You Can Garden How You Want, But....

.... the ethical imperative to garden differently is glaring. This from AMERICAN GREEN by Ted Steinberg:

1) Between 1994 and 2004, an estimated average of 75,884 Americans each year were injured using lawn mowers, or roughly the same number of people injured by firearms.

2) Using a gas-powered leaf blower for half an hour creates as many polluting hydrocarbon emissions as driving a car 7,700 miles at a speed of 30mph.

3) Approximately 7 million birds die each year because of lawn-care pesticides (and that's just lawn care, not including shrubs, trees, flowers, or agriculture).

4) In the process of refueling lawn care equipment, Americans spill 17 million gallons of gas every summer, or 50% more oil than the Exxon Valdez spilled off of Alaska.

5) A single golf course in Tampa (Florida alone has over 1,000 courses) uses 178,800 gallons of water per day, enough to meet the daily fresh water needs of more than 2,200 Americans.

6) Lawn chemicals are tracked into the home often, where they build up in carpet, this placing small children, whose developing bodies are far more vulnerable to toxins, at risk of chronic exposure. 

Twilight on the Tallgrass -- Spring Creek Prairie

This is the place my wife and I had our wedding reception six years ago, but last night we were at their annual festival. Spring Creek is a virgin tallgrass island in a sea of cash crops, still sporting wagon ruts from an Oregon Trail cutoff, over 800 acres in size about 7 miles due southwest of Lincoln, Nebraska. There are plans to connect this prairie and the one near our home in Pioneers Park with a prairie corridor -- hopefully this happens within the next decade or so.

Presentation, Plant Sale, Open Garden

This Saturday, 9/21, I'm opening my heart and soul to anyone who wants to poke and prod it. 

At 1pm I'll give a roughly 30 minute powerpoint presentation on native plants for wildlife that work well for me (if you've seen my talks before it'll pretty much be the same thing). I'll have enough seats for about 15 people, then you have to stand.

At 1:30pm, or a fuzz later, I'll open the garden for tours, questions, and a plant sale (proceeds of which will go straight into my buy a prairie / restore a prairie / start artist residency and nursery fund).

Come see the beginning blooms of the last fall flowers, and hopefully the peak migration of monarch butterflies as they come south.

Either before or after stopping by here, you should also visit the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum native plant sale over on UNL's east campus. Great folks, great plants!


Saturday 9/21
1:00 to 3:00 pm
3755 W. Plum St.
Lincoln, Nebraska
RAIN DATE -- Next day, same prairie time, same prairie channel

Some of the 50 or so plants I'll have, $3-5 each, include:

Stiff Goldenrod
Zigzag Goldenrod
Blue Pitcher Sage
Wild Senna
Mystery Liatris (is it white or purple, low or tall?)
Monkey Flower
Milkweed
Amsonia hubrichtii
Eupatorium Coelestinum
Caryopteris
Iris
Prairie Cascade Willow (rooted tree cutting)
Dig you own / beg me to chop it and dig it Mystery Hosta
Some sort of white Spiraea that needs a wetter area than I can give it (needs to be dug)

I plan to have another plant sale next May or June -- this one will have tons of flowers, grasses, and sedges from seeds gathered from my open-pollinated, organic garden.

Unbroken

Out here in Nebraska prairie is an endangered species. In a little over a century it's been pushed back to bad soil, roadsides, and graveyards. Within it countless flora and fauna have broken. With no understanding we alter the landscape, we erase power before we understand, we undermine hope, we negate other cultures. We've done this for so long it doesn't seem wrong. I plant a bluestem and a milkweed where I can -- the act a shout against progress and manifest destiny, against hubris and ignorance. No one may hear me but one lone monarch filled with a deeper sense of this place than I'll ever have, the memory passed down over thousands of generations, unbroken like the prairie that not so long ago swept over the horizon.

Yes, it's on ironweed, but that's what's blooming now.

To Butterfly Bush or to Not Butterfly Bush (Or to Native or Not to Native)

No other plant seems to get people's engines revving more than butterfly bush. I mean heated arguments -- I've been in my fair share. Is it invasive or not? Well, Oregon doesn't let it into the state, and the USDA says it's naturalized on both coasts, and even in parts of eastern Kansas.

But that's not the core issue.

Does it support lots of insects by providing good nectar? If one person sees one monarch nectarting on it one day, it's always assumed to be a good plant to help butterflies. Whenever I say -- and I am not lying to prove a point -- that my native prairie perennials see 50x the insect action than butterfly bush, I hear "I have plenty of butterflies on mine." Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. Doesn't really matter. Butterflies are one kind of insect, and I have NEVER seen a soldier beetle, or any beetle, or fly or wasp, on butterfly bush (let alone a caterpillar munching on its leaves). A few bumblebees, yes, and some hummingbird moth species. The point is when my prairie clover, coneflowers, mountain mint, rudbeckia, culver's root, ironweed, jow pye weed, milkweed, goldenrod, aster, viburnum, ninebark, serviceberry, baptisia, pasque flower, boneset, and countless other natives are in bloom, they are COVERED in a DIVERSE set of insect species. I wave my hand over them and a literal buzzing cloud lifts up like steam then settles like snow. I can't do that on butterfly bush.

But that's not the core issue.

White-lines sphinx moth on New England aster

I don't give a rip about supporting just one type of insect, since songbird chicks eat a 100% diet of insects, as do most adult songbirds (in decline due to habitat loss). 1 in 3 bites of food we humans take began with the act of a pollinating insect, not just a pollinating butterfly.

Still, not the core issue.

Here's where I get lambasted the most -- plant choices in our landscapes are moral choices. Just like shopping at a local business is a moral choice, going to a farmer's market, consolidating trips in a car, not using plastic bottles, not slamming a door on someone's face, not driving drunk, not using racial slurs, not beating your spouse, not shooting prairie dogs for entertainment.

IDK on Agastache foeniculum

This is the core issue:

Using plants native to your locale is a moral and ethical choice.

This statement insinuates that if you have a hosta I think you're an immoral, self-centered, planet-degrading a-hole. I wouldn't go that far, but we're on that sliding scale, I must admit. Here in eastern Nebraska 99% of the tallgrass prairie is gone, replaced my publically-subsidized monocultures that fatten cattle in terrible feedlots, poison our food supply, and create a bridge fuel (ethanol) which is like plugging a leak in the boat by adding food dye to the water. What does the loss of prairie say about who we are and what we value?

The preservation of our world is no matter to take lightly. When you plant with natives you are standing up against corporations that rape and poison this planet for profit, that own our government, and you're standing up against social, racial, and gender inequality. I know that seems like a leap, but it's all related, it all comes from the same root of choices we make every day in our hearts and minds. (I always wonder why the term is "mother nature," as if that gender gives us more inherent rights over it, that is then passive and submissive, simply a backup support to something or someone more important.)

If wanting to ensure a livable future for subsequent generations labels me as a native plant purist, then get that branding iron out of the fire -- here's my bare rump.

It's easy to dismiss issues that make us uncomfortable, that highlight our complicity in ecological harm. It hurts. It should hurt. But I'm not asking for you to feel guilty or ashamed -- I'm asking you to take stock of what you know and see and experience, and reflect on what's really going on beneath the shiny surface fed to us in our daily lives. What do you believe in? Should you? I ask this of my college students all the time. I'm asking you, too.

E. altissimum, Rudbeckia, A. azureus

You are certainly free to plant whatever you want, just as you are free (in America, theoretically) to practice whatever religion you want, eat what you want, love what you want, hate what you want. But we innately know where the moral lines are in our unique existence. I don't believe that any gardener can be a gardener without understanding and feeling the life our plants give, the wild systems at play, our hand for better or worse in the natural world, and not garden selflessly. If we garden selflessly, suddenly we get FAR more in and from the garden than we ever could have imagined. That selfless gardening begins with native plants and local ecosystems.

For more on the butterfly bush vs. native plants debate:

-- The North American Butterfly Association did a feisty spread
-- This ecologist goes deeper than I did above, so you might not like him
-- And I did a post suggesting alternative plants here
-- Maybe if I make you cry about a swallowtail I helped, you'll see where I'm coming from better.

Why I'm Becoming a Native Plant Purist

Because Trans Canada wants to put a pipeline through the Nebraska sandhills and above the Ogalalla Aquifer, and the oil is coming from tar sands which could be worse than mountain top removal mining when it comes to destruction of landscapes.

Because the next generation may not know what a rhino or elephant or polar bear is.

Because the arctic had the lowest recorded levels of summer ice ever.

Because our taxes go to subsidize farmers who can't afford GMO seeds and who plow up marginal prairie in order to cash in on high commidty prices (oh, there's crop insurance too for all this so there's little gamble).

Because we perpetuate a myth about wilderness and nature, about the Midwest, about the yeoman farmer and his family, about American progress.

Because ADHD has been linked to chemicals in our environment and a lack of engagement with outdoor play in places other than soccer fields and playgrounds.

Because racism, sexism, and other intolerance is tied to how we live in nature, what we think of it, how we act toward it directly and indirectly.

Because there's a floating garbage patch the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Because feed lots exist.

Because when we lose wilderness, we lose our cultural, regional, and national identity. We grow a little bit more disconnected from "home" and each other.

Because when I walk my college class across campus not one of them can tell me that's a blue jay in the oak tree calling out. Or that over there it's a robin.

Because being a native plant purist is equivalent on the "crazy" scale to wanting equal rights for minorities, or good healthcare, or fair wages, or a government not owned by massive corporations.

Because the silhouette of a prairie orchid at sunset makes me swoon.

Ludicrous Speed -- Fall Events

I'm not sure where summer went. Fastest one ever. I am certain that it was just last week when I bid farewell to the four classes I was teaching at two colleges, thrilled to have a long 3 month summer to research and finish the first draft of my prairie memoir (I got close, at 85,000 words). Now, the second week of school has ended and my calendar is piled high with events.

I'm on the board of Wachiska Audubon Society, a prairie education and conservation group, and our 40th anniversary gala is this weekend. National Audubon president David Yarnold is speaking, the mayor is giving him an award, we're giving an award to photographer Joel Sartore, and dozens of silent auction items will be up for grabs (including a cool hand-written poem and sketches by Ted Kooser). Yeah, I'm pumped, plus we're sold out at over 230 guests.

9/21 is Twilight on the Tallgrass down at Spring Creek Prairie in Denton, NE from 5-10pm. Just $5 for a lovey evening of events.

9/27 is the Pioneers Park Nature Center's fundraiser, Beer, Brats, and Bison from 6:30-8pm. $25 tickets in advance get you, well, beer, brats, and bison.

9/29 My wife and I will be at one of the last Old Cheney Road farmer's market from 10-2, spreading the words about Monarch Gardens, butterflies, and native plant habitat.

And either on 9/14 or 9/21 I'm going to host a presentation on native plants I like, open my garden for a tour, and sell a very small number of plants. Either of those afternoons, so stay tuned here or on Facebook and I'll hope to see you sometime this month. Prairie on!

Why Do Garden Designers Resist Native Plant Landscapes?

If you've been reading this blog since early July, you know how I feel about native plants and ecosystems, about what we're doing to the planet and to ourselves.

Gardening with native plants is a moral imperative. Period. A lot of landscape designers and architects who've been in the business much longer than me often decry my plea for all or mostly native plant landscapes. I tend to have a knee jerk reaction that makes me wonder how stuck in the mud they are.

• "It can't be done where I live"
• "There just aren't enough choices"
• "My clients would never go for it"

Aren't landscape designers also educators by nature? Don't clients often simply defer to their judgement and knowledge? And why can't we dream big? What happened to the desire to change the world for the better? Isn't that one of the core tenants of gardening, of wanting to be a gardener, of designing landscapes? If our human vision for a better world fails here in the garden with those who have the greatest environmental imgaination, it fails everywhere. The way we design a garden is the way we live, our beliefs given form. It's time to draw a line in the garden -- just as we'd expect it drawn for healthcare, green energy, poverty, etc, all issues directly related to our environmental footprint.

So, how many of you landscape designers would lose work if you suggested / pushed more native plants? How much work would you lose? Some say compatible and well-behaved exotics are fine and necessary to use along with natives in order to increase the pallet and diversity -- but do we know when an exotic will become invasive? Do we have proof that it is as beneficial to wildlife, especially pollinating insects (for nectar AND as a host plant)? We'd have to have a plant by plant case study, probably county by county too, but there is much research pointing to the fact larvae need native plants as hosts, and that adult insects have as much of an evolutionary tie to the leaves as they do with the nectar and the flower shapes that draw them in. And that's just what's happening above the soil surface.

So without knowing a plant fully (or predicting the future), how can we responsibly suggest these to clients? How can we garden with ALL of the wildlife in mind or the nearby ecology, a holistic gardening that goes beyond just our artistic ideal and vision, and begin to combine how we see a landscape with what it really is and was before colonization and houses and roads and telephone poles, and how it responsibly rebuilds what we've pushed to the brink and insures a healthy future? Designing with natives is a test of our ethics; we are often bankrupt in that regard. We are lucky to live in a country where environmental destruction is relatively recent -- there are still patches, echoes of native wildness we can take a cue from; they call out to us like someone being carried away in a flash flood. Thousands of species go extinct globally each year, most as a direct result of our action, or inaction.

Gardening can no longer be about aesthetics alone, and this move must start with designers and architects. There is a massive and burgeoning desire to garden locally (it ties into the local food movement) -- plants raised within a nearby radius, plants grown from open-pollinated seed collected within that same radius, plants not sprayed with pesticides. When we begin to garden like this, we know our place more, we connect, we thrive, we care about our home. We live better. Maybe our kids will, too. Suddenly, community means something more. All of the above must be at the center of landscape design in the 21st century, and if it isn't, we aren't designing right.

Sure, gardening with natives may not be as easy, as pie-in-the-sky wonderful, as silver bullet as some make it out to be. And this is where the coaching / teaching on the part of the designer comes in. A gardener must always take an active part in any landscape, native or not, and when they do only then does gardening become easier:

• The right plant in the right spot
• Learning to identify good bugs vs bad
• Allowing for insects and plants to decide their own fates in beds and boarders
• Letting drought tolerant plants go dormant
• Not freaking out when something does not suit our cosmetic ideal, but learning with nature

These are things landscape designers should be teaching their clients -- homeowners or cities or businesses. Maybe our idea of a garden needs to change; perhaps you can't have a meadow look in New Mexico, just like you can't have lawn, so let's design to local flora and fauna and educate about that locale. If you moved to the southeast you should expect to design for that environment, not New England's. How can we teach to this? If a garden is simply artifice, an outdoor HGTV room, a painting on the wall -- or something to appease local standards and create the illusion of intent (hello 'Karl Foerster' grass and daylilies and barberry in staggered rows) -- then gardens are failures of our imagination and humanity.

Maybe we're afraid to face ourselves in our landscapes because we know the implications of our hand in nature, we know what's going on, and to garden in a different way means accepting that how we usually garden may be problematic (to say the least). But how else do you grow? Is gardening with natives really any different than being kind to each other, taking care of ourselves, paying it forward, or ensuring future human freedoms by protecting the planet that sustains us? Of course not.

Gardening with natives is something any landscape designer needs to get on board with and get clients into -- gently or vigorously. Now. We can't just talk about simple maintenance issues or aesthetics, we must go beyond and talk about the health of our planet and our families, clean water, carbon sequestration, helping specific local wildlife, backup ecological systems (redundancy), about nature deficit disorder causing increased mental health issues in children. I do not see how any of these subjects is separate in a designed landscape. Every time we consult with clients the discussion should be as much about the design as the moral implications of that design. This is a new, brave paradigm we desperately need, and it will expand our creativity as landscape managers and engage our clients in more meaningful ways.

We can help each other live and garden better, or we can keep making excuses and shooting holes in the idea of gardening with natives, but the core issues still remain -- our planet is sick, so are we, we have caused it, and we can do something about it. It's simply irresponsible and short-sighted in this day and age, given what we know, to design with an extensive use of non native plants (or lawns and impermeable hardscapes). If designing with native plants is restrictive then our landscape professionals have had a failure of education or imagination, and maybe even hope in the medium they use.

Re-Prairie Lincoln

Prairie is my home. Nebraska is my home. Yet there is so little prairie. Therefore I feel homeless. I finally began to articulate this idea the last few days as I've prepped tonight's Ignite Lincoln talk. I have less connection to this ground precisely because so much of its ecology is not local. I can't begin to make Lincoln my home without prairie, but everything we do works hard to destroy the last of the prairie spaces (and certainly not to restore much of it). So I begin to loathe the place, I get angry, I get depressed, I shut down, and then I lash out. And then I dig. Toss seed out my car window. Ignite.

I'm Speaking at Ignite Lincoln

Ok folks. I'm one of 16 people speaking on 8/29, from 7:30-9:30, at Ignite Lincoln. We each have 5 minutes and 20 slides to make you laugh, cry, or get angry. I chose the latter. My topic will be "Re-Prairie Lincoln."

All proceeds benefit a local nonprofit, so get your ticket here.

I've been a bit nervous already -- the largest group I've talked to is about 100, twice, but this could be hundreds, even a thousand. Will I ignite a flame in you, or perform spontaneous combustion on stage when the spotlight hits me? Come find out! It'll be a blast. (oh, stop the puns.)

Our New Acreage

I like to torture myself -- but also dream. If you can imagine the thing, you can make it happen.

There is a fairly ideal acreage for sale in Prairie City, IA, which is 30 minutes east of Des Moines. It is also just 2 miles south of the 5,500 acre Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, where prairie and sedge meadows are being restored along with bison. What a link we could have with them educationally and ecologically.

Here are 80 acres we can't afford, and what I'd do with it if we had another $150,000 - $200,000.

The red lines are the rough property edges, and the yellow lines are future additions to start the business and outreach programs we propose.

1 -- Possible sites for artists residencies that would be off the gird and self supported. We'd only be able to start out with 1, but I hope for 2 or even 3 down the road. Each would be about 200-300 square feet with an efficiency style space -- bed, desk, kitchen, bathroom, covered porch.

2 -- A newer barn already exists for storage / education space. Outside a hoop house or greenhouse would be built, with a parking lot off the main driveway.

3 -- There's a neat little chunk to the east across the road. I picture this as a formal in-the-ground, in rows, prairie plant cultivation area -- for seed gathering or roots.

4 -- A current 50% finished house stands. The space could be used as temporary housing or as an event space for weddings, meetings, etc. It's plumbed for four baths with four bedrooms. The view to the north off the covered porch is stunning, looking down the slope of a long prairie field.

5 -- Our future permanent home -- passive solar design, using grey water, off the grid, etc.

6 -- My future writing shed

7 -- Destination / test garden (1/2 acre)

The fields are in hay right now. There is a creek. So, there you go -- me playing around.

3 Monarch Caterpillars

It's the latest I've ever gone by well over a month, but found three eggs on Asclepias sullivantii and brought them in. I thought for sure I'd have none this year, after I raised 25 in 2012, 150 in 2011, and 200 in 2010. If it weren't for Liatris ligulistylis, I'm sure I wouldn't have any monarchs dashing through the garden.

People call me a "nativist" and "native plant purist," and my defense is sitting in a plastic container on the kitchen table. Morality just emerged from an egg casing. Bite me -- and the milkweed.

My Other Garden Writing

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, my articles below will be redundant to you, but I wanted to share with you the writing I'm doing in other places that connects to what I do here.

I recently began expanding my writing at Houzz, and my fist foray was a piece entitled "3 Ways Native Plants Make Gardening Better." You know how I feel about using native plants -- it's a moral imperative going far beyond simple aesthetics. This piece practically went viral on Facebook, much to my shock (and my editor's). Very cool. My thanks to all who shared it! I hope you'll follow me at Houzz as I write on native plant combinations, butterfly gardening, and other ways to garden for the environment and with nature.

At Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens I'm confronting a crisis as I look out over my garden -- is it really native? Lots of cultivars and hybrids that I wonder might not be as attractive or beneficial to wildlife.

On my Facebook group page Milk the Weed, I shared a story yesterday of a black swallowtail female, battered and nearly wingless, who was flapping all over the ground. I lifted her to some fennel and got a few eggs out of her before she became exhausted. I thanked her, told her I'd look after her eggs. I was honored. 

And here are gratuitous pics of a bumblebee on wild senna and my garden. :)

Dream Talking Out Loud

Last week my wife and I visited an acreage for sale that's 20 minutes west of Lincoln. It's 80 acres of rolling land, with two tree stands, some CRP restored prairie, some hay, some corn. I'm not saying I want to move there -- the massive power lines are a health concern and eyesore -- but I'm trying to imagine myself living in such a space. And if I imagine, perhaps the reality of it is that much closer.

I liked the land because of the CRP, because it has differing terrain, because it adjoins a wildlife management area and small lake. It felt private. In a lot of ways it's perfect. In a lot of ways it isn't -- like the half million dollar price tag with no structures; that's what you get for being close to a larger city in prime farming country.

My thinking has always been to have multiple incomes: our prairie plant nursery would be open on long weekends during the spring and summer, and the plants I grow would be winter sown in a hoop house, not coddled in a heated nursery. But it takes time to build stock in such a way. And I don't have a horticulture or business degree -- I have three English degrees. At least I've done some marketing in my life and know how to spell.

I imagine an enclosed learning space for workshops and presentations, perhaps it could be picturesque enough to host weddings inside, or host that outside in the open or under some sort of shelter. I imagine two artists residencies that are 300 square feet, have a kitchen and bath, are completely off grid. They'd be further out into the acreage to provide solitude and serenity for a two week period. We'd drive residents into town for supplies (or provide them before arrival), and let artists raid our vegetable garden.

I'd still be doing garden consulting -- hopefully more than I am now, since folks apparently stop thinking about plants after July 1. Ideally I could teach English classes at a nearby college to tide us over in the winter months.

I'd like our home and buildings to all be off the grid, or at least 50% so. We'd harvest rainwater, use grey water outside. We'd host prairie walking tours, educational events, immersion programs for kids and adults but with some sort of unique twist. Maybe we'd sell plants at farmer's markets and other events.

Where does one do this? Where are tax laws favorable? Where are incentives for renewable energy best? Where is a community that would be open and supportive of these business ideas? Where is there affordable land, with part of it preferably already in CRP? How does one raise capital without the weight of loans and mortgages?

And then I wonder about my mental health. I've long wanted to "be out there," away from suburbia, in a place I can wander and explore at will. I need copious amounts of solitude and silence to remain even moderately balanced and healthy. I crave diversity in what I put my hands to (as does my wife). Would I turn into a mountain man and vanish? Would I feel more centered and grounded? Would I feel lost? Would I feel whole?

Could the acreage have a writing shed for me? Could I write books that would mean something? Sell? Provide another source of income, from royalties and readings and conferences?

I know a few things -- if I had the money I'd move today (no brainer); if I don't do this, I might regret it my whole life; if I do it, and go bankrupt, I'll regret that, too. Anyone out there have experience with this sort of thing? Any specific or philosophical advice for a guy in his late thirties?

I feel like folks think I'm crazy when I talk like this -- they immediately come up with reasons not to do any of these things. It's all so big and dream-riddled. But isn't that what cool people do? Muir. Leopold. Carson. Thoreau. So many more. 

Prairie Rescue

Last week I was invited to a surprising space in the country club area of Lincoln, a typical older home on a small lot. As one would expect in this portion of town, each home nestled among mature tree-lined streets has perfectly manicured landscapes full of lush green lawn. Certainly picturesque, and certainly high maintenance and of less value to wildlife.

When I stepped around back of a home on 30th street, made my way around the secluded sidewalk hugging a detached garage, I was amazed at the backyard. A sunny expanse of around 1,500' filled with blooming prairie flowers.

You don't often see this sort of thing. So alive, so colorful, so lush -- more of a perfect pairing with the architecture of the home than the lawn next door. Insects were literally dancing on the horizon of petals. The coneflowers were certainly going bananas. And milkweed! Everywhere! God save the fledgling monarch butterfly! This space is at least five years old, and you can see how happy it is, established and doing its prairie thing well (though the flowers have shaded out the few shortgrasses I saw).

I was invited here by the landscaper hired to tidy up and prepare the space so the house could be put up for sale, but the homeowner is inclined to mow it down, spray it, and sod over this wildlife mecca. With dwindling populations of monarch butterflies, and other pollinating insects that give us 70% of our food, I can't imagine this space being anything other than a literal oasis. And no lawn means no mowing or fertilizing or wasting water.

Yes, it needs some tlc. A pathway through the flowers would give it some structure; a mulched or paved seating area / patio near the back door (instead of a formal iris bed) would make it a welcoming outdoor space to sit in and absorb the atmosphere; and on the west side behind the garage underneath tall trees is an opportunity for a shade or meditation garden with sculpture or a water feature. But all those things would be pointless without the mini meadow.

I saw wild quinine. I never see wild quinine in home landscapes. My prairie nerd radar was beeping like crazy. These plants filter groundwater, improve soil fertility, are adapted to the boom / bust cycles of Nebraska drought, bring in tons of wildlife, and need attention only in early spring when they should be cut down or burned. If you know of anyone interested in a home with some good prairie landscape bones, I can hook you up -- the place is alive and thriving.

Musings

I've been in a musing mood this week on my personal Facebook page, and thought, hey, I'll share them here -- because sometimes leftovers taste better when they have a day or two to soak in the fridge.


Tell me, is there anything more wonderful than walking the garden path as bees, wasps, moths, and butterflies travel parallel alongside? They are like close friends keeping you company in the silent cacophony of a morning meandering. Wake the world. Break into blossom.

Watching bumblebees on the sunflowers out my office window. Their flights from bloom to bloom are erratic to me, yet I know they are simply feeling their way to the next flower -- ultraviolet light on petals, oppositely charged pollen. And just as I was typing this a goldfinch landed on a bud and began stabbing at something (eating ants?). A black-capped chickadee also landed and the two birds flapped and screamed at each other a few moments until the chickadee retreated. The finch soon flew off to another sunflower, then toward the garden, allowing the chickadee to come back. Plant sunflowers by your windows!

Cicadas remind me of August 1995 when I was scared out of my mind arriving for college in Indiana. It was so hot and my dorm had no a/c. I spent hours outside alone on a bench or drove to a park, and the cicadas pierced their echo into my heart while I cried, longing to be home again. I feel that anxiety today as I hear the cicadas in Nebraska, but I also feel the hope and excitement of later years, of growing up and becoming myself -- which must be the most frightening thing any of us can do. I can't wait to meet my college freshman in a month and help them (and push them to the place / people they will become).

It's that time of year when one has to be careful walking the garden; invisible threads of spider anchor lines cross in the least expected places. How do they drape these webs seemingly out in the middle of nowhere? Their silk is many times stronger than kevlar, holds droplets of dew that sparkle like flat chandeliers, then tear apart as the morning winds strengthen. Hunger. Purpose. Design. Loss. Repeat. Everything that we are a spider was long before.

Wheat Harvest -- From the Memoir

I remember climbing the imposing, vertical ladder of the combine to reach the cab when I was about eight. The slick, sun-baked green paint, the shallow, dimpled treads where my feet easily slipped out, the wide spacing of the steps, the fear I’d fall and break my neck. I made it to the top and kneeled on the small deck, afraid of heights, as my dad sat waiting in the driver’s seat. Inside, the floor was dusty, the air stale, sweet, and hot. An oversized red water jug sat sweating beside the steering column. Looking out from the cab I imagined myself falling into the head, being torn to pieces, sucked up into the giant machine, then spewed out from the elevator into a grain truck.

I sat on my dad’s lap, or more accurately, stood between his legs in front of him. He reached one hand around me to turn the key and start the combine, which shook and whirred until the seat and glass vibrated like a prop plane. With the other hand he put the combine into gear, grabbed the wheel gently, and moved us away from the parked pickup truck over an expanse of stubble. We bounced along quickly, the head swaying in echo to the cab. When Dad finally lined us up for a first pass of the remaining wheat, he lowered the hydraulic head which began spinning, adding more vibration and pulse. When he nudged us into the wheat a loud hum rushed underneath us as the seed moved up toward the thresher and into the hunchback bin of the combine, the chaff violently shooting out the back. 

We seemed to move slower than I thought we would – driving a combine is methodical, hot, organ-jarring work. Even as the air conditioner made things more tolerable, I could smell the sweat and dirt on my dad’s button down work shirt. “Do you want to steer?” he asked me. I wasn’t sure. Could I drive this big monster? Would it let me?

He shifted in his seat, nudging me closer to the wheel set out before me like a carnival game, and I spread out my young arms to grasp both sides. He kept a few fingers on one corner, and sometimes when I let the combine stray a few inches, he’d put a few more fingers on the wheel and straighten us out – this happened a few times each minute until he finally pulled me back toward him, fully grasping the wheel to make a 90 degree turn. “You did pretty well,” he’d encourage me. “Want to try again once I straighten out?”

The cabin filled with the dry dust of harvest that you cannot see, but can taste on your tongue and feel lining your nostrils. It’s cigar sweet and dirt dry, this smell, this sustenance. The reel rolled over and around the wheat with a lunging embrace, then tore it from under pushing it into the cutting bar with a sort of split personality. I knew we were farmers, especially in June, but the rest of the year I was certain we were not. My dad built houses, my mom ran a toy store, I went to school, we lived in a nice house in town along a creek. I was not a farmer, nor would I ever be one. And yet the memory is like a second skin, stuck to the underside of my body but above the muscle. Every move I make in a field or my garden calls upon the echo of this memory in my blood – that when I was a child my dad and I sat in a combine for a little while, made passes over the hot, flat land until the bin was full enough to bring me back to the pickup, and then home.

The Activist Garden Sign is Up

I actually felt nervous digging this in, wondering if neighbors will be offended, what someone might say, if it will be vandalized for what it says or just because it's there. But I had to say something. I have this learning lab out back that no one sees. I had to do something. What do you think?

I've found, and assumed, that those living in new subdivisions like mine are much more militant about what landscapes should look like -- namely, lawn, lawn, lawn, and a few super bland foundation plants so close to the house wall you're not sure if they're painted on or not. Go into town, in older neighborhoods, and there's more variety. Of course, that lack of uniformity means someone might have a moldy couch out front, an RV that never moves, or plastic flamingos in various colors.

I planted the sign with aromatic aster, rudbeckia hirta, stiff goldenrod, and blue sage. I'd like to find some sideoats grama grass (for some reason my seeds never germinated this year).

We'll see. Go bold or go cold.

Suicidal Lawns

I live in a young suburban development, and most of the houses have nothing but lawn right up to the foundation walls. A few homes have thin planting beds filled with the following overused, non-native, big box junk plants: barberry, hosta, spiraea, boxwood, rose (that's right, I went there), japanese maple (good luck in zone 5), and a host of others. These plants do very little to nothing for native wildlife.

I have a neighbor who just yesterday essentially scalped his lawn, making the burned areas more burned looking as we face five weeks without rain and temps in the 90s. Another neighbor mows 3 times a week no matter the weather. Sprinkler zones run 20 short minutes at a time around 4pm in the hottest and windiest part of the day, clouds of mist wafting on to the street to evaporate. But any passing pedestrians do get a nice pick me up.

Lawns aren't completely stupid -- if you have younger kids that need a play space, go for it. Lawns also provide negative space in landscape design, a place for the eye to rest. But lawns are ecological dead zones. Lawns are helping us destroy our planet. Lawns don't create a positive environmental impact (please, shut up before you talk about lawns aiding carbon sequestration or cooling -- stop trying to defend your antiquated thinking and comparing a lawn to prairie or woodland).

An entrance to a local park -- a mile or two in is some prairie.

Doug Tallamy notes bird species are down 50% in the last few decades, primarily as their habitat -- and habitat for the insects they eat -- is eroded by our blind insanity. Further:

"We’ve come to see plants as decorations,” adds Tallamy. Turf is one of those plants. Lots with lawns don’t clean water, don’t provide clean air, and don’t support wildlife. Developed spaces are trying to borrow ecosystems services from elsewhere, but there is no “other place” where these ecosystem services are produced. “Our yards support very little biodiversity because they were not designed to do that,” says Tallamy. “We can save nature if we learn to live with nature." (full article here)

Last night I saw a promo on the local news -- 5 steps you can take to help the environment. You know what it sounded like? Like being environmentally aware is equivalent to holding a door for someone, volunteering at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, a hobby that makes you feel better -- a craft project. I'll tell you what helping the environment really is: 5 steps to not kill your kids.

Our current great monoculuture is lawn. Slathered in chemicals we absorb and that lead to birth defects, developmental disorders, cognitive disorders, cancer.... The CDC tested 1,000 people for some 20 common pesticides and found 13 in their systems. That's not just lawn, of course, that's what we eat. I always wonder what we drag into our house on the bottom of our shoes -- what babies then crawl through.What pets roll in.

Acreages near Lincoln. AKA deadzone-ville.

Lawn does not help biodiversity. Lawn does not filter ground water (like a prairie does). Lawn is us exerting our will on the planet and being sheep -- but oh, if only we ate our grass like good sheep instead of spewing out toxic mower exhaust that leads to lung diesease and hypertension and hearing loss. One hour of mowing is equivalent to driving a car 100 miles when it comes to exhaust emissions; I've heard estimates several times that, though.

Last year's drought decimated pollinating insects -- and if you don't garden for pollinating insects, you don't garden right. Period. They are the base of the food chain for most life. Honeybee colonies are vanishing to a point where we can't keep up with food production, and now we must turn to native bee populations which are many times more efficient, pollinating a greater diversity of flowers and more of them. But native bee populations are also being decimated.

"I just wish there were more incentives for people — not just farmers — to plant a more diversified landscape that provides nutritional resources for all kinds of pollinators," says the UIUC Entomology Department chair. "Plant more flowers! And be a little more tolerant of the weeds in the garden." And not just in the garden, but in agricultural fields where prairie strips heal the soil and create better yields -- same could happen in your landscape if you have veg and cut out as much lawn as you can.

Tax dollars hard at work -- and look at those CO2 emissions.

Less lawn. Less plants that are more like statues, and more plants that are like fireworks displays or supernovas -- shooting off fragments of life, creating life, having a purpose beyond ourselves. Lawns aren't REALLY places for kids to play since there's nothing there: no fireflies (need leaf litter for them), no butterflies, no flowers, no sticks, no trees, no places to hide, no places to explore, no places to develop an imagination that makes kids smarter, more confident, and healthier. And beyond that, every school, k-12, should have a large garden space where kids in every subject area work: art, music (if we haven't cut those programs), math, science, history. We're creating a population that relies on drugs instead of nature to heal our mental, emotional, and physical ills. It's insane!

Being environmentally conscious (by having less lawn) is not a hobby -- it's a way to stave off suicide. It's a way to protect your kid's future. It's a way to live more fully. Walk across a lawn, then walk through a meadow -- the difference is emotionally palpable. When explorers first came into the Great Plains prairies there were two reactions: one seeing it as a desert, one seeing it as an eden. Lewis and Clark counted hundreds of fish species when they tossed out a single net into the Missouri river, and hundreds of wildflower species on the banks, with deer and antelope bounding across the plain. Others saw the vast horizon of monotonous grass as having nothing, no value, no life -- but in actuality this is the American lawn, our simplified, knock-off version of English aristocracy that has killed America. It's also not a space that creates a park-like feel in suburbia, or brings humans together like 19th century landscape architects professed; lawn separates us from the earth and ultimately from the ones we hold most dear. Lawn is a gentle, slow suicide.

Yup, that's my lawn. And my 1,500' non-spray-anything garden.

*I want to point out I have lawn -- 2/3 of my backyard is lawn. If I had an extra $500 I'd till it up and seed it in prairie. If local ordinances allowed anything above 6" the front yard would be gone, too. But I tell you this: I don't water lawn in the middle of the day. I don't even fertilize it. I let it burn up in August and watch it green up like moss in fall and spring. I mow once a month, if that. You can tell me I have no right to criticize lawns when I have plenty of it, but it doesn't make what I said above any less true. Why is Los Angeles paying residents $2 a square foot to rip out their lawn? Because lawns shouldn't be in arid LA -- just as they shouldn't be in great portions of North America (like Nebraska). And they certainly shouldn't be maintained with petrochemicals that poison us, our kids, our pets, with fertilizers that emit greenhouse gases as they sit in the lawn and as they are produced with oil and water. Lawns are as sustainable as a flamethrower-armed zombie apocalypse. Without greater diversity in our landscapes we are all doomed, doomed I tell you -- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

Come Talk (and Hold) Butterflies

Monarch Gardens, my native plant garden coaching business, will have an educational tent at two farmer's markets this month, August, and September. As the season goes on I hope to actually have monarchs, but right now it's all black swallowtails. Come play a game and win a prize, see native wildflowers that attract insects, touch a caterpillar, and learn about organic butterfly gardening.

7/21 -- 10am-2pm -- Old Cheney Road Farmer's Market

8/8 -- 4:30-8pm -- Fallbrook Farmer's Market

9/8 -- 10am - 2pm -- Old Cheney Road Farmer's Market

Happy Birthday to Me and the Garden, 2013

Time for my annual self love festival. It's always amazing to see how the garden looks from year to year on the same date, and to do it here on the blog for easy reference (here's a 16 month daily timelapse vid). The 1,500' garden started in July 2007, and looked decent in 2009, then came into its own in 2010. Since then, each year plants shift, fade away, reseed and come back. Natives crowd out non natives, because in the early days I did not know what I was doing (fyi, come get my iris next month please). So, let's go on a tour in pics, then at the end I'll have a link to a video tour.

Purple prairie clover is busy this year

Liatris are pretty neat pre bloom, too

Mourning dove momma and youngin' in grape arbor

And a short video tour:

If you're in or near Omaha tonight, 7/15, I'll be speaking at the monthly meeting of the Plattsmouth Garden Club at the First United Methodist Church on Main Street in Plattsmouth. 6:30pm. I'll have books for sale. Bring cake.

My wife and I will also be at the Old Cheney Farmer's Market in Lincoln on Sunday 7/21 with, hopefully, butterflies and caterpillars, info on native plants, native plant examples, pictures, other fun stuff for kids (and maybe adults who act like kids). Look for the Monarch Gardens tent.

And might I direct your attention to the photography gallery slideshow on the right? You can purchase my photos (better ones than the above) and print them lots of cool ways.

Otherwise, birthday wish list remains much the same:
1) 50-100 acres somewhere on the eastern Plains, complete with a passive 100% off the grid home, two artist residencies, shed for speaking / teaching / events / education, small native plant nursery.
2) Book deal for any of my memoirs, Morning Glory or Turkey Red, or maybe something rant-ish on native plants.
3) A job this fall. Preferably teaching.
4) More speaking gigs. More garden consults.