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carumens · 6 years

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sunflowers at night snippet: valba’s and gerah’s first real convo

longer excerpt because i wrote literally 0 words on the first day of nano (this is self-indulging i know). just a tip, listen with the song i linked because it captures the mood perfectly and it’s just a song in replay in my head rn.

tagging: @kit-tells-a-story @annaalexiswrites @katabasiss @omgbrekkerkaz@aetheriium @sleepyscribbling @katherinescribbles @naturallysweetnloaded@maskedlady @writing-kimmi @endymions @chellewrites @the-ichor-of-ruination @breakingpointwip @cosmo-worlds @theforgottencoolkid @florhiver@jess—writes @nexiliss @easypreywip @brekkerings@saintephemeral @crimescenedwrites

https://youtu.be/OtFRcJpzEwA

Gerah Mayham was a strange creature. Spoiled only child born rich who felt irrationally wretched for having to wear slacks and dress shoes all the time. His whining was a silent one, never a word of discomfort leaving his mouth in front of his parents, the only sign of his restlessness being the sullen looks he sent his own clothes. Apparently, he’d declared war on using more than one type of fork when eating and was often reprimanded by Mrs. Mayham because there are different types of cutlery for a reason, Gerah.

Valba had discovered a heap of ragged hoodies, ripped jeans and battered sneakers behind a thorny bush that was far away enough from the house to be considered out of bounds from her jurisdiction, but the Mayham was nowhere to be found and she didn’t want to lose her job on the first day. Well, maybe she wouldn’t mind losing that particular job, but her father wouldn’t be happy if she did. Valba picked up one of the shaggy tee shirts and crinkled her nose at the mud and grass stains covering the white fabric. So it’s true, she thought.

A rumor had been circulating the village for some years now, that Gerah Mayham bought old almost-rubbishy clothes from the boys in the village, seemingly oblivious to their curious and sometimes enraged expressions when he approached them to offer money for their rags. Because he only bought rags, the kind Valba wore to work on the land or Tom Sanders used the days he had to clean the stables. She didn’t give too much credit to the gossip always pumping through Romello but from time to time a rumor was in fact a truth, and it seemed this was one of those times.

Valba sighed, dropped the muddled shirt and turned around, a hand coming up to shade her eyes as she scanned the vast green expanse surrounding Mayham Manor. She could see the gravel path that led to the village, the same path she had taken a few days ago to officially meet the Mayhams before she got hired— “Just a formality, love, I already talked to Mrs. Mayham myself,” her mother had said. “But it’d be good if you went by and presented yourself to them.” Behind Mayham Manor, the world looked like a crazy puzzle, as if a god couldn’t quite decide if he wanted a prairie or a forest, irregular patches of green and yellow grass suddenly cut out by a stubborn of high pine trees. Just like that, no gradualism, no creeping appearance of bushes and trees, just a sudden firm line separating the meadow from the woods—an ovation to saltationism.

There weren’t any more places where Gerah Mayham could have gone. Valba had looked everywhere, every room inside labyrinthic Mayham Manor, every crevice and potential hiding place in the immense garden. Five minutes, that’s what it had taken her to go to the bathroom, five minutes and Gerah was nowhere to be found. He tends to disappear, Mrs. Mayham had said, just keep an eye on him, he has a few health problems. That was her job: easy, simple, less demanding than she had thought it would be. When she arrived at the Mayhams a few days before, she thought she would be working as maid, cleaning endless halls and airing mattresses so they’d be soft and fresh for their rich Mayham owners, or maybe in the kitchen, struggling to cook French and Italian dishes she had not once in her life heard about. In actuality, her job revolved about one simple task: babysitting Gerah Mayham.

“Not babysitting,” Gerah had huffed when she had asked, more out of spite than real incredulity, why would a seventeen-year-old need a nanny to babysit him.

“Not babysitting,” Mrs. Mayham had repeated, a small polite smile plastered on her shiny chocolate face. “Just keep him company. You see—” she had said, sipping from the greenish tea she had served for the three of them. “My husband has had to go back to the city, business matters, and we have decided it would be the best for me to move with him.” There was a trace of a long-gone accent in her words, a quiet slur in the way she pronounced consonants that made Valba think of straw houses and colorful dresses. “Gerah will be staying here, since the school year has already started.”

“Okay,” had said Valba.

“It would be most convenient if you moved here,” Mrs. Mayham had looked at her intently while she spoke. “Not if you do not want to, of course.” Valba knew it was an essential condition for her to get the job, an order, even if it didn’t sound like one.

“What?” Gerah had jerked from the velvety sofa he had been tightly sitting in so suddenly that he dropped the cup of tea he was holding. “You didn’t say anything about her moving in, mom!”

“Well, your dad and I decided it only this morning.”

“But—” he looked at Valba, golden eyes almost popping out of his sockets. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Go change, Gerah, will you?” Mrs. Mayham’s smile looked murderous. “And call Sonya, you have made quite a mess here.”

Then Gerah had walked out of the room, seemingly calm, but Valba could see the clenching in his fists and the slight change in the set of his jaw.

Valba took off her faded espadrilles, dropped them beside Gerah’s puddle of second-hand clothes and started trotting through the high grass towards the clean line of pine trees, her feet feather-light on the dry mud. She loved the feeling of nature pressing against the soles of her feet, memories of infantile eternal summer days threading through the forest, Mark close on her heels, his too-big hands for a nine-year-old threatening with grabbing her and throwing her to the Chrysalis River. Not that being thrown to the river was too big of a trauma—winters were warm in Romello and summers were full-time furnace-hot— but it felt good knowing that not even racy Mark Marks could beat her in speed.

The forest surrounding northern Romello was a strange one: an aleatory turmoil of pines and oaks and weeping willows and wildflowers in every shade and color, bees and wolves and snakes that hid themselves in the fresh foliage, butterflies and rhinoceros beetles and poison ivy, a mind-blowing mix of polar opposites that made Romello seem a little bit more interesting for Valba. The Chrysalis River ran through it, a marvelous stream of crystal clear water and tiny colored fish that shone metallic in the sunlight.

She entered the forest, twigs and sticks snapping under the hardened feet, fingers stopping briefly to caress the bark of a tree or pull at her cotton t-shirt when it got tangled up in a low branch. It didn’t take her too long to find Gerah Mayham sprawling at the edge of the river, trousers rolled up to his knees and feet deep into the glassy Chrysalis’ water and his usually perfectly-combed hair a mess of charcoal tangles. A puff of smoke left his mouth, and as she approached, Valba could see a rather large pile of cigarette butts carelessly forming near the river bank.

“What are you doing?”

Gerah turned around so quickly the cigarette fell from where it was dangling on his lips. “Shit,” he said, as he picked it up before it could scorch even further his already scorched-looking jeans. “How did you find me?”

Valba arched a brow. “You haven’t gone too far.”

“Mom and Dad never found me here,” he said, taking a last drag of his cigarette and putting it out in the wet soil next to him.

“Well, then they’re not very good at looking for things,” said Valba. “Or they didn’t even try.”

Gerah frowned, his dark brows coming together in a way that didn’t seem fitting for him, not that Valba knew him a lot.

“What are you doing?”

“Are you going to tell me not to smoke?” Said Gerah, a tense set to his jaw that seemed somehow out of place for him. Valba didn’t know Gerah Mayham at all, but she remembered punching him in the face, and not even then had he seemed the littlest bit aggressive. He looked different now, she realized, not only because of his haggard looks, but for the vibrating aura around his posture, a wild animal prepared to jump.

“No, your lungs are yours to fuck,” she said. “I’m only gonna tell you not to put off your cigarettes here, because as surprising as it may be, the forest is actually not yours to fuck.”

Gerah sent a side glance to the butt mountain in the mud. “Okay,” he said, and his shoulders sagged visibly.

Valba leaned against the nearest tree and slid down, the rough bark scratching her skin, her bare feet creating muddy indents in the fresh soil. There was something, Valba didn’t quite know what, about the stillness of the forest that calmed down even the roughest of her edges, all thoughts about her life debt to Gerah Mayham almost forgotten. It was such a contrast with the bustling life inside the village, all whispers and shouts and overload of information.

“I don’t need you monitoring me,” said Gerah, his iridescent eyes trained on her.

Valba held his gaze. “Your parents seem to differ on that matter,” she said.

“Fuck you, you don’t need to be here.”

“Actually, I do. Because I need the money. Not that I expect you to understand what need is.”

Gerah dropped his eyelids, white teeth coming out to chew on his lower lip. He started fiddling with the cigarette butts, and Valba thought she could see something changing in him. His shoulders relaxed, and he leaned slightly backwards to rest on his elbows, the edges of his coal-rimmed lashes softening into something akin to curiosity. Suddenly, he was the dumbstruck boy that had stuttered at her a year before all over again, when she punched him in the face after he pushed her off the road and weakly demanded a “thank you” in exchange.

“Were you born here in Romello?” He asked, and Valba felt, much to her dismay, her own eyebrow raising in amusement.

“Born and raised,” she answered.

He looked at her, expectant, as if waiting for Valba to ask something to him in return, and frowned slightly, his nose furrowing childishly, when he realized it wasn’t happening anytime soon.

“I was born here, too,” he said. “But mom’s from Spain. I’d like to go visit someday.”

Valba knew the story: young handsome and promising Nicholas Mayham made an extremely important business trip to Seville where he fell desperately in love with young intelligent and exotic Nerea Murillo, who worked as a touristic guide to pay for her university fees. They married, moved to the United States of America, and after some very happy and dreamy years of marriage, decided to have a child and raise him in the quiet tranquility and safety of a lost village in the mountains, far from America and its cardiac-arresting life. Fairytale-like.

She could almost picture Nerea Mayham in her younger years, caffeinated skin glistening under the Andalusian sun the same way Gerah’s did under the stray rays that perforated the shady canopies of Romello’s forest.

“Your name’s not Spanish, though.” She said. “Nor English.”

Gerah looked up at her from where he was fiddling with the fallen foliage. “No, actually, it means something in Javanese, but it’s not supposed to be a name?” he said. “But they let you name your children however you want nowadays so…”

Valba frowned. “Why Javanese?”

Gerah shrugged. “Mom thought it was fancy.” He shrugged again, as it to clarify that he did not think it was fancy at all. Valba hated to agree with him.

“What does it mean?”

Gerah stared at her, a moment too-long for his ever-shifting gaze. “I don’t know.”

“That’s a lie,” said Valba, leaning forward.

“It’s not,” he said, his eyes stubbornly trained on Valba’s muddy bare feet.

“It is, how would you know it wasn’t supposed to be a name—”

“What do you care?” Gerah bristled, a flash of the boy Valba had found aggressively smoking next to the river some minutes earlier.

Valba leaned back again. “I don’t,” she said.

#im obssessed w rosalias new album #im not sorry #she just captures the atmosphere in san so well #listen to it!!!!#it's called el mal querer #wip: sunflowers at night

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kevinbsharp · 6 years

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Living in Chicago: ESCAPING THE CITY, IN THE CITY. Rediscovering secret Chicago parks.

Rediscovering secret Chicago parks. Oases designed for us by some of the greatest landscape architects of all time.

Living in Chicago, it’s hard to forget that the city is famous for its’ architecture. Those who imagined and reimagined the landscape were visionaries, superstar architects and designers, such as William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, Bruce Graham, William Holabird, and of course, Frank Lloyd Wright. These luminaries made their mark throughout the city. Their vision around us at every turn.

But, we are also a city of parks. I mean, our motto is literally, “City in a Garden,” translated from the Latin, “Urbo Hurti.” And we seem to be guided by it. With a park system made up of an astounding 8,000 acres of open space, wherever you are, an oasis of spectacular beauty and history is never far away.

Chicago has long been on the forefront of landscape architecture. From Jen Jensen’s Prairie-era masterpieces, Frederick Law Olmsted’s iconic lakefront parks, and Daniel Burnham’s masterful city planning, to prolific designers such as Alfred Caldwell and modernist Dan Kiley, our pedigree is long. So, while we are known for being the birthplace of the skyscraper, it’s our city’s park system that is quietly heralded as one of America’s greatest.

It wasn’t always this way. At first we had the motto, but no parks to speak of.

Jackson Park, 1891, before World’s’ Fair in 1893. Courtesy of the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collection.

Necessity is the mother of invention. A quick history –

Not wanting to be overshadowed by the creation of New York’s Central Park, it was in the mid 1800s’ when a group of visionary citizens rallied for the creation of Chicago’s first parks, starting with Lincoln. It was then, in late 1800’s, that the idea of neighborhood parks started to take hold. It was a time of great industrial growth and wealth in the city, along with extreme poverty, families living in overrun and dilapidated tenement houses. These smaller parks were born in large part to serve social purposes, like providing fresh milk, public playgrounds for children to play, or as a place to get a hot meal. They were meant to transform marginalized areas into beacons of civility. Jen Jensen, along with Jane Addams, founder of the Hull House, and other influencers of the time, championed for these public spaces, and went on to identify a series of forest preserves’ across western Chicago that were dedicated to the creation of our first neighborhood parks. They encircled the city in a green band and would come to be known as the Emerald Necklace.

As the 20th century unfolded, Jen Jensen designed four massive neighborhood parks; Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Douglas Park and Columbus Park, while Alfred Caldwell designed The Lily Pond and Dan Kiley followed in the 1960’s with more formal gardens, such as The South Garden. One thing they all valued, was preservation and conservation of the land, and most important, that all citizens had a place to play, rest, meet and organize in an open green space. They felt it was the rights of all citizens to enjoy the city’s parks- and enjoy we do –

“There is nothing so American as our national parks.” Franklin Roosevelt

Bennett Park, One Bennett Park. Related Realty

And now in 2018, with a resurgence in landscape architecture around the city, comes a new generation of world-class designers, like Michael Van Valkenburgh, Carol Ross Barney and Jeanne Gang, helping to shape a Chicago of the future. They are innovative and driven by similar values as Olmsted, Jensen, Caldwell and Kiley before them, designing urban parks and streetscapes, urban trails and playground with an eye towards making our city’s ecosystems healthier and more biodiverse.

“I don’t so much think of a park as an escape from the city as I think of it as an escape in the city.” – Michael Van Valkenburgh , Designer, One Bennett Park

Take a pause between your busy day, amid the trees and gardens of these unique public spaces, gifted to us by our predecessors. It will surely transform your day.

THE LILY POOL Landscape Design by Alfred Caldwell

The sounds of birds singing and waterfalls breaking is just the kind of respite you need from a busy day. Nestled away in Lincoln Park, The Lily Pool is an almost otherworldly space in the middle of the concrete jungle. It was designed in the late 1930’s by Alfred Caldwell. He envisioned a refuge from the city, intending it to resemble “a river meandering through a great Midwestern prairie.” And it does. It remains one of the best examples of prairie-style landscape architecture which was what Caldwell intended. He was inspired by Jen Jensen’s use of the environment. His understanding of sky, the wind, the movement of water and seasons. Chicagoans flocked to the gardens for decades, which eventually took a toll on the space. Caldwell visited near the end of his life. The park, for which, at one time had cashed in his own $5,000 life insurance policy for a measly $250 in order to pay for the gardens much needed perennials, had fallen into deep despair and flowers grew no more. He declared, “It is a dead world.” But with the support of citizens, environmentalists and birdwatchers, artists and the like, The Lily Pool was refurbished in 2000. It is now deemed a National Historic Landmark and Chicago Historical Landmark status.

The Lily Pool, Lincoln Park

The Lily Pool, Lincoln Park 125 W Fullerton Pkwy 773-883-7275 lincolnparkconservancy.org

BENNETT PARK A garden hideaway in the heart of Chicago. As the designer of the celebrated Maggie Daley Park and The 606 Trail in Chicago and Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, world-renowned landscape architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh, appreciates how a park can truly be an escape within a city. He appreciates how a park can truly be “an escape within the city.” At Bennett Park, the idyllic gardens sit alongside two dog runs, meandering pathways, and steps leading to a shady grove. A sense of privacy is ensured with a frame of trees surrounding the park’s outer edge, yet the center of the park, which welcomes the sun, is bright and open. At the core of the park is what Van Valkenburgh calls a “lawn bowl”— an open bowl ringed with small flowering trees that get progressively larger and taller. It’s the perfect gathering place in the center of the 1.7 acre park. This magical area is the perfect place for children. “They can sit under the trees or run freely in this small world,” he says. Van Valkenburgh designed the park so that it will evolve through the seasons, with some trees maximizing their color each fall and others retaining their greenery throughout the year. As a result, the park will maintain a sense of life all year long as the beating heart at the center of One Bennett Park and the broader Streeterville neighborhood.

Bennett Park, Related Realty Bennett Park, One Bennett Park 451 E Grand Avenue onebennettpark.com

THE GARDEN OF THE PHOENIX Landscape Design by Frederick Law Olmsted

There is peace to be found in the lush, Garden of the Phoenix, nestled away on Jackson Parks’ Wooded Island, a true escape in the belly of the city. There is a feeling of otherworldliness in this hidden park, as you walk the gravel paths that wind through several acres of greenery. Although, this feeling is not just due though to the garden’s unique beauty, its’ landscape full of azalea trees, waterfalls, or its intelligent landscape design, which deliberately and perfectly obscures all sight of industry and commerce lurking nearby. But it is also the enormous history of the garden, that has twisted and turned, right along with our own for over a century. The parks website provides a fantastic timeline and history of the park, but it was in the 1930’s that the Japanese Emperor gifted the Phoenix pavilion to the city, reflecting his high hopes for greater understanding and a wish to showcase their nations heritage. Today, Yoko Ono’s Sky Landing sculpture conceived as a call for peace and respect among nations, stands on the spot of the original pavilion.

The Garden of the Phoenix

The Garden of the Phoenix, Jackson Park South Cornell Drive 773-256-0903 gardenofthephoenix.org

THE MONTROSE BIRD SANCTUARY Original Landscape Designed by Alfred Caldwell

Think of it like a stop-over point while travelling the world, a logical landing place for exhausted songbirds. Resting quietly on the shores of Lake Michigan, the Montrose Bird Sanctuary is home to over 300 species of birds and is considered the best bird watching spot in all of Illinois. The Great Lakes are an important area for migratory birds, the open water provides a resting point for them as they travel from one continent to the next. While there are other points in Chicago that are active during spring and fall migrations, it is Montrose Bird Sanctuary, nicknamed “Magic Hedge,” that stands above the rest. In the mid-1930s, Alfred Caldwell created a plan for the area that conveyed what he called a “naturalistic effect” with sweeping meadow spaces and layered native plant materials emphasizing the long view. In the late 1990s, the Chicago Park District undertook an expansion of the habitat for birds while retaining the historic integrity of what was intended, hundreds of trees and shrubs were planted. Thirty years later, this sanctuary is truly well worth discovering for yourself – bird lover or not.

Seagull, Montrose Beach at sunset.

The Montrose Bird Sanctuary 4400 N Simonds Dr 847-433-6901

THE SOUTH GARDEN Landscape Design by Dan Kiley

There is a timeless, simple quality to the South Garden, situated on top of a parking garage, along the Art Institute of Chicago on Michigan Avenue. The honey locust trees hang low, providing the perfect shade for your lunch break, or just to take a quick break from it all. The South Garden was designed and constructed by Dan Kiley between 1962 and 1967. Kiley is considered one of the most influential Modernist landscape architects of the 20th century, and the South Garden one of best commissioned pieces. Kiley believed that man was a “part of nature not separate from it.” Rather than forcing order into the landscape, he ignored obvious man-made boundaries. Nowhere is it any more clear than in The South Garden, which features The Fountain of the Great Lakes, a sculptural fountain from Lorado Taft, created in 1913. It is the centerpiece of the space and an “allegorical sculpture in which the five women are arranged so that the water flows through them in the same way the water passes through the five Great Lakes.”

The Fountain of the Great Lakes, by Lorado Taft – The South Garden, Art Institute of Chicago

The South Garden, Art Institute of Chicago 229 South Michigan Avenue

from Related Chicago – Feed https://ift.tt/2zAFrW4

Living in Chicago: ESCAPING THE CITY, IN THE CITY. Rediscovering secret Chicago parks. published first on https://relatedrealtychicago.wordpress.com

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thebestintoronto · 3 years

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10 Best Toronto Hiking Trails: Amazing Places to Hike in Toronto

Searching for Toronto hiking routes to explore? When Toronto enters your mind, you could picture imposing condo structures, limitless concrete roads, and traffic for days. That's not all there is to the city. There are gorgeous woody parks, tracks via serene woodlands, and also wild animals environments in Toronto.

You can locate many locations to trek in Toronto without leaving the city limits. So, explore your very own neighbourhood or hop on the TTC to discover the best of your own yard. Here are the leading Toronto hiking trails that you need to check out.

Toronto Walking Trails: Scarborough Bluffs

The Scarborough Bluffs are just one of Toronto's not-so-hidden secrets where the high cliffs look right out of England and the waters are blue-green like the Caribbean. It is just one of the very best walking tracks in Toronto, as well as the major path runs for 5 to 6km at the base of the cliffs. The Scarborough Bluffs Route is a very easy ride in between Bluffer's Coastline and also Bluffer's Park You'll appreciate views of the sturdy cliffs, the tranquil waters, and the occasional seabird flying around. It's also feasible to go swimming right here at the little sandy beach throughout the summer.

If you wish to look into the sights from the top of the cliffs, you'll require to increase to Scarborough Crescent Park (the Scarborough Bluffs Lookout). While you could be able to figure out how to climb up the cliffs to the top, I don't suggest it. It's a really ecologically sensitive location, as well as sections of the rocks could offer anytime. To prevent injury to yourself as well as damaging the landscape, please do not forge your very own path approximately the top. If you're caught attempting to raise to the top of the Bluffs, you can encounter a $5000 fine.

Strolling Trails in Toronto at High Park

High Park is just one of one of the most gorgeous areas in Toronto, and the city park has several of the best Toronto treking tracks, as well. While you could have seen High Park for cherry blossom viewings in the spring, there's a lot even more to this natural space that covers a number of city blocks. You might have roamed around Grenadier Fish pond or the Japanese garden, however have you ever gone treking at High Park?

Even though it's a much easier walk through the park, there are several forests and also woody locations within High Park. You'll discover wood woodlands, wildflowers, as well as various types of birds. The High Park Area Path is a loop route around the perimetre of the park, spanning concerning 5km. It's Toronto's "Central Park" on a smaller range. While these Toronto hiking trails aren't difficult or the lengthiest, it's a beautiful trip for a few hours.

Rouge National Urban Park.

Rouge National Urban Park is Canada's first nationwide urban park, and it's a special wilderness setup in the capital city of the district. It integrates remarkable biodiversity and all-natural landscapes with background as well as society of the area. You'll find Toronto's only camping site, substantial marshes, a sandy beach, Carolinian woodland, as well as some of Canada's earliest Aboriginal sites.

When hiking at Rouge National Urban Park, you'll be absolutely spoiled for choice. There are numerous routes of various ranges and troubles. Here is a full listing:

Rouge Marsh Route: A short walking of the largest remaining wetland in Toronto (500 metres).

Pole Route: Explore Carolinian ecosystems on a 200 year old former logging path (2.5 km).

Glen Eagles Panorama Trail: Sights of the Rouge River as well as the Little Rouge Creek (600 metres).

Event Forest Path: A ceremony of neighborhood leaders that aided safeguard as well as produce Canada's first urban national park (500 metres).

View Route: Look into the two level watching system on this route (1.5 km).

Orchard Trail: Woodlands, marshes, and residues of very early European settlements (2km).

Cedar Trail & the Beare Wetlands Loop: Mature woodlands as well as wild animals (1.5-- 4.5 km).

Woodland Path: Forests, meadows, as well as water (4.5 kilometres).

Reesor Method/ Tanglewood Route: A loophole trail of young and also old woodlands and fields (3.3 km).

Monarch Path: Carefully rolling loop route across several habitats (7.6 km).

Tallgrass Trek: Meadows, marshes, and also meadows-- a loop path (3.2 kilometres).

Sentier Route: Shaded forests and wetlands, a household pleasant path (5.1 km).

Prairie Wolf Trail: Pine as well as cedar woodlands, wetlands, fields-- a loophole route (2.9 km).

There's also an application for the park. Trainees at the College of Toronto Scarborough's development hub dealt with Parks Canada to create an app, offered for both iPhone as well as Android gadgets. You can use the app to navigate the hiking trails and also find out about the park's history along the way. It's also feasible to take some digital walks at Rouge National Urban Park prior to you took off.

Don Valley Brickworks Park & Moore Park Abyss.

The Don Valley Brickworks Park is a 40 acre park on a former quarry including treking trails and also surroundings of the Toronto horizon. This is among the best hikes in Toronto since you're not as well much from the city, there are woody tracks with prospective wild animals discoveries, as well as you can even pop by Evergreen Brickworks, too. There's a tiny cafe on website, a farmer's market on Saturdays, as well as an artisan market on Sundays.

While the whole loop of the Don Valley Brickworks hiking trail is just about 2.4 kilometres, it's easy to extend your walk with the Don Valley from here. Advance the Beltline Trail north or southern, or hike along the Lower Don River Path. You can even do a whole loophole of the Moore Park Abyss continuing on to David Balfour Park. Look into my walking overview to the Moore Park Ravine.

Hiking in Toronto at Crothers Woods.

The trails at Crothers Woods are among the very best places to hike in Toronto that in fact link with the previously mentioned Evergreen Brickworks Path. The Crothers Woods loophole route is 6.6 km and also runs along the edge of the Don Valley. If you're mosting likely to stroll on the Crothers Woods loop route, the hiking course begins at a supermarket with a big car park (so you can park there).

Despite the fact that there's a shopping centre and a neighboring freeway, you'll be delivered to the middle of serene nature within no time, virtually failing to remember that you remain in the city in any way. Nonetheless, you might stumble upon some legendary city sky line views on the journey that are a happy reminder that you're experiencing the nature of this terrific city.

Warden Woods (Gus Harris Path).

Warden Woods includes the Gus Harris Trail (called for a former mayor of Scarborough) in the eastern end of the city. It's a 3.2 kilometres out as well as back track that's really simple to access. The Gus Harris Route is just one of the very best walking routes in Toronto. It's an easy walk via the woods, there's a pretty abyss, and also a river going through it.

You can conveniently reach it from the train stations (Warden or Victoria Park) or there's great deals of car park on domestic roads. Although you could need to tolerate some city sound on the path, there's likewise the tranquil noises of birds chirping as well as the gentle circulation of the river that makes it all rewarding.

Tommy Thompson Park (Leslie Road Spit Trail).

The Leslie Road Spit Path at Tommy Thompson Park is just one of the leading Toronto treking routes. While you may discover old building and construction debris on parts of the route, it's a great instance of exactly how nature is beginning to recover it all. The whole loop trail has to do with 11km in length, although there are a couple of various courses to take within Tommy Thompson Park.

First, there's a multi-use trail expanding from the landmass as well as out towards the water. This is a flat, paved surface about 5km in length in between the park entry and also the lighthouse at the end. There are 2 pedestrian tracks with a level or smooth crushed rock surface area, meant for pedestrians just. Then, there's the nature path (3.3 kilometres) featuring a natural surface area that runs alongside the multi-use trail. As this park is a habitat for wild animals (10 types of owls are understood to live below), family pets are not permitted in the park.

Humber Bay Park East & Humber Bay Park West.

Humber Bay Park is a beachfront park in Toronto's west end (Etobicoke) near where the Humber River meets Lake Ontario. Specifically, the parks are right where Mimico Creek streams into the lake. This environment-friendly area is divided into 3 parks: Humber Bay Park West, Humber Bay Park East, and Humber Bay Shores Park. There are hiking trails at all three parks and they're several of the best strolling trails in Toronto.

The Humber Bay Park West Path is a 1.9 kilometres out and also back trail that offers lovely views all over. The Humber Bay Park East Path is somewhat much more beautiful with some wild animals watching opportunities, and it also includes lovely lake views, too. It's a 2.6 kilometres loop path. If you continue along the Humber Bay Park East Route, you'll ultimately end up at the Humber Bay Shores Park. You'll walk past a small butterfly yard on the way. Ultimately, there's a fascinating pedestrian bridge called the Humber Bay Arch Bridge with beautiful searches on either side of it. It's easy to invest an entire day checking out these parks as well as Toronto tracks. You're not too far from the city streets if you would love to pick up a dish or a coffee, too.

Humber River Recreational Route.

Farther north in Etobicoke on the Humber River exists the Humber River Recreational Path, an 8.2 kilometres out and also back trail on a smooth path. It twists along the river from Humber Bay to Old Mill as well as ultimately to Scarlett Woods. The Humber Bay Park East route connects with the Humber River Recreational Path, so you can easily check out both in someday for an extended expedition. While you'll be sharing the path with bikers, it's a sensational breathtaking course in the city that's not to be missed.

Glen Stewart Ravine.

Glen Stewart Gorge - Toronto treking tracks. The Glen Stewart Abyss is a surprise forest escape in the Beaches area of Toronto. On the Glen Stewart Park Trail, there's a large boardwalk throughout a secured forested area where you'll promptly fail to remember that you're walking in Toronto. It's one of my favourite Toronto treking tracks within the city limits.

The path itself is a little over 1km long (1.3 kilometres to be specific), so it isn't exactly a lengthy walking. It took me about 20 mins to trek from one end to the various other, and after that backtracking my way back to the vehicle. While several of the stroll traverses over a dust course, you'll additionally venture throughout raised boardwalks for a lot of it. Despite where you go, you'll be surrounded by a rich and also attractive woodland with a canopy of red oak and also red maple trees overhead.

Toronto Island.

Last but not least, I had to consist of the Toronto Islands on my list of the top Toronto hiking tracks. While these aren't hard expeditions via the woodland, you'll find peaceful strolling paths on among the most beautiful places in the city. You'll need to take the ferryboat from the mainland to Centre Island. From there, discover 14km of routes from Hanlan's Indicate Ward's Island.

There's a great mix of waterside boardwalks, beaches, as well as courses near enchanting homes. You'll likely require to see on several celebrations to uncover the island from every angle. You'll witness among the best city sky line sights from the island as well as on the ferryboat ride, too. Taking a trip to the Toronto Islands is a must for anyone living here or checking out the city from afar.

Map of Toronto Trails.

Below is a handy map of all the Toronto treking trails so you can see them visually in one area. If you want to conserve this map for future referral, please click the little celebrity next to the title and also it will be saved to your Google account.

The post “ 10 Best Toronto Hiking Trails: Amazing Places to Hike in Toronto “ was first seen on Ontario Hiking

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thepoemeater-blog · 7 years

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By accident my heart lifted with a rush. Gone for weeks, finally home on a darkish day of blustery wind, napped, waking in a few minutes and the sun had come clean and crept around the house, this light from one of trillions of stars falling through the window skeined by the willow’s greenish bright yellow leaves so that my half-asleep head opened wide for the first time in many months, a cold sunstroke, so yellow-gold, so gold-yellow, yellow-gold, this eye beyond age bathed in yellow light.

* * *

Seventy days on the river with a confusion between river turbulence and human tribulation. We are here to be curious not consoled. The gift of the gods is consciousness not my forlorn bleating prayers for equilibrium, the self dog-paddling in circles on its own alga-lidded pond. Emily Walter wrote: “We are given rivers so we know our hearts can break, but still keep us breathing.”

* * *

When you run through the woods blindfolded you’re liable to collide with trees, I thought one hot afternoon on the river. You can’t drown yourself if you swim well. We saw some plovers and then a few yellow legs with their peculiar cries, and I remembered a very cold, windy September day with Matthiessen and Danny when the birds lifted me far out of myself. It was so cold and blustery the avian world descended into the river valley and while fishing we saw a golden eagle, two immature and two adult bald eagles, two prairie falcons, two peregrines, Cooper’s hawks, two Swainson’s, a sharp-shinned, a rough-legged, a harrier, five turkey vultures, three ospreys, and also saw buffleheads, widgeon, teal, mallards, morning doves, kingfishers, ring-billed gulls, killdeer, spotted plovers, sandpipers and sandhill cranes. They also saw us. If a peregrine sees fifty times better than we, what do we look like to them? Unanswerable.

* * *

Nearing seventy there is a tinge of the usually unseen miraculous when you wake up alive from a night’s sleep or a nap. We always rise in the terrifying posture of the living. Some days the river is incomprehensible. No, not the posture, but that a terrifying beauty is born within us. I think of the 20-acre thicket my mother planted after the deaths 40 years ago, the thicket now nearly impenetrable as its own beauty. Across the small pond the green heron looked at me quizzically— who is this? I said I wasn’t sure at that moment wondering if the green heron could be Mother.

* * *

Now back in the Absarokas I’m awake to these diffuse corridors of light. The grizzlies have buried themselves below that light cast down across the mountain meadow, following a canyon to the valley floor where the rattlesnakes will also sleep until mid-April. Meanwhile we’ll travel toward the border with the birds. The moon is swollen tonight and the mountain this summer I saw bathed in a thunderstorm now bathes itself in a mist of snow.

* * *

Rushing, turbulent water and light, convinced by animals and rivers that nature only leads us to herself, so openly female through the window of my single eye. For half a year my alphabet blinded me to beauty, forgetting my nature which came from the boy lost comfortably in the woods, how and why he suspected home, this overmade world where old paths are submerged in metal and cement.

* * *

This morning in the first clear sunlight making its way over the mountains, the earth covered with crunchy frost, I walked the dogs past Weber’s sheep pasture where a ram was covering a ewe who continued eating, a wise and experienced woman. I headed due west up the slope toward Antelope Butte in the delicious cold still air, turning at the irrigation ditch hearing the staccato howl of sandhill cranes behind me, a couple of hundred rising a mile away from Cargill’s alfalfa, floating up into the white mist rising from the frost, and moving north in what I judge is the wrong direction for this weather. Birds make mistakes, so many dying against windows and phone wires. I continued west toward the snake den to try to catch the spirit of the place when it’s asleep, the sheer otherness of hundreds of rattlesnakes sleeping in a big ball deep in the rocky earth beneath my feet. The dogs, having been snake trained, are frightened of this place. So am I. So much protective malevolence. I fled. Back home in the studio, a man-made wonder. We planted a chokecherry tree near the window and now through cream- colored blinds the precise silhouette of the bare branches, gently but firmly lifting my head, a Chinese screen that no one made which I accept from the nature of light.

* * *

I think of Mother’s thicket as her bird garden. How obsessed she was with these creatures. When I told her a schizophrenic in Kentucky wrote, “Birds are holes in heaven through which a man must pass,” her eyes teared. She lost husband and daughter to the violence of the road and I see their spirits in the bird garden. On our last night a few years ago she asked me, “Are we the same species as God?” At eighty-five she was angry that the New Testament wasn’t fair to women and then she said, “During the Great Depression we had plenty to eat,” meaning at the farmhouse, barn and chicken coop a hundred yards to the north that are no longer there, disappeared with the inhabitants. The child is also the mother of the man.

* * *

In the U.P. in the vast place southeast of the river I found my way home by following the path where my shadow was the tallest which led to the trail which led to another trail which led to the road home to the cabin where I wrote to her: “Found two dead redtail hawks, missing their breasts, doubtless a goshawk took them as one nests just north of here a half mile in a tall hemlock on the bend of the river.”

* * *

With only one eye I’ve learned to celebrate vision, the eye a painter, the eye a monstrous fleshy camera which can’t stop itself in the dark where it sees its private imagination. The tiny eye that sees the cosmos overhead.

* * *

Last winter I lost heart between each of seven cities. Planes never land with the same people who boarded.

* * *

Walking Mary and Zilpha every morning I wonder how many dogs are bound by regret because they are captured by our imaginations and affixed there by our need to have them do as we wish when their hearts are quite otherwise.

* * *

I hope to define my life, whatever is left, by migrations, south and north with the birds and far from the metallic fever of clocks, the self staring at the clock saying, “I must do this.” I can’t tell the time on the tongue of the river in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment of greenery, the dust off the canyon’s rock walls, the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water.

* * *

Maybe we’re not meant to wake up completely. I’m trying to think of what I can’t remember. Last week in France I read that the Ainu in Japan receive messages from the gods through willow trees so I’m not the only one. I looked down into the garden of Matignon and wondered at the car trip the week before where at twilight in Narbonne 27,000 blackbirds swirled and that night from the window it was eerie with a slip of the waning moon off the right shoulder of the Romanesque cathedral with Venus sparkling shamelessly above the moon, Venus over whom the church never had any power. Who sees? Whose eye is this? A day later in Collioure from the Hermitage among vineyards in the mountains I could look down steep canyons still slightly green from the oaks in November to the startling blue of the Mediterranean, storm-wracked from the mistral’s seventy knot winds, huge lumpy white caps, their crests looking toward Africa.

* * *

I always feared losing my remaining eye, my singular window to the world. When closed it sees the thousands of conscious photos I’ve taken with it, impressionist rather than crystalline, from a lion’s mouth in the Serengeti in 1972 to a whale’s eye in the Humboldt current, the mountain sun gorged with the color of forest fires followed by a moon orange as a simple orange, a thousand girls and women I’ve seen but never met, the countless birds I adopted since losing the eye in 1945 including an albino grouse creamy as that goshawk’s breast that came within feet of Mother in our back pasture, the female trogon that appeared when Dalva decided to die, and the thousands of books out of whose print vision is created in the mind’s eye, as real as any garden at dawn.

* * *

No rhapsodies today. Home from France and the cold wind and a foot of snow have destroyed my golden window, but then the memory has always been more vivid than the life. The memory is the not-quite-living museum of our lives. Sometimes its doors are insufferably wide open with black stars in a grey sky, and horses clattering in and out, our dead animals resting here and there but often willing to come to life again to greet us, parents and brothers and sisters sit at the August table laughing while they eat twelve fresh vegetables from the garden. Rivers, creeks, lakes over which birds funnel like massive schools of minnows. In memory the clocks have drowned themselves, leaving time to the life spans of trees. The world of our lives comes unbidden as night.

- Jim Harrison, The Golden Window

#Jim Harrison #The golden window #sight #backpacking #nature #birds #river #river rafting #home #light #that certain slant of light #bear

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turfandlawncare · 4 years

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Good Plant, Bad Plant, Native and Non-Native. Is it That Simple?

Liatris, Lobelia, Pycnanthemum living happily with Perovskia at The Art Institute in Chicago.

Guest Rant by Roy Diblik

Every planting situation creates diverse opportunities – not just for how it can be planted, but for how each of us can share our thoughts about it with each other. Whether it is a prairie, an urban vegetable or ornamental garden, a school developing outdoor classrooms, a city park being replanted, or a forest preserve: every open space should be planted thoughtfully, but not necessarily the same way for the same reasons.

We want and need diversity in gardens, parks, schools, businesses, villages, cities – and ourselves. There are so many reasons to plant. We plant to benefit the soil, the insects, the birds, the small creatures, the water, the air. We plant to understand art, theatre, dance, music, and all forms of culture. We plant to live healthier lives and to experience involvement, commitment, satisfaction, cheerfulness, gratification, comfort, and the joy of sharing.

We need to arrive at an understanding regarding not just the cultivation of nature, but also the cultivation of ourselves, our own human nature. Each of us must have an affection for the other: the birder for the delphinium collector, the prairie enthusiast for the perennial gardener, the butterfly observer for the daylily hybridizer, the golf course superintendent for the naturalist, the land developer for the farmer. We are realizing that healthy relationships grow when we come to appreciate one another’s loves and passions.

To support what matters to everyone, we cannot simply say a native plant is better than a non-native or a non-native is better than a native. No answer is that simple, no person or planting can be that limiting or that limited. When we come to know plants in a close, sound way, native and non-native plants can live collectively planted in all situations and conditions. Those plantings will be determined individually by each project’s goals and objectives, and diversity is healthy. Picture prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) living with Salvia ‘Wesuwe’ and groupings of bell peppers in a beautiful, sustainable vegetable meadow.

We have to come to know the plants, their infinite relationships to each other from youth to maturity. Not judge and argue with each other concerning what we may not really know enough about.

Veronicastum and Eupatorium sharing a good life with Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster.’

I am watching a prairie garden being planted in the Chicago area knowing it will be another bleached-out prairie. In a few years the garden will be filled with the native thugs: goldenrod (Solidago), asters, Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), and prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera). There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these plants – I use them myself. Whether in seed or plug form, however, they establish very rapidly and seed themselves early and heavily within their own community. They will out-compete the other native species planted or seeded with them and then dominate the planting.

In many new plantings that attempt to restore and recreate the native prairie, this is the situation that results – what I call the bleached-out commercial prairie. If the designers had known the plants better, they would have not used this group of natives initially, knowing they could be introduced a few years later and would find a home in the established, diverse planting.

Jerry Wilhelm, who wrote Flora of the Chicago Region, always had the thought of planting a young oak and beginning its life and continuing its life with the plants Oaks have always lived with. These are photos of a young Oak planted first with native Carex, some Podophyllum, Geranium and Phlox. He plants only to the drip line of the tree canopy and keeps adding plants as the canopy gets larger every year or two. He also burns the little area.

As I suggested earlier, we all have our loves and passions. But we have to know the plants. There can be no successful way to create gardens with all the qualities and forms of beauty we want. And we will often emotionally critique other people’s plantings, arguing back and forth about what each of us believes is a better way. Yet here’s what can take place with a knowledge of plants and all of us working together:

Each of us who is passionate about native plants and their benefits to all creatures can collaborate with others to help the park districts, cities, corporate campuses, and even golf courses that recognize they have too much turf and would appreciate thoughtful, successful alternatives. At the same time, we should never scold people for the turf they actually need for play, aesthetic continuity, and sports programs.

Working together, we can get diverse prairie plantings – at least 6 to 14 species per square meter – into park districts, cities, villages, and urban spaces where they are useful. If we cannot cooperate to do this in our public spaces, how will we ever get native plants into residential landscapes? Some people still think the prairie is untidy, harbors pests, or causes damage to their homes. We need to convince them of the health and beauty of the prairie.

We can help municipal agencies learn and work together, teaching proper long-term seeding practices to encourage plant diversity that will in the long run provide more habit for insects, birds, and small animals. We can encourage municipalities to get community residents involved in collecting and sowing the seeds and managing their plantings. We can share with them how beauty is not immediate but arrives and stays in many ways and at different times. We can show them how to pass the process on to the next generation of families and residents. As we accomplish this together, thousands of acres of unused, mowed turf will become prairie, connecting one city to the next and inspiring all their residents. Then, as more and more people see the beauty and activity of a genuine developing prairie, they will find ways to bring the activities into their own gardens, and native plants will have a home in all our neighborhoods.

10-year-old seeded prairie, seeded every November to continue adding diversity. Each seeding is nurtured by the previous plants established. This is the thoughtful, smart practice of Tom Vanderpoel who very sadly passed away two years ago.

With knowledge of plants, vegetables don’t have to be separated into their own areas. They can live well with native and non-native perennials, annuals, shrubs, and trees. With knowledge of plants, perennial gardens will be cared for in a way that responds to every plant’s healthy ability to grow with and into other groups of plants, without requiring constant mulching, dividing, and replacement. When planted thoughtfully, annuals can strengthen and enliven plantings of perennials and shrubs. Annuals can become components of a process and complement the quiet, durable plants that make up the majority of the long-term plantings.

In each planting situation I have mentioned native plants. It is hard to understand why people would not appreciate the value of using native plants in every style of planting. At the same time, assuming all plantings should consist of only native plants seems short-sighted and limiting to the possibilities for expanding the use and joy of natives. I think we can all agree that we are a community of many, living together, working together, and trying to understand how to do it better and smarter. We have to be, for many reasons.

Whatever your personal passions, beliefs, hopes, and necessary dreams, I urge you to leave opportunities for others who may have different thoughts, but who also want to live in beauty, be healthy, and plant the earth in smart ways. We can all probe deeper and pursue truths together, raising the level of beauty, managing time and money effectively, and living enthusiastically with others.

Roy Diblik, co-founder of Northwind Perennial Farm, is a recognized perennial plant expert, grower, designer, speaker and author.

Good Plant, Bad Plant, Native and Non-Native. Is it That Simple? originally appeared on GardenRant on March 13, 2020.

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geohoneylovers · 4 years

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Plants & Flowers Producing True Honey

Flowers & Plants Attracting Bees

Pansies

Whimsy, joy, colours – pansies have it all, and bees love them. They are great for containers or ground cover.

Pussy Willow

These North American wetland shrubs have a beautiful greyish hue and fur-like blooms.

Siberian Squill

These beautiful blue blooms have a stunning presence that you can enjoy for a few weeks each year.

Snowdrops

Snowdrops are known to announce their arrival by poking out of the snow. They are great for climates with mild to cold winters.

Peony

With their colours and sweet scents, these flowers will attract bees, hummingbirds, and possibly your neighbours too.

Milkweed

Milkweed not only serves as food to bees, but it is also the only host to monarch butterflies.

Bee Balm

As you may guess from the name, bees love these North American prairie flowers. The blooms almost resemble little fireworks and come in befittingly vibrant shades too.

Lavender

Bees love them for their nectar, humans love them for their scent and flavour. Everyone wins, and with many different varieties of lavender to choose from, you’ll likely find one that will settle happily in your garden.

Phlox

With their star-shaped blooms, these plants are a beautiful addition to any garden and can make a great ground cover.

Zinnias

Zinnias come in many colours and will attract both bees and butterflies to your space. They are relatively easy to plant and will bloom in abundance all summer long if dead flowers are removed.

Marigolds

Like zinnias, marigolds are annuals that can bloom all summer long if properly groomed. Their edible blooms can brighten up your salads as well as your garden, and they are even known to repel pests and animals, such as nematodes.

Goldenrod

These flowers are sometimes considered weeds because of their ability to spread easily but kept in check, they are an invaluable resource for bees and have medicinal value as well.

Chives

Resist eating their tasty purple flowers and the bees will thank you! This perennial tolerates cold climates rather well and is a great way to add a fresh, oniony taste to salads, dishes, or eggs.

Liatris

These flowers, found in purple, pink, and white, bloom on grass-like spiky leaves that can grow 1 – 5 feet tall.

Mint

Mint is invigorating with its fragrance and flavour – and bees go crazy on their flowers too. Mint is a great choice if you’re looking for a herb that’s low maintenance.

Sage

It’s great in stuffing, sauces, and herb pots! Bees love sage’s beautiful flowers, and these perennials are rather easy to grow.

Nasturtium

Nasturtiums can keep bees buzzing in your garden well into autumn. Their edible blooms will bring a burst of colour to your outdoor space.

Black-eyed Susans

These are flowers that attract bees, butterflies and bring a burst of yellow to your garden.

Borage

Also known as starflower, borage’s star-shaped blooms start out pink and mature into a beautiful blue.

Thyme

Irresistible to bees and pun-lovers alike, placing one of these shrubs by a walkway will prove to be a wonderful way to pass the thyme.

Oregano

This perennial has pink, purple, or white flowers, and its late blooms will be appreciated by your bee friends.

Calendula ~ Calendula officinalis

Shorter, bushy plants full of orange/yellow, daisy-like flowers that provide both pollen and nectar for pollinators.

Salvia

Description: The term “salvia” includes a massive group of plants, with something like 800 or 900 different species! Culinary sage is salvia too.

Nasturtium ~ Tropaeolum

Description: Easy to grow, sprawling, edible, lovely nasturtium! The peppery arugula-like leaves are edible, as well as the flowers. The blooms come in a variety of colours.

Verbena ~ Vervain

Description: Verbena is a huge family that includes over 250 species of both annual and perennial plants. Most of them produce flowers that pollinators go wild for!

Hyssop ~ Agastache

These tall showy, long-lasting spikes full of hundreds of individual blooms are essential in a pollinator garden! Also called “hummingbird mint”, they’re a favourite nectar source for our sweet little bird friends.

Heliotrope ~ Heliotropium

Description: These fairly compact plants range from 1 to 3 feet high, with dark green fuzzy foliage. The plants produce very fragrantly, vanilla-scented flowers.

Yarrow ~ Achillea

Description: Clusters of small yellow, pink, white, red, or lavender flowers. One of our favourite varieties is “Moonshine” yarrow, which has silvery-sage, fuzzy foliage.

Blazing Meadow Star ~ Liatris

Blazing Meadow Star is a known “monarch magnet”. These perennial plants can reach over 4 feet tall.

Penstemon

Penstemon range from less than a foot tall to over 5 feet tall. The nectar-rich flowers also come in a wide range of colours, shapes, and sizes.

Pincushion ~ Scabiosa

Round, frilly, tufted flowers that appear in lavender, blues, pink and white. Most varieties are short, averaging around a foot tall. Both annual and perennial varieties exist.

Bachelor’s Buttons ~ Centaurea

Their 2” thistle-like blooms bring interest to the garden, attract butterflies, are edible, and are perfect for cut and dried flower arrangements.

Anise hyssop/Agastache foeniculum

Anise hyssop is considered one of the premier plants for feeding pollinators. One can see bees on the flowers from the morning until dusk.

Astilbe, False spirea/Astilbe spp.

Astilbes are excellent at creating soft, colourful displays underneath trees, in low light corners, or in shady borders.

Chrysanthemum (open types)/Chrysanthemum

Gardeners and councils who want to plant the right flowers to attract bees usually choose them based on how easy they are to plant, and by watching which ones the insects already visit.

Betony/Stachys Monieri

This species forms large, rounded clumps of green, long and narrow, textured leaves. It is lovely even when it's not in bloom.

Blanket flower/Gaillardia

This is a species that is nourished by neglect, and that thrives in sunny, dry, and rocky conditions.

Clematis/Clematis spp.

Clematis stans are dioecious semi-arboreal, with pale purple-blue, nodding, tubulous flowers in a paniculate inflorescence. Both male and female flowers produce nectar from the base of the calyx tube during a flowering period of 3 or 4 days and are pollinated by two bumblebee species.

Common poppy, Red poppy/Papaver rhoeas

A must-have for any wildflower meadow or garden, this easy-to-grow annual delights with bright blooms throughout the summer season.

Common yarrow/Achillea millefolium

Yarrow attracts butterflies, bees and other insects, making it a nice addition to a pollinator garden.

Coral bells/Heuchera spp.

Annual flowers like coral bees are readily available at the garden centre, but most have been bred for showy flowers or vigorous growth and do not produce enough pollen and nectar to be good food plants for bees or butterflies.

Fennel/Foeniculum vulgare

This perennial herb is a member of the carrot family and originally comes from the Mediterranean.

Foxglove or beardtongues/Penstemon spp.

They are tubular in shape and about 1" long, with the corolla, divided into a lower lip with 3 lobes and an upper lip with 2 lobes.

Globe thistle/Echinops ritro

Echinops, the blue hedgehog thistle or globe thistle, is a perfect sphere of blue that appeals to every pollinator around.

Hyssop (naturalized in North America)/Hyssopus

officinalis Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) Labiatae, is a compact, bushy perennial usually grown in herb gardens, but is great in flower gardens in masses, as a hedge or border, and in pots. Because of its medicinal smell Hyssop has a history as a cleansing herb that attracts a bee.

Large-leaved aster/Eurybia Macrophylla

Asters and goldenrods attract loads of late-season pollinating insects. In the wintertime, they provide food and habitat for many birds and small animals that feast on the seeds and find shelter in the dried stalks.

Allium

Many garden varieties are available, these are bulb forming perennials. Some are very showy, with huge flower heads.

Antirrhinum, snapdragon

Like their relative the foxglove, mainly visited by long-tongued bumblebees such as B. hortorum. Short-lived perennials, often grown as annuals.

Apple

Apples are a good source of forage for queens in April and May, and of course, the bee visits ensure a good crop. owers and are very attractive.

Aquilegia

Nectar is hidden at the end of very long tubes, so it is visited by long-tongued bees.

Bistort

A very tough, spreading, low growing perennial. Good ground cover. A bit hit and miss with bees, but seems popular with Bombus hypnorum in particular.

Buddleia davidii, Butterfly Bush

A fast-growing shrub, to 9', great nectar source for butterflies and popular too with bumblebees. I often see young queen Bombus Terrestris on this, fattening up before going into hibernation in July/August.

Cirsium rivulare

A great one for male bumblebees in high summer, this species is not spiny like its wild relatives and is quite at home in a herbaceous border.

Comfrey, Symphytum officinale

Visited by long and short-tongued species, the latter often robbing from holes bitten in the tops of the flowers.

Cotoneaster horizontalis

Favoured by short-tongued species such as the early bumblebee, B.pratorum, and the tree bumblebee, B.hypnorum.

Crocus

Great for queens when just emerged from hibernation. Joan of Arc comes highly recommended.

Echinops, Globe thistle

Pretty and unusual perennial, with mauve flowers producing spiky balls on tall sturdy stems in high summer.

Echium vulgare, Viper's bugloss

A stunning biennial wildflower growing to about 4', flowering in July and August and absolutely loved by bees of all types for its copious nectar.

Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea

No cottage garden is complete without foxgloves, hardy biennials that are loved by long-tongued bees such as B.hortorum and B.pascuorum.

Geranium spp.

Geraniums are hardy perennials that come in a broad range of colours, but most are moderately attractive to short-tongued bees.

Globe artichoke

Huge plants, related to thistles, with massive composite flowers that bees flock to in July/August. Grows to 6' or more.

Helleborus foetidus

Flower in late winter, great for early emerging queens. Unusual looking herbaceous plants, usually less than 1' tall.

Hollyhock

Bees seem to go for the nectar but ignore the plentiful pollen, often becoming smothered in it.

Honeywort, Cerinthe major

An unusual annual, preferring sunny locations. Produces huge amounts of nectar, but I've always found it hard to keep this plant going in my garden.

Jacob's ladder- Polemonium caeruleum

Very pretty little perennial, up to 2' tall, and often overlooked as a plant for bees. Easy to grow perennial, tolerates most conditions, flowers in May-June.

Hyssop, Hyssopus officinale

An understated, low-growing perennial herb, can also be used in cooking though not to my taste - I prefer to leave it to the bees!

Iris (Iridaceae)

There are many species of iris grown in gardens - generally with spectacular flowers that are good for bees.

Catmint

A fantastic cottage garden classic, extremely popular with bumblebees, and flowering for a long period from early summer to autumn. Hills Giant is one of the best varieties for bees.

Phacelia tanacetifolia

Perhaps the single most attractive plant for bees on the planet! An easy-to-grow annual, flowers in 8-10 weeks from sowing and keeps flowering for quite a while.

Pulmonaria, lungwort

A great early spring nectar resource for hungry queen bumblebees, visited by long-tongued species, especially Bombus pascuorum.

Red Campion

A lovely perennial wildflower with a very long flowering period, from May to September. Visited by Bombus hortorum.

Red clover

A staple of bumblebees in the wild, red clover used to be a very common UK plant.

Sainfoin

A rare perennial wildflower in the UK, stunning pink flowers, and like most legumes, popular with bees.

Salix spp/ Sallow/ pussy willow

Trees, some growing to 30' or more. Sallows are dioecious, being either male or female. Dwarf varieties can be bought for smaller gardens.

Salvia spp/ Meadow Clary

When a bee probes for nectar, this triggers the stamens to curl down and deposit of blob of pollen onto the bee's back.

Sedum spectabile

A succulent herbaceous perennial, flowering in September and loved by male bumblebees and butterflies. Grows to about 1', can be spread by splitting plants.

Thrift

A lovely low-growing perennial plant found in the wild on rocky coastal headlands. Flowers in May and June. One for the rockery or in pots.

Tufted vetch/ Vicia cracca

A scrambling climber, a wildflower that takes well to the garden, and great for long-tongued bumblebees. Popular with the very rare Bombus distinguendus.

Wisteria A legume, hence related to peas and clovers, a family much loved by bees for their protein-rich pollen.

Pseudogynoxus chenopodioides (Mexican flame vine)

The vibrant orange blooms on this climbing vine are one of the best (and only) vine flowers that attract monarchs. It also attracts swallowtails, hummingbirds, and bees to our northern butterfly garden.

Duranta erecta (sapphire showers)

Purple ruffled flowers with jagged white edges are attractive to bees and butterflies, as well as the gardener. AKA Duranta repens, ‘golden dewdrops’, or ‘geisha girl’.

Echium fastuosum (Pride of Madeira)

The beautiful purplish blooms with red stamens are popular with bees and butterflies, especially monarchs!

Verbena bonariensis (Purpletop vervain)

This monarch's favorite is also constantly visited by a large variety of butterflies, bees, and birds.

Callistemon spp. (Bottlebrush)

Bottlebrush is native to Australia but grows well in warm regions of the US attracting monarchs, other butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.

Pentas lanceolate (Egyptian star cluster)

While there are many new cultivars and pentas hybrids, many pollinators seem to prefer sipping nectar from this early heirloom variety. However, most pentas will attract and support pollinator life in your garden.

Oligoneuron rigidum (Stiff Goldenrod)

There are many species of goldenrod, but this species is reported to be a particular favorite for migrating monarchs. It also attracts other butterflies and beneficial pollinators.

Lantana Plants

A trailing lantana variety with intense purple blooms. A great choice for spilling off raised beds or growing in hanging pots.

Lantana Camara ‘Miss Huff’

While monarchs rarely touch our other lantana varieties, I was pleasantly surprised to see them visiting Miss Huff on a regular basis, along with lantana regulars like the eastern tiger swallowtail above.

Anaphalis margaritacea (pearly everlasting)

Pearly everlasting is one of our earliest blooming northern butterfly plants, and typically the first host plant to receive butterfly eggs each season.

A must-have butterfly plant addition for attracting American Ladies and their offspring.

Prunus serotina (wild black cherry tree)

A preferred host plant for Eastern Tiger swallowtails, Coral Hairstreaks, Red Spotted Purples, and those amazing Cecropia Moths! If you’re looking to support butterflies and moths this option gives you several chances

Ptelea trifoliata (hoptree or wafer ash)

Another host that conveniently stays under 20 feet. Its musky spring blooms are a pollinator favourite, and it’s also a caterpillar host for both eastern tiger and giant swallowtails. Pictures to come as our stick matures.

Ruta graveolens (common rue)

A small citrus butterfly plant that hosts black swallowtail caterpillars, as well as the caterpillar that transforms into the largest U.S. butterfly.

Zanthoxylum americanum (northern prickly ash)

The Northern Prickly Ash (Zanthoxylum americanum) is a Host Butterfly Plant for Giant Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillars.

Zizia Aurea (golden Alexander)

This lesser-known member of the carrot family grows 2-3 feet high and puts forth small, sunny blooms in late spring. It is a host plant for eastern black swallowtails.

Rosa ZLEEltonstrack (‘above and beyond’)

The white and apricot blooms have been an early bee favorite, so plant this spring beauty to support your local pollinators.

Collarette Dahlias

Like zinnias, dahlias come in a rainbow of colors. They’ll attract some monarchs, but bees absolutely love the blooms that keep bursting until first frost. After the plants die back, you can dig up dahlia tubers to store and plant next season

Tradescantia ohiensis (Ohio spiderwort)

Ohio spiderwort puts out a profusion of purple blooms in the morning, then fades as the day starts to sizzle. They’re a popular destination for bumblebees in our garden. Try Four O’clocks as a companion plant since they’re on polar opposite bloom schedules.

Joyful Butterfly

Nectar Seeds and Plants to help bring home the joy of butterflies.

Almost Eden

Beautiful, unusual, exotic and native plants for butterflies.

Ways to attract Bees

Give them cover

Bees need a break from the sun and heat. Planting ground cover can give them a place to hide out between feedings and flying.

Give them something to sip on

Place shallow dishes of water in the yard and around flowers, or keep a fountain going (place pebbles in it for bees to sit on) so they can hydrate as needed.

Try some colourful bee balm

Bee balm is a gorgeous perennial that can attract bees to your yard while also dressing up your landscape.

Keep colour in mind when planting

Bees love blue, purple, and yellow flowers and plants.

Plant flowering vegetables

Consider planting flowering vegetables such as tomatoes and zucchini.

Try planting flowering fruits

Consider planting flowering fruits like strawberries and apples that will blossom before they bloom to fruit.

Forget about pesticides

Use natural pest protection such as herbs, sage burning, and the use of ladybugs in your garden.

Plant single petal flowers

Choose from flat and single petal flowers like Queen Ann’s Lace or Black-Eyed Susans since they are easier to feed from.

Don’t kill or aggravate them

Teach children not to kill or swat at bees. Let them just sniff around and feed and if left alone, they will leave you alone.

Visit www.geohoney.com to get more details!

#wildflower honey #sidr honey #honey iherb

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relatedrealtychicagoblog · 6 years

Link

via Related Chicago - Feed

Rediscovering secret Chicago parks. Oases designed for us by some of the greatest landscape architects of all time.

It wasn’t always this way. At first we had the motto, but no parks to speak of.

Jackson Park, 1891, before World’s’ Fair in 1893. Courtesy of the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collection.

Necessity is the mother of invention. A quick history –

“There is nothing so American as our national parks.” Franklin Roosevelt

Bennett Park, One Bennett Park. Related Realty

“I don’t so much think of a park as an escape from the city as I think of it as an escape in the city.” – Michael Van Valkenburgh , Designer, One Bennett Park

Take a pause between your busy day, amid the trees and gardens of these unique public spaces, gifted to us by our predecessors. It will surely transform your day.

THE LILY POOL Landscape Design by Alfred Caldwell

The Lily Pool, Lincoln Park

The Lily Pool, Lincoln Park 125 W Fullerton Pkwy 773-883-7275 lincolnparkconservancy.org

Bennett Park, Related Realty Bennett Park, One Bennett Park 451 E Grand Avenue onebennettpark.com

THE GARDEN OF THE PHOENIX Landscape Design by Frederick Law Olmsted

The Garden of the Phoenix

The Garden of the Phoenix, Jackson Park South Cornell Drive 773-256-0903 gardenofthephoenix.org

THE MONTROSE BIRD SANCTUARY Original Landscape Designed by Alfred Caldwell

Seagull, Montrose Beach at sunset.

The Montrose Bird Sanctuary 4400 N Simonds Dr 847-433-6901

THE SOUTH GARDEN Landscape Design by Dan Kiley

The Fountain of the Great Lakes, by Lorado Taft – The South Garden, Art Institute of Chicago

The South Garden, Art Institute of Chicago 229 South Michigan Avenue

#Related Chicago - Feed #Chicago Real Estate

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athertonjc · 6 years

Text

Time to “Rethink Pretty” in the Garden by Allen Bush

Benjamin Vogt and I began an email exchange last March after I read his very interesting A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future.

A few weeks ago, Benjamin had a sign posted on his property in Lincoln, Nebraska that warned him about the public nuisance he had created. He won the fight to keep his front and back yard prairie, but this got me thinking.

It seemed like a good time to share our exchange. Portions have been edited and expanded.

Onward Benjamin.

I wrote my book to make folks as uncomfortable as I felt. I wrote it to question horticulture, landscape design, and all environmental movements. I wrote it to invigorate the discussion and get us to grapple with humanity in ways we avoid in order to protect ourselves from the reality of our lost love. I wrote it in order to unearth aspects of environmentalism I thought weren’t explored enough. I wrote my book out of depression, fear, and anger in order to discover a strength we all possess — the ability to go against the force of history and culture and risk some aspect of ourselves we assumed was better for us. Gardens are places of activism in a time of mass extinction and we need to start using them as such. And if gardens are art, if that’s the primary viewpoint about them that we’re stuck with, then remember the long tradition of art based in activism and making folks uncomfortable for a purpose.

March 2018

Hi Benjamin,

I apologize for being slow to read your book, but I’m glad I brought it to the top of my book pile.

I thoroughly enjoyed A New Garden Ethic.

I worried at the outset that it might be full of redundancies, but when there were similar claims, “We proclaim ourselves right in a wrong world…” (p.56), each new argument augmented your case. Rarely did I feel like you were talking down to me. On occasion, there were annoying passages, such as, “Native plants are a threat to an entire Western culture…(p 59).

But here’s what I got out of your book.

A garden isn’t nature

Our values screw us up

A new garden ethic is needed

Surprisingly, I enjoyed your bits about “pretty” and “beauty.” It reminded me of an undergraduate course in Philosophy of the Mind. Your subject is complex but well written. However, I still like “pretty” and don’t agree that “pretty,” as a premise, need be “arrogant.” I don’t think I’ve ever gardened for “human supremacy.” I was heartened, when you briefly backed off and said, “Of course a garden must be pretty.”

“Pretty” concerns me because that’s how we primarily judge the worth of a garden or landscape — I just want us to redefine gardens, especially in the context of mass extinction. What is pretty to the silent majority on this planet, to wildlife? I don’t think many of us garden for human supremacy in a conscious way, but when we go outside and say “I want this maple tree right here” we are practicing a form of supremacy since we are placing our desires over or onto the landscape, whether we’ve researched the tree and ecosystem or not. Now, I’m not explicitly saying such actions are good or bad, per se. I’m saying we must think more critically about our actions, and that if we don’t we are propagating an arrogance that has led us to the assumption we are at the top of the pecking order and can do no harm. This is what’s created a 6thmass extinction — privileging ourselves over other species and landscapes. We do it every day in small, subtle ways and in massively overt ways.

I was glad to read the chapter: More than Native Plants. Your sentence on p. 52 is magnificent: “Every place we touch is a garden, no matter its size, and the economic, aesthetic, and emotional lessons we learn in one landscape are practiced in others.”

Good stuff on feelings: denial, grief and loss.

And, more good stuff: wisdom is evolutionary (p.66); “ethical amnesia” (p. 78) and “compassion fade” and “psychological numbing” (p.81)

This was my favorite chapter to write and research, chapter three; it’s the heart of the book, and I think out environmental crisis (and other crises, like race, gender, guns, etc). There’s a lot of psychology at play in how we view ourselves, one another, and the world around us. There’s a lot of guilt and shame. There’s a lot of self-defense that’s totally genetic and human and natural that we have to understand, identify, and process more thoughtfully. For example, when someone proposes native plants instead of hosta, it’s easy to feel defensive because we’re being exposed to new concepts that both feel constrictive and carry greater ramifications for the environment, and those ramifications influence how we perceive ourselves as acting or thinking ethically. Change is hard — learning new ideas is hard (especially when they go against the cultural / social default). Emotionally and psychologically evolving as fast or faster than the changes we are forcing on the plant is really hard, if not nearly impossible.

I wish you’d go easy on red cedars (p.79). I love red cedars!

But your red cedars aren’t aggressive thugs, right? I like them, too, but boy do they destroy our prairies. It’s all about regional context, and in the U.S. there’s lots of nuance. We burn trees in Nebraska, we don’t hug them.

And there are the useless plants… I don’t agree with your statement: “Gardens composed of both native and exotic plants constitute a precarious balance.” (p. 83) I am NOT grief stricken, although you might argue I’m in denial.

Yes, I would argue that. Denial is one of the five stages of grief, and processing grief is both an exercise in preserving the self and accepting the new self that is forming. It’s a conundrum we carry into our landscapes — our emotions dictate a lot of what we do behind our fences.

I love daffodils and peonies, among many other non-beneficial plants. I get your point and respect your radical approach. I know you don’t think there’s a perfect world as long as humankind is here on earth.

Oh I wouldn’t go that far. I firmly believe humans can be part of a thriving, balanced, biodiverse global ecosystem. But as is — given our extraction-based cultures that privilege humans — it’s not working. And the argument that nature will find a way is sort of bogus — I don’t want to live, and I don’t want my kids to live — in a world where nature is in the process of finding its way. Drought, famine, disease, dirty water, no fish, plastic in every bite we take… We could still be in a relative Goldilocks era if we woke to the world right now.

I’m glad you threw a bone to the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)for promoting a planting spectrum that includes a large % of native plants.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to plant challenging exotics and natives that I am curious to grow. I will endeavor to try and be more attentive to what’s under foot and around me.

You’ve inspired me.

I’ve got tons of natives, even a faux prairie, but I’m a one-trick pony. I’m a plantsman, far from a naturalist. You’ve encouraged me to dig deeper. Microbes are in my future.

Go go go Allen! We’re all taking steps even if I wish (and other species wish) they were much larger and were at more of a brisk jog’s space, if not a hard sprint.

My favorite chapter was Urban Wildness and Social Justice. You made me think of Thoreau leaving Walden Pond to take his laundry to his mom.

“(If we expect to be selfless”… p.120). Louisville needs to work harder (p. 125). My friend, Louisville tree activist, Mike Hayman is planting trees as fast as he can. Mike is the role model I suggested for you. Talk about selfless!

I hope you’ll keep pushing harder, even when you hit headwinds.

It is very hard because it seems that all I hit are headwinds; such is the role I’ve apparently chosen for myself.

I know you’re working your way toward your dream of your own prairie compound.

Paradise?

But don’t turn your back on the people, and the soulless suburban gardens, you might leave behind.

On the other hand, an ascetic life has some appeal.

I still design urban and suburban meadow gardens for clients, some of whom are removing their front lawns. I am desperate to live on a prairie away from mowers, to create an oasis among the corn and soybeans. I don’t think I’d live ascetically, only as a way to restore and revive my soul so I could have the energy and focus to ramp up to get back into the fray. I am a massive, massive, massive introvert, and it’s still going take me a lifetime to discover how that’s a strength and not a liability.

While I was reading your book, I was also reading a book of essays by Wes Jackson, whom I admire tremendously. Your earnestness reminds me of Jackson.

As I have argued, I think your most convenient prey (prairie novitiates?) might be your neighbors. They can’t be more intransigent than the rest of built America. You could do prairie grass roots door-to-door?

Have you seen my yard? https://www.houzz.com/projects/1968383/front-yard-makeover

I know you’re working your way, eventually, toward your own prairie farm. If you do, I worry you will be turning your back on the people and the wretched suburban gardens you leave behind. However, I understand. Life as an ascetic has always had some appeal for me.

Can you become both a missionary—hunker down and save souls in the suburbs—and escape, as Thomas Merton did, to a cloistered outpost and write down, as it was said about Merton, every thought you have. (You’re a very good writer!)

Merton could be as petulant as he was gifted. He remained a constant pain in the ass to his abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Maybe you will become the artist, activist, pain in the ass and save souls.

I hope so! We all need to be bigger pains in the ass. Especially if those asses are the right ones (you know who I’m talking about).

You’ve got options and a bright future.

You’ve written an absorbing and provocative book that reminded me of the cultural unraveling that Wendell Berry described in Unsettling of America.

That’s high praise indeed! You know I’m a Berry Fan. Thank you, Allen, for an insightful and warm conversation. Let’s have more of these in the garden world.

Photos courtesy of Benjamin Vogt and Monarch Gardens. A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Futuremay be purchased at Monarch Gardens.

Time to “Rethink Pretty” in the Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 13, 2018.

from Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2018/06/time-to-rethink-pretty-in-the-garden.html

#Garden Rant

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vincentbnaughton · 7 years

Text

Putting Down Roots 40 Feet Up: Life in a Fire Lookout

They saw it coming: the mushroom cloud of smoke.

Dabney Tompkins and Alan Colley were on their deck enjoying the view when Stouts Creek Fire broke out earlier this month. They’d read about moments like this - spotting a forest fire from a 40-foot-high tower - but nothing could have prepared them.

youtube

They weren’t staffing a fire lookout, after all. They were at home.

Treehouse without the tree

Alan Colley (left) and Dabney Tompkins wouldn’t trade their life above the trees for anything.

Tompkins and Colley’s lives changed course on a ferry ride several years ago. Quite literally stumbling upon a book about fire lookouts used by the U.S. Forest Service, they learned how the structures on stilts were used to spot forest fires throughout the 20th century. Now largely replaced by satellites, very few lookouts are still standing.

Tompkins and Colley, who had downsized from their big Dallas estate to 1,400 square feet in Portland, wanted to know more.

“It was a magical moment that the book sort of fell off the shelf to us,” Colley recalls. “We called the ranger district and said why don’t we rent this thing? That was the beginning.”

The urbanites rented several fire lookouts before purchasing 160 acres of meadow and forest land in rural Oregon, known as Summit Prairie. With the help of a local builder and engineer, their “treehouse without the tree” was completed in 2010.

For the first few years, it was just a weekend getaway, but those weekends quickly turned into something more.

“About a year and half ago, we decided to be totally irresponsible and quit our jobs and move here,” Tompkins explains. “We were just going to do it for one year because we thought this might just be too isolated, too boring, too rustic. But then we got down here and we started to meet people and really enjoy the rhythm of it.”

Life on the prairie

Up four flights of stairs, the lookout is 388 square feet with a simple kitchen spanning the back wall and two narrow beds flanking the sides. Up a skinny wooden ladder, a “cupola” serves as a master suite - minus the bathroom.

In fact, there’s no bathroom to be found. Historic fire lookouts never had them, and Tompkins and Colley didn’t want to obstruct their 360-degree view of the Umpqua National Forest. Instead, they created a few alternative options and put the shower out on the deck.

“My favorite time to take a shower is when we have snow outside and you have to walk barefoot through the snow on the deck,” Tompkins says. “Then you turn that hot water on and that yin and yang of hot and cold - and looking out and seeing the meadow - it’s heaven.”

Source: Alan Colley

Without the luxuries of a typical single-family home, Tompkins and Colley find themselves retreating to the “hammock tree” or soaking in their wood-burning, spring-fed hot tub.

“It’s quiet - so quiet it allows me to hear things I wouldn’t hear in the city,” Colley says. “There’s no urban beat. You don’t hear sirens, you don’t hear traffic - you hear us. There’s nothing like that.”

He says the experience has brought him and Tompkins closer, as they’ve allowed each other to grow and be different.

A taste of ‘off the grid’

They’re also learning what it truly means to live off the grid, finding you often gain more than you lose.

“The saying we love to tell each other is ‘just because we live off-grid doesn’t mean we have to eat bad food.’ And we have made some amazing meals,” Colley says after making a blueberry pie from scratch.

Instead of buying organic produce from the grocery store, they have their own garden and are involved with the local farmers market.

Of course, living off-grid has its challenges - like figuring out how to install solar panels - but the biggest challenge came as a surprise.

“We’re so enmeshed in this community, as weird as that may sound, that we really have to back away and say I just want time on my meadow,” Colley says.

From vegan potlucks with the “old hippies,” as they call the neighbors, to looking for ways to stimulate a local economy still dependent on timber, Tompkins and Colley are keeping busy.

The view that never gets old

They laugh when they think about how they used to worry about being isolated and bored.

“Reading, cooking, hiking and splitting wood are much more entertaining to us,” Colley says. “If you’re interested in those kinds of things as a DIYer, you’re going to be fine in this situation.”

And in the wake of a recent forest fire, they’re even more thankful for the view.

“Every day, the sun is doing something different. There’s no repetition at all,” Colley says.

“Many mornings, we’ll get up, and the entire meadow is shrouded in fog. And then as the sun moves up into the sky, the fog starts to kind of slip into the valley,” Tompkins adds. “As you look out, it’s like you’re in an airplane where there’s just this lower level of clouds. To me, that’s magic.”

Photos and video by Tom Hanny.

Originally published August 26, 2015.

Could You Live ‘Tiny’? See How a Seattle Couple Found Room for Their Dreams

Treehouses: They’re Not Just for Kids Anymore

Ahoy! It’s a Ship Sticking Out of a Home

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wendyimmiller · 4 years

Text

Good Plant, Bad Plant, Native and Non-Native. Is it That Simple?

Liatris, Lobelia, Pycnanthemum living happily with Perovskia at The Art Institute in Chicago.

Guest Rant by Roy Diblik

We have to come to know the plants, their infinite relationships to each other from youth to maturity. Not judge and argue with each other concerning what we may not really know enough about.

Veronicastum and Eupatorium sharing a good life with Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster.’

Roy Diblik, co-founder of Northwind Perennial Farm, is a recognized perennial plant expert, grower, designer, speaker and author.

Good Plant, Bad Plant, Native and Non-Native. Is it That Simple? originally appeared on GardenRant on March 13, 2020.

The post Good Plant, Bad Plant, Native and Non-Native. Is it That Simple? appeared first on GardenRant.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2020/03/good-plant-bad-plant-native-and-non-native-is-it-that-simple.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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danielgreen01 · 7 years

Text

Putting Down Roots 40 Feet Up: Life in a Fire Lookout

They saw it coming: the mushroom cloud of smoke.

youtube

They weren’t staffing a fire lookout, after all. They were at home.

Treehouse without the tree

Alan Colley (left) and Dabney Tompkins wouldn’t trade their life above the trees for anything.

Tompkins and Colley, who had downsized from their big Dallas estate to 1,400 square feet in Portland, wanted to know more.

“It was a magical moment that the book sort of fell off the shelf to us,” Colley recalls. “We called the ranger district and said why don’t we rent this thing? That was the beginning.”

For the first few years, it was just a weekend getaway, but those weekends quickly turned into something more.

Life on the prairie

Source: Alan Colley

Without the luxuries of a typical single-family home, Tompkins and Colley find themselves retreating to the “hammock tree” or soaking in their wood-burning, spring-fed hot tub.

He says the experience has brought him and Tompkins closer, as they’ve allowed each other to grow and be different.

A taste of ‘off the grid’

They’re also learning what it truly means to live off the grid, finding you often gain more than you lose.

Instead of buying organic produce from the grocery store, they have their own garden and are involved with the local farmers market.

Of course, living off-grid has its challenges - like figuring out how to install solar panels - but the biggest challenge came as a surprise.

“We’re so enmeshed in this community, as weird as that may sound, that we really have to back away and say I just want time on my meadow,” Colley says.

From vegan potlucks with the “old hippies,” as they call the neighbors, to looking for ways to stimulate a local economy still dependent on timber, Tompkins and Colley are keeping busy.

The view that never gets old

They laugh when they think about how they used to worry about being isolated and bored.

And in the wake of a recent forest fire, they're even more thankful for the view.

“Every day, the sun is doing something different. There’s no repetition at all,” Colley says.

Photos and video by Tom Hanny.

Originally published August 26, 2015.

Could You Live ‘Tiny’? See How a Seattle Couple Found Room for Their Dreams

Treehouses: They’re Not Just for Kids Anymore

Ahoy! It’s a Ship Sticking Out of a Home

from Zillow Porchlight http://ift.tt/2vuuoL2 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Zillow Porchlight

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feamproffitt · 7 years

Text

Putting Down Roots 40 Feet Up: Life in a Fire Lookout

They saw it coming: the mushroom cloud of smoke.

youtube

They weren’t staffing a fire lookout, after all. They were at home.

Treehouse without the tree

Alan Colley (left) and Dabney Tompkins wouldn’t trade their life above the trees for anything.

Tompkins and Colley, who had downsized from their big Dallas estate to 1,400 square feet in Portland, wanted to know more.

“It was a magical moment that the book sort of fell off the shelf to us,” Colley recalls. “We called the ranger district and said why don’t we rent this thing? That was the beginning.”

For the first few years, it was just a weekend getaway, but those weekends quickly turned into something more.

Life on the prairie

Source: Alan Colley

Without the luxuries of a typical single-family home, Tompkins and Colley find themselves retreating to the “hammock tree” or soaking in their wood-burning, spring-fed hot tub.

He says the experience has brought him and Tompkins closer, as they’ve allowed each other to grow and be different.

A taste of ‘off the grid’

They’re also learning what it truly means to live off the grid, finding you often gain more than you lose.

Instead of buying organic produce from the grocery store, they have their own garden and are involved with the local farmers market.

Of course, living off-grid has its challenges - like figuring out how to install solar panels - but the biggest challenge came as a surprise.

“We’re so enmeshed in this community, as weird as that may sound, that we really have to back away and say I just want time on my meadow,” Colley says.

From vegan potlucks with the “old hippies,” as they call the neighbors, to looking for ways to stimulate a local economy still dependent on timber, Tompkins and Colley are keeping busy.

The view that never gets old

They laugh when they think about how they used to worry about being isolated and bored.

And in the wake of a recent forest fire, they're even more thankful for the view.

“Every day, the sun is doing something different. There’s no repetition at all,” Colley says.

Photos and video by Tom Hanny.

Originally published August 26, 2015.

Could You Live ‘Tiny’? See How a Seattle Couple Found Room for Their Dreams

Treehouses: They’re Not Just for Kids Anymore

Ahoy! It’s a Ship Sticking Out of a Home

0 notes

hottytoddynews · 7 years

Link

The Chickasaws plan to build a heritage center in Tupelo as part of a quest to reconnect with their homeland.

A white bus with “The Chickasaw Nation” printed in purple on one side scoots through a Tupelo neighborhood and pulls up next to Pierce Street Elementary school.

This is where the Chickasaws fought the French Army in the 1736 Battle of Ackia, and this bus is filled with nine supervisors and managers of the Chickasaw Nation’s Department of Culture and Humanities, craning their heads to look down a ridge and imagine what it must have looked like when French soldiers and Choctaws massed to attack.

Once a Chickasaw village, Ackia became the place where the tribe would ultimately change the course of American history by defeating French Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville and his army, thwarting French plans to destroy the Chickasaw and limit British influence in the region. Today, a historical marker with details of the battle is the only sign of the climactic struggle that took place here almost 300 years ago.

“One thing you have to do when you’re in the Homeland is kind of use your imagination,” William Brekeen, a cultural interpreter for the tribe, warned as the tour began.

After all, a city of nearly 40,000 people was built on this land, and it has been almost 200 years since the mighty Chickasaw Nation called it home.

Yet, Tupelo is littered with artifacts, burial sites, and ridges once occupied by Chickasaws past. It is the epicenter of the tribe’s Homeland, which stretches through the Blackland Prairie in Mississippi and parts of Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

To the Chickasaw, this is sacred ground.

David Correll, left, tribal greenhouse supervisor in Oklahoma, and Brian Hatton fell in love with the flora and fauna of North Mississippi.

This is why the Chickasaw Nation selected Tupelo as the perfect spot for the Smithsonian-quality heritage center they plan to build near the Natchez Trace to trumpet their culture and history. It is why the tribe buses its people here, 500 miles from Oklahoma, to reconnect with their past. And it is why the tribe has staffed a special homeland affairs office here.

In a very real sense, the Chickasaw are back, and they are here to stay.

“A lot of Chickasaw tribal history and identity was forged here in the homelands,” said Brad Lieb, the Mississippi-based Tribal Archaeologist for the Chickasaw Nation’s Department of Homeland Affairs.

“Governor (Bill) Anoatubby knows the importance of keeping in touch with Chickasaw heritage and to maintaining that living connection with the traditional homeland for Chickasaw people. He is creating opportunities for Chickasaw people to travel that long, 500-mile distance back from Oklahoma to North Mississippi, and Tupelo specifically, to reconnect with their ancestral heritage,” Lieb said.

Candice Blevins and David Correll walk along the Chissa’Talla’ Preserve.

The heritage center will become an additional resource for tribal members to reconnect through. Meanwhile, the bus tours – taking Chickasaws throughout Tupelo, Amory, Lee County, Pontotoc County, and more – will have to do.

The tour bus rolled by many sites important to Chickasaw heritage, including the remains of a Chickasaw village site on the Natchez Trace Parkway, the Chissa’Talla’ Preserve – a nature and cultural preserve on the Coonewah ridge – Tishomingo’s home site, and Moundville, Alabama.

The group made a melancholy last stop in Memphis for one last look at the picturesque Chickasaw bluffs then drove on, back to Oklahoma.

Midway through the first day of the tour, the bus rolled down a wooded road with old, decrepit houses, some of which looked as if they were about to fall in on themselves. Past a vast grassy meadow littered with trees, a large, gray, two-story cabin sat on a hilltop overlooking the Coonewah Creek Valley below.

The nine tribal employees made their way out of the bus and to the other side of the cabin, which looked down onto farmland. They stood surrounded by wildflowers dancing in the breeze, mesmerized at the natural beauty and wealth of exploration opportunities before them. It wasn’t long until they began exploring, peeking into the windows of the cabin and examining some rubble nearby.

Cody Reynolds, a Chickasaw Nation employee, soaks up the Chissa’Talla’ Preserve.

This site was picked over extensively by collectors of Chickasaw relics throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. Eventually, most of one man’s collection made it back to the Chickasaw Nation for preservation. Now, they’ve purchased the land, once a Chickasaw village.

It is impossible to overestimate the power of the homelands to the tribe, seeing and touching it, becoming part of its history, after only hearing tales of it.

To many, the homelands bring an inner peace. For others, seeing the cast aside or obscure nature of some of the most important Chickasaw heritage sites brings back the pain of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the Trail of Tears and the establishment of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.

For example, the ancient grave of Piominko, one of the Chickasaws’ most important leaders, is believed to lie beneath a rental house in a Tupelo neighborhood. The site of Ogoula Tchetoka, the first battle against the French, sprawls atop a grassy ridge next to a customer service center off Interstate 22. At the Long Town settlement area, 20 Chickasaw people are reburied near where they lay for centuries until disturbed by hospital construction. In a hidden glade, an impressive stone monument marks the spot in a space between trees. Fifteen yards away is a busy street.

“People ride by this every day and don’t realize the history here,” Brekeen said.

“It’s just sad. Sad we had to leave. We lost so much land here,” said Dixie Brewer, performing arts manager and member of the Chickasaw dance troupe. This was not Brewer’s first time to the homelands. She has danced at a number of sites throughout the area.

The connection to the homelands runs deep for David Correll, greenhouse supervisor for the tribe’s department of history and culture in Oklahoma. After his first visit two years ago, he fell in love with the flora and fauna of North Mississippi.

As he walked through the Chissa’Talla’ site at Coonewah Ridge, Correll kept his eyes peeled for interesting plants.

“Hey what’s this?” he said to Brekeen.

“American Columbo. They used to call it Indian Lettuce. Very astringent.”

Correll immediately plunged into the brush to photograph it.

In fact, at almost every site, medicinal plants could be found. From the multi-use Self Heal, to Echinacea, and purple, spiny thistles. While many people consider some of these plants invasive weeds, the Chickasaw had a purpose for each.

After leaving the preserve, Correll planned to return and bag up several plants to take to his greenhouse. In exchange, he will bring some native plants he’s been cultivating in Oklahoma to leave in their place.

Oklahoma, while it is the home for the Chickasaw nation, lacks something, Correll said. “I feel like it’s home but something is missing. Here, it feels normal… The land is like a pharmacy, like our hospital,” he said.

Correll’s first visit two years ago left him with a vivid vision of what life would have been like for his ancestors on the fertile land near the Coonewah Ridge.

“It was sleeting and ice was sticking to my clothes,” Correll said. “I was sitting down there in the sleet and I could suddenly see our people in the flat fields below the village. The water from the rivers was coming up and covering the fields but our gardens were green and flourishing on the mounds. Our Three Sisters gardens were there… I could see our history come to life. I could see our village full of our people… It felt like home.”

The Chickasaw Nation pre-removal was centered in Tupelo, according to Lieb, so much so that French maps from the 1700s accurately depict how the tribe’s villages consolidated in Tupelo for self-protection.

Archaeological and historical studies since the 1930s have compiled compelling evidence that the city was the site of many Chickasaw towns, battles, and important interactions.

The tribe’s Chissa’Talla’ Preserve on the edge of Tupelo

“The Chickasaw people have stories and oral tradition about all this, but being removed for 180 years to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, everybody has forgotten where some of these actual places were,” Lieb said. “It was up to archaeology to relocate the exact sites, and that’s an ongoing process, but it’s more than half done. That’s why we’re confident about setting up the Chickasaw Heritage Center at Tupelo, establishing other preserves, and commemorating village sites as well.”

The heritage center will be a hub not only for visiting Chickasaws but also for other people interested in learning about the Native American experience.

Tupelo attorney Brad Prewitt is an executive officer for the tribe and director of the Inkana Foundation, which is working to establish a stronger connection to the area. A large chunk of Chickasaw history and culture has its origins in the homeland, and Prewitt said even the Chickasaw language derives its contextual meaning from the distinctive southeastern natural environment which the tribe once called home. The heritage center will seek to explain the nexus between the cultural, the historical, and the natural.

“Chickasaw Nation Governor Anoatubby is very energized about this, and obviously, we’re energized about it, too, as this represents an historic opportunity for the tribe to officially come home in a substantial, exceptionally transformative way,” Prewitt said.

Much like the Chickasaw Nation’s elaborate cultural center in Oklahoma, the heritage center will be a multimodal, active facility with opportunities to experience Chickasaw culture and arts. The site will include interpretations of how life would have been in the homeland. There are plans to restore the land nearby to a prairie-like state, just as the Chickasaws would have burned off the grass around their villages for protection. Nature trails will surround the area,allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the ecology of the Chickasaw ancestral lands.

“With partnerships underpinning our foundation efforts, at the center we’ll explore that theme even historically, by telling a story not only of the Chickasaw people, but connecting them to the greater Southeastern Indian experience through time and place. The center will add meaning to all of it,” Prewitt said.

After its construction within about five years, according to Prewitt, the heritage center will be a unique addition to existing attractions such as the Natchez Trace Parkway and the Mississippi Mound Trail.

“I think that Chickasaw Nation’s reverence for this place marries well with Mississippi’s affection for our roots and our awareness of being a people on an ever-moving historical and cultural journey,” Prewitt said. “I think that there’s a common language of love for the place that can be shared by both people.”

Tupelo has already embraced one of America’s greatest allies within the Chickasaw tribe: Piominko. He is immortalized in statue form in Tupelo’s Fair Park in front of City Hall, or as Mayor Jason Shelton calls it, “Tupelo’s front porch,” just a stone’s throw from a statue of another American legend – Elvis Presley.

Piominko was the Chickasaw equivalent to George Washington. In fact, they were great friends. Washington even bestowed a presidential peace medal on Piominko. His likeness, sculpted by renowned Mississippi artist William “Bill” Beckwith of Taylor, stands stoic in bronze, carrying a long rifle, the peace medal dangling from his neck. He is wearing a Washington-style coat, which would have been blue with gold buttons.

When the tour bus stopped at the rental house where Piominko’s grave is believed to lie, Correll’s eyes grew wide. “We need to buy it,” he said. “It’s important.”

Shelton said Tupelo’s relationship with the Chickasaws is beneficial to both tribe and town, as their history and culture is synonymous with Tupelo’s history.

“This is the native homeland of the Chickasaw Nation and that history is not lost upon us,” Shelton said. “We want to work with them in any way possible to develop that relationship and tell the story of this area. It [the Chickasaw Heritage Center] will have a very significant historical, cultural, economic, and tourism related impact on our area.”

Joe Thomas, who drove the tour bus, said the homeland experience is much like reliving what it means to be a Chickasaw.

“I feel like I’m time traveling each time I come back home,” he said while examining arrow points in a museum inside the Pontotoc post office.

The town of Pontotoc owes its very existence to the Chickasaw because that’s where the land office was set up to handle white settlers’ purchase of Chickasaw lands after the tribe’s removal to Oklahoma.

Moments before, as the bus approached its late afternoon stop there, Thomas took the bus into a parking lot from the wrong direction.

“You’re going the wrong way!” someone yelled, good-naturedly.

“Tourist!” another added.

“No,” Thomas said, smiling softly. “We’re home.”

By Zoe McDonald. Photography by Ariel Cobbert.

LEFT TO RIGHT: Ariel Cobbert, Mrudvi Bakshi, Taylor Bennett, Lana Ferguson, SECOND ROW: Tori Olker, Josie Slaughter, Kate Harris, Zoe McDonald, Anna McCollum, THIRD ROW: Bill Rose, Chi Kalu, Slade Rand, Mitchell Dowden, Will Crockett. Not pictured: Tori Hosey PHOTO BY THOMAS GRANING

The Meek School faculty and students published “Unconquered and Unconquerable” online on August 19, 2016, to tell stories of the people and culture of the Chickasaw. The publication is the result of Bill Rose’s depth reporting class taught in the spring. Emily Bowen-Moore, Instructor of Media Design, designed the magazine.

“The reason we did this was because we discovered that many of them had no clue about the rich Indian history of Mississippi,” said Rose. “It was an eye-opening experience for the students. They found out a lot of stuff that Mississippians will be surprised about.”

Print copies will be available October 2016.

For questions or comments, email us at [email protected].

Follow HottyToddy.com on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat @hottytoddynews. Like its Facebook page: If You Love Oxford and Ole Miss…

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wendyimmiller · 5 years

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Ed Lyon on How to Write about Native Plants

I’m back with another report about a terrific talk I heard during the garden communicator conference in Salt Lake City. This time, it’s a talk by Ed Lyon, director of Reiman Gardens at Iowa State University, about how garden writers should be writing about native plants. (And thanks to Ed for amplifying on my notes.)

While praising garden communicators jumping on the “noble bandwagon” of promoting the use of native plants, he argues that the missing piece is educating the public about the challenges this might entail. He urged us to “Educate!” and to expand the topic beyond from the usual messaging.

How to Attract People to Gardening

Ed believes the way to attract people to gardening is NOT by telling them that annuals in massed displays such as at Longwood and Butchart Gardens are environmentally irresponsible. Annuals are often the very plants that first entice non-gardeners to try gardening. Telling them to avoid annuals and plant only natives can lead to disappointment if the results aren’t colorful and visually appealing enough.

Here’s a number that surprised me: that 60 percent of all plants sold currently are annuals – they get people started. Succulents and houseplants also bring people to plants, getting them connected to plants again. “No single type of gardening can bring in enough people.”

So Ed’s message is that we shouldn’t make people feel guilty, and scare tactics never work. We should embrace people wherever they are along the gardening path. Once they’re “in the fold” we can educate them to more sustainable practices, but we can’t do that if they haven’t started gardening yet.

He also mentioned his worry that many of the upcoming young horticulturists have jumped on the “natives only” bandwagon or are promoting some other single style of gardening. But “there are millions of people not currently gardening. If our goal is to get as many as possible involved, we’ll never accomplish it if we limit gardening to one style.”

As writers are covering hot trends like prairie gardens, native gardens and rain gardens, Ed urged us not to forget the “garden” part. Despite the implied impression that the resulting prairies, meadows, and native gardens will be self-sustaining, they won’t be. They still need management and maintenance, and when inexperienced homeowners aren’t told that, they often end up with weed-infested messes. In their frustration, novices may revert their home landscape to what they know to be easiest – turfgrass.

An enlightening moment for me was learning why prairies are relatively weed-free in natural states but plenty weedy where they’re created. It’s because true prairies cover hundreds to thousands of acres and airborne seeds don’t travel that far into that large space. The weedy areas are along the edges of the prairies. So naturally, a small home “prairie” is more like a true prairie’s edge, not its interior.

How Natives Behave in Gardens

Ed explained that in practice, native plants plants don’t always work as intended, or where intended. Lurie Gardens in Millennium Park and the High Line in New York City are examples of noble efforts at using 100% native plants. But the cultural conditions of both sites weren’t conducive to some of the native species, so non-natives that are more durable in these conditions and complement the naturalistic planting effect were added.

There’s the illusion that plants considered “native” will always be the more durable option, but Ed reminds us that’s simply not true. It might be if the conditions where they’re being planted are exactly as they were when they evolved and adapted to the region, but you simply can’t find indigenous sites that haven’t been highly modified many times over the last several hundred years.

On the other hand, a native like milkweed spreads and can be a thug in garden settings, and people need to know that – not only because it may take over areas of the garden and be difficult to control but because it can easily spread by seed to neighbors.

About the Monarchs

People generally plant milkweed in their gardens to provide for Monarch butterflies, but Ed believes the focus should instead be on agriculture, where large quantities can be grown, not “tiny dots in back yards.” So we should encourage farmers to plant the edges of their fields with milkweed because what the Monarchs really need is re-establishment of the large masses of milkweed that have disappeared.

Another problem with all the focus on Monarchs, just one species of butterfly, is that other species that need the same protection and attention are ignored. Ed told the roomful of garden writers, “If you want to increase your opportunity to sell a story, start writing about the other butterflies, insects and fauna that need attention. This will expand your opportunities for stories and help the overall native effort.”

Changing Times

Human influence has brought about major changes in our environment, including the spread of invasives and disease that make it impossible to use such natives as ash, American chestnut, and American elm. No matter how noble the effort to use natives; there are those we simply should no longer plant.

Ed’s point is that urban forests need to be diverse, and not just include a few native species, as is the trend. For maximizing diversity and limiting the spread of insects and disease, the goal is to use no more than 5 percent of any one genus in an urban forest, which translates to at least 20 different genera in the city’s tree population.

For example, in the Midwest ash has been used as a major street tree (20% of most cities’ tree populations) but then wiped out by an invasive insect. Oaks and maples, two other giants of urban plantings, are the next two genera expected to see severe losses due to new diseases. So leading experts in woody plants are telling cities they have to include nonnatives in urban forests because there simply aren’t enough native trees that will survive there.

Competing Approaches

Turning to the literature on this topic, Ed applauds Doug Tallamy’s “revolutionary” Bringing Nature Home, but suggests we also read Where do Camels Belong by Ken Thompson. It makes the point that flora and fauna have moved around the planet throughout history and we’re spending billions of dollars to battle invasive species when plant movement is a natural occurrence.

Ed warned us not to get caught up in views at either end of the spectrum, views asserted as “the only way.” His point is that humankind has so dramatically changed the global environment that our solutions for the future are likely to be found somewhere in between these two views.

Right Plant, Right Place

Ed suggests that with climate change, we should focus not on “natives” but on “regionally appropriate” plants. This term includes the possibility that if a native species is no longer able to thrive due to new, permanent adverse conditions, maybe there are similar plants from other regions that would provide the same benefits.

And instead of dissing some plants as “ornamentals, how about simply asking “What plants will do best in this landscape?” Ed suggests we learn from some “wonderful sustainability focused gardens that include nonnatives.” Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison is one example of a garden that uses a wide array of styles, from sustainable meadows to a new type of low-maintenance gravel garden to combinations of durable native and non-native plants.

Writers Teaching Gardening When writing and speaking to novice (and probably advanced) gardeners, Ed encouraged us to stop showing lists of plants we think people “should be responsibly planting.” Instead, we should tell them to start by analyzing their particular site for environmental, geographical and, most importantly, cultural conditions.

And we should not encourage them to use only plants that were indigenous to that area 200 years ago. To illustrate his point, he showed us a part of Wisconsin he’d gardened in where the soils had been heavily modified over 100 years of agricultural tillage and chemicals, then further modified during construction of the homes. “Never base a plant palette on what was native 200 years ago; base it on what the conditions are currently.”

“Hear, hear!” to everything Ed said.

For more information about Ed’s writing, speaking and consulting, go to Spellbound Garden.

Ed Lyon on How to Write about Native Plants originally appeared on GardenRant on October 29, 2019.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/10/ed-lyon-on-how-to-write-about-native-plants.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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turfandlawncare · 5 years

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Ed Lyon on How to Write about Native Plants

How to Attract People to Gardening

How Natives Behave in Gardens

About the Monarchs

Changing Times

Competing Approaches

Right Plant, Right Place

“Hear, hear!” to everything Ed said.

For more information about Ed’s writing, speaking and consulting, go to Spellbound Garden.

Ed Lyon on How to Write about Native Plants originally appeared on GardenRant on October 29, 2019.

from GardenRant https://ift.tt/2NwDDkv

#GardenRant

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