An unhealthy environment should not be the price of a beautiful landscape. Inappropriate plant choices and inadequate soil preparation can lead to a reliance on excessive use of water and on toxic chemicals to resolve problems. Ecological landscaping encourages practices that promote a healthy environment through conservation of resources, respect for biodiversity, and ecologically-sound techniques.
Imagine two woodlands. Both have deciduous, fire-adapted trees overhead. One has widely spaced trees, and sunlight reaches a diverse community of grasses, sedges, and forbs. The other has a dense thicket of invasive shrubs that shades out all but the earliest spring ephemerals. Will removing the invasive shrubs and exposing the bare soil trigger a profusion of native plants, restoring the diverse community that lived there hundreds of years ago?
In landscape and gardening design, spring means a change from a more sedentary winter lifestyle to a sudden increase in physical activity. This quick transition can be a challenge for the body, so optimizing your nutrition throughout the Spring and Summer can help you feel better, increase energy levels, and prevent inflammation and pain in the joints.
A medida que nos acercamos al Día de la Tierra 2021, comparta la lista de pasos ecológicos de ELA con colegas, amigos y familiares. Aquí hay acciones que todos podemos tomar para hacer que nuestros paisajes sean más amigables con la tierra.
As we approach Earth Day 2021, share ELA’s list of ecological steps colleagues, friends, and family. Here are actions all of us can take to make our landscapes more earth friendly.
The landscaping professions’ seasonal demands will continually challenge one’s ability to balance work, family life, and social obligations, leaving little time for self-care. Let us explore how you can incorporate self-care into your daily life, particularly your work life, for a better tomorrow.
Gardeners and Landscapers spend hours stewarding the land but often times at the expense of their own bodies. Take time every day to appreciate your hard-working body by practicing some deep breathing and easy yoga stretches to better align your spine and recharge your mind.
Coastal wetlands are a valuable component of our landscape for many reasons. They provide habitat to many species that are important for fisheries and recreation. They reduce wave energy and help mitigate coastal flooding. It turns out that they also help control the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by trapping carbon dioxide in plants and in soils.
How can we reconnect with the forest as well as ourselves, regardless of our community makeup? How can we steward forests as a resource in a neutral manner? We can all find ways to invite others into forested land by looking through a relationship lens rather than a personal ideal lens.
Invasive species are on the rise as trade and travel accelerate the introduction and spread of new species in a way never seen before. Simultaneously, our climate is changing at an unprecedented rate resulting in climate extremes. While these two phenomena are each daunting challenge to biodiversity, their impacts can act synergistically and present additional hurdles for conservation and sustainability.
Goodbye 2020 and good riddance!!! Though we are not out of the woods yet, I couldn’t help but feel a weight lifted as the ball fell at the stroke of midnight. 2020 started like any other year, with hope and possibility. The anticipation of a new season combined with knowing how crazy things would be in spring felt like I was on a rollercoaster about to hit that big drop. All I could do was hold on as the world rushed past. Little did we know that drop would be less like a rollercoaster and more akin to Niagara Falls.
In 2019, the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) sustainability committee asked me to research and write about plastic horticultural pots use and disposal methods. Because plastic is so easy to use, billions of plastic pots were being produced without a blueprint for what would happen as demand increased. Unfortunately, we’ve produced so much plastic that we can’t possibly recycle it all.
Last year I found a copy of The Closing Circle, Nature, Man & Technology by ecologist Barry Commoner. I started rereading it and was stunned to find in the first chapter, even before he states the Four Laws of Ecology, Commoner discusses the fundamental interaction of nutrients, humus, soil microbes, plant health, and climate! What is amazing is the book was published in 1971!!
