have Hillary Clinton and John McCain promising to suspend the federal gas tax. And we have chemical fertilizer companies working their fingers to the bone, trying to build new plants.

As for the rest of us who'd prefer not to have their air, soil, and water poisoned for other people's profit--I believe we're out of luck. We have no vote whatsoever.

Let 100 dead zones of algae bloom! Let the people drive SUVs! Anything to avoid change for the better! I think we were once a different kind of country.

Yours,

Michele   

Championing natives—worldwide

You may remember that I posted on British gardening celeb Monty Don’s Around the World in 80 Gardens show, complaining that it was not available in the U.S. It’s still not, and we still don’t have anything close to this show, in terms of its thoughtful survey of indigenous gardens throughout the world.

Turns out, Don had an epiphany of sorts after doing the series—not a terribly surprising one. This is what he says in a recent interview with the Daily Mail: "Gardening with indigenous plants and working with nature by tweaking it is so much more interesting than imposing on to the natural world,” and then: "The interesting gardens are related to geographical/historical/ personal context.”

Not so surprising or shocking, right? Yet, many in Don’s audience are not quite ready to fall in line with his newfound (perhaps not so newfound—I don’t know his regular show) love of natives.

I love this headline : Yew must be joking! Growers' fury at Monty Don's call to use only British plants. Ha. I can feel the pain of those who were outraged, like Dr Mark Johnstone, a lecturer at Myerscough College, Preston, in Britain, who says: "I'm amazed someone as high profile as Monty Don should recommend sticking to native British plants. He is confusing biodiversity and native plants. Plants and trees are used for social, economic and environmental reasons." And this is my favorite quote in the article (from a garden center owner, natch): “The vast array of non-native plants available in Britain is something that we are recognized for and that has given us our identity." As paradoxical as it sounds, it’s absolutely true. The English border is known as a desirable gardening style throughout the world; yet, many of the plants that compose it are by no means native to Britain.

So? So nothing. I look at natives as a challenge and as an opportunity, though I’ll never be 100% native or even close. But I love the passion that someone like Monty Don brings to this cause. If only we had a gardening personality on this side of the pond who could proselytize as well. Or at least, could we please air this show here?!

Street Trees: Friend or Foe?

My neighbors just told me that the sugar maple to the right, which is at the border of my property, is coming down.  The city came out and had a look and said that it's sick. 

Now, a lot of the giant old sugar maples that line the streets in this part of the world are sickly.  They're having a tough time adjusting to warmer temperatures and the insults of modern life.

That's not to say that these trees wouldn't live on indefinitely, if allowed to. In fact, I'm entirely skeptical about the goodwill of government bodies when it comes to trees. I suspect they are all in the pockets of the power and phone companies and would just as soon take them all down to keep them from interfering with their lines. Can you believe we still run these primitive lines from pole to pole above the ground and butcher trees to protect them?  In a century in which we have iPhones?

We had another giant property-line sugar maple taken down a few years ago.  This one was in the backyard. It was beautiful, with a round crown that shaded the entire yard--though the tree-cutters showed us a rotten core and said it was sick. Removing it was a sickeningly violent act.  When the torso touched down, it shook the house.  The stump bled a flesh-colored sap for a full year.

It was terrible, but it allowed me to garden the yard. 

My husband laments the loss of these old giants. I am really skeptical about whether trees of this size belong in cities. When the one in front goes, I'll feel bad for a minute and then plant a pair of sweet cherry trees I can eat off of.   

Breaking News: EPA Orders Scotts to Stop Selling Certain Products

Thanks to Tamara at Can-U-Dig-It for the tip.

The EPA has pulled a couple Scotts products off the shelf ("Garden Weed Preventer + Plant Food" and "SLS Fertilizer With .28 Halts") because, according to the EPA,the products have not been registered with the EPA and have invalid registration numbers.

EPA has urged Scotts to voluntarily recall the product, and they've posted information about how to find out if you have one of these products on your shelf.

More later.  Stay tuned.

WEIRD weather

We've broken all the records in Buffalo (it got up to 90 in some areas of WNY yesterday) and I wonder if others are experiencing some of the dryest, hottest days in April they've ever known.

It's difficult to rant about such a thing—aside from the pleasure of being outside, I'm a month ahead on most gardening tasks—but it is disturbing.

The scene above depicts one of the few times I have ever seen daffodils standing upright in my front yard. Normally, these would be bending low with broken stalks or just laying face down in the mud, having succumbed to freezing rain or whatever. So this is the way they're supposed to look—interesting.

The Homeowners Association You'll Love Hating

An old rant about homeowner associations and restrictive local laws recently received this comment about laws and rules that require perfect green lawns:

I live in one of those lovely "Deed Restricted" communities. We too are under water restrictions here in Florida. Yet here they are giving out citations left and right. On my street alone at least every other house has received a citation. We have fifteen days to "resod", which is the only permissible option.

I recently posted a letter to the editor about this. I have received "hate mail" from anonymous "angry neighbors". Expressing their disgust at people like me who flaunt the rules. I have three burnt spots approximately a foot wide on the side of my driveway. For this I am expected to sod my entire lawn. I have already told them that is not on my agenda. I am still awaiting their response. What a bunch of Nazis! And strangely the same people are always elected. Sounds very fishy to me.

Then the commenter left this link to the Great White Lawn Enforcer of his civic association (Beacon Woods in the Tampa area).  This Neanderthal seems proud of the 150 citations he issued last year for lawn violations.  Noting that some residents have complained that it's hard to grow grass under trees, he suggests creating a "garden area" around the trees, "provided the area does not exceed 20% of the front side or back areas."  So 80 percent of the property HAS to be lawn - perfect, and green at all times.  He goes on to threaten legal action against anyone who refuses to get with the program.

"LET'S KEEP THE HOUSES BEAUTIFUL  AND THE LAWNS GREEN ALL THE TIME"

That headline in bold serves as a loud reminder from the "Deed Restriction Committee Chair" of the attitude behind their outdated restrictions.  But even more prominent on the website of this proud little deed-restricted community is this bit of dubious PR: "A Friendly Community and Florida Bird Sanctuary."  Excuse me while I gag.

Sustainable happiness

When mentee Ron emailed me Thursday with a heads-up on a radio show, I wasn’t too enthusiastic. Yet another discussion of our carbon footprint on NPR? Sure, there are less appetizing topics (economic forecasts, for one), but for some time green living has inspired a media feeding frenzy. How much more guilt needs to be heaped upon us? How many more dire scenarios must we envision? But as I obediently listened to On Point on Thursday, I found myself intrigued by the equation one of the guests, Colin Beavan, had devised to make sustainability work for him and his family.

A “don’t freak out; don’t be self-righteous; do what you can” mindset appeals to me and that's at least partially a driving force behind Beavan’s famous blog, No Impact Man, though Beavan takes sustainable living farther than most of us ever will. Here's Beavan’s opening manifesto:

A guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop, and, while living in New York City, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic, who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and Prada-wearing, four seasons-loving wife along for the ride.

Yes. Humor. That’s what’s needed. But I appreciate Beavan’s on-going rationale even more. On the NPR program, he continually paired the word “happy” with his advice and in the blog always uses words like “abundance”; the idea is to focus less on deprivation/restriction and more on changes that work, and that actually make life better, not just more sustainable. Sort of like effective dieting I guess (but probably equally as difficult!).

Beavan’s initial concept was to take a year to develop a no impact lifestyle, a year that is now up. After the year, he would assess what worked, what didn’t, and how to proceed. For a typical day in a no impact year, this post tells it best. I particularly liked the premise of “escaping city life by embracing it:” using mass transportation, hanging out more with neighbors, and families spending more time with each other.

OK, the gardening part. Beavan started a vegetable plot in a nearby community garden; stuck to a locally-grown (local trumping organic), meat-free, minimal-dairy diet; and vermi-composted (no garbage allowed!). His posts on the problems of eating meat are very compelling; particularly since after years of always preferring the side dishes to the main course, I’m feeling more and more inclined to give it up as well. Maybe.

I am sure many of you are familiar with the No Impact Man project and blog, but to me it was new and—I don’t hesitate to say—inspirational, particularly given its urban setting. Will I follow suit? Not to the same degree, certainly, but finding a way to do all I can happily and abundantly sounds more like fun and less like punishment.

Apocalypse Soon

This week's New Scientist magazine features a cheery cover announcing "The Collapse of Civilization."  Fine, I can do without anything except wikipedia and Swiss chocolate. What will be the immediate cause?  New Scientist doesn't say, considering a flu pandemic, environmental degradation, and the depletion of fossil fuels.

Why will it collapse?  Complexity, of course, but New Scientist seems to focus on two aspects of complexity in particular:

First, our hyper-efficiency, which means that there is very little redundancy in the global economy.  If only a handful of factories in the world make an essential widget, and they use their economies of scale to offer that widget cheaply to everybody--that's terrific, until every worker in one of those factories suddenly comes down with bird flu and the universe grinds to a halt.

Second, our interconnectedness.  As Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of an organization improbably called the New England Complex Systems Institute, explains, "A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism. Random damage is like lopping a chunk off a sheep." 

Interestingly enough, New Scientist cites the subprime mortgage crisis--I wrote here about the weird connections it was revealing--as a prime example of sheep-lopping. Instead of spreading the risk in the sense of dividing it up and minimizing it, our financial system is now so tightly wound that it spreads risk like a contagion--and if one segment of the American mortgage market gets sick, there is a worldwide credit crunch.

Who comes out on top when the collapse occurs?  Subsistence farmers, according to Bar-Yam.  Garden Rant readers, according to me.  Independent types who know how to use a shovel.