Recently in Native & Drought Tolerant Plants for Landscaping Category

A study of the magicians of the soil is an endless endeavor! Paul Stamets makes it a bit easier to learn about mushrooms with this TED talk. Mushrooms are both a citizen of the micro world of soil, but they are the manufacturers of the very soil in which they live. What a sentient approach to sustainability.

California landscaping is... well, different.  Having lived in several states in the eastern half of the country, I was not prepared for the dramatic differences in plant species, seasons or water situations when we moved to California.  And it appears I'm not alone.

California, having a very long southern to northern body is as diverse as ... well, most of the eastern seaboard states combined.   That covers a LOT of habitat diversity!

California has deserts, semi-deserts, foothills, mountains, coasts, and dense urban habitats that have been radically altered from natural landforms. 

Landscaping in California is about water conservation more than it' about a green lawn.  At least it is to most native Californians who understand that we get no rain ... I mean ABSOUTELY NO RAIN for NINE MONTHS every year. That's different!

Okay...so that's Southern California.  Like I said, our southern to northern diversity is mind boggling!

Sustainable landscaping is important in California no matter where you live.  It's even more important here than many other states because of our unique geography, our dense populations along the coasts, our high agricultural influences, and yes, our high tourism appeal.

California looks like a tropical paradise in some areas...but we're not.  We're a desert.  We're one of the Western states...with lots of sand, hot winds, droughts, cacti, rattlesnakes and of course, floods, fires and landslides!  Those wildfires are a major contributor to California's unique necessities in landscaping. 

Even urban sprawl has added the need for water conservation.  Native plants and low-water requirements of plantings and hardscapes are helpful when your neighborhood is threatened with wildfires and the fire department needs water pressure ... and an ample supply of water for disaster prevention.

Native plant societies do their best to spread the word about alternatives that are more suited to our climate and wildlife and seasonal uniqueness, but most new residents don't even take the time to learn what is different here.  They just go to a big box store and stock up on the plants they know how to tend.  And those plants frequently last about as long as it takes for water to seep through 90% sand soils!

Here's one resource for landscape  professionals -- who can be as challenged as anyone to keep pace with climate change and regulations and client demands.

CLCA 'Greenovate' Your Yard Tip of the Week

With the threat of global warming looming on the Earth's horizon, eco-friendly ideas have once again revitalized the "green" movement. Going "green" is not only a state objective, but meets local policy mandates for healthy communities. One place you can begin to go green is by starting in your own yard. There are some simple changes you can make that will not only benefit the planet, but will also save you money as well. Here is one way that a CLCA licensed contractor can help you "greenovate" your yard. Check back weekly for a new tip in the series.

Learn to GREENoVATE!

Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research today released a scientific assessment ("Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate") that provides the first comprehensive analysis of observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes in North America and U.S. territories. Among the findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases, according to the report. Many types of extreme weather and climate event changes have been observed during this time period and continued changes are projected for this century. Specific future projections include: Abnormally hot days and nights, along with heat waves, are very likely to become more common. Cold nights are very likely to become less common. Sea ice extent is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in the Arctic Ocean in summer in coming decades. Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense. Droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe in some regions. Hurricanes will likely have increased precipitation and wind. The strongest cold-season storms in the Atlantic and Pacific are likely to produce stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.

My mother introduced bamboo into our backyard about 50 years ago...it was exotic and I had endless fun creating fishing poles and lattices and other crafts.  However, it took over the backyard flower garden!

With today's interest in sustainable materials and plants, bamboo has risen in popularity, both as a building material and as landscaping material.  This "grass" is definitely a plant on "steroids!"

Controlling Bamboo tips are available on the website of  ...

American Bamboo Society

Controlling Bamboo:  While we really are in favor of planting bamboos, rather than eliminating them, we do need to tell people how to get rid of a bamboo when somebody has planted the wrong variety, or the right variety in the wrong place. One of the most common letters we receive starts out “My neighbor planted a bamboo, and now it is coming up all over my yard. I have sprayed it with (product name deleted) and it doesn’t work. What can I do?"

The first thing to remember is that there are many different species of bamboo. In general, however, one can divide bamboos into “Runners” and “Clumpers”. The Clumpers don’t invade. To remove a clumper, just dig it out (and transplant it.) Runners can be well-behaved in cold climates, but some kinds when in a warm climate, and given plenty of water, can become a serious problem. Don’t plant a runner in a small yard in a warm climate, unless you put a barrier* around it.

THIS Landscaping Society provides a wide variety of information about growing and controlling bamboo, as well as source lists and frequently asked questions and events.

American Bamboo Society
www.americanbamboo.org

Indoor Water Conservation

Plumbing conservation is widely accepted and routinely called for in federal, state and local legislation, ordinances for new development and agency rebate programs.

These devices are making a measurable difference. For example, Los Angeles saw a 25 percent decrease in demand in the 1990s with a plumbing retrofit program funded by water agencies.

The major benefit of low-flow plumbing device programs is that they can be implemented without requiring a change in the behavior of end users.

Outdoor Water Conservation

Saving water indoors with low-flow plumbing is easy compared to controlling outdoor water waste. Yet the vast majority of household water flows outside.

A study conducted by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) shows that 58 percent of residential water is applied to landscapes.  Gardening, recognized as the number one outdoor leisure activity, is growing in popularity as a national pastime.

According to a report published in the journal Environmental Management, some 40 million acres of the U.S. are covered in lawns, making turf the nation’s most irrigated crop.

And according to the American Water Works Association, most landscapes are overwatered by 30% to 300%, accounting for 80% of all landscape damage...and water waste!

SOLUTION:  Remove the TURF and replace it with DROUGHT TOLERANT GARDENS or NATIVE HABITAT, etc. that reduces water use.

See more research studies that can help you save water at the Independent Research Studies webpage provided by WeatherTRAK.

SOURCE:  WeatherTRAK.com

America is under siege by many harmful non-native species of plants, animals, and microorganisms.

More than 6,500 nonindigenous species are now established in the United States, posing risks to native species, valued ecosystems, and human and wildlife health.

Natural Disaster of a Living Kind

The current annual environmental, economic, and health-related costs of invasive species exceed those of all other natural disasters combined.

USGS provides the tools, technology, and information supporting efforts to prevent, contain, control, and manage invasive species nationwide.

USGS plays an important role in Federal efforts to combat invasive species in natural and semi-natural areas through early detection and assessment of newly established invaders, monitoring of invading populations; improving understanding of the ecology of invaders and factors in the resistance of habitats to invasion; and development and testing of prevention, management, and control methods. USGS invasive species research encompasses all significant groups of invasive organisms in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in all regions of the United States.

Research components of the  USGS Invasive Species Program include:

• Prevention
• Early Detection and Rapid Assessment of New Invaders
• Monitoring and Forecasting of Invasive Species
• Effects of Invasive Species
• Control and Management of Invasive Species
• Information Management

INVASIVE SPECIES MANAGEMENT RESOURCES

For a list of the most current Invasives program research projects, visit the USGS Invasive program's Highlighted Projects page.

The Invasive Species Information Node (ISIN) is a data management portal for invasive plants, animals, and pathogens in the United States and a thematic node of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). I

The Global Invasive Species Database, now easier to use, grants access to quadruple the number of invasive species than when the database began. 

The Land Institute's strategy includes collaboration with public institutions in order to direct more research in the direction of Natural Systems Agriculture.  

The team at the Land Institute feels comfortable having demonstrated the scientific feasibility of their proposal for a Natural Systems Agriculture. Because this work deals with basic biological questions and principles, the implications are applicable worldwide. If Natural Systems Agriculture were fully adopted, we could one day see the end of agricultural scientists from industrialized societies delivering agronomic methods and technologies from their fossil fuel-intensive infrastructures into developing countries and thereby saddling them with brittle economies.

Perennial Grain...a hybrid of intermediate wheatgrass and triticale could produce a more sustainable food crop that lives for years and builds deep root systems to tap deeper water sources. 

According to Scientific American's article about the Land Institute in 2007, Americans assume food production is easy and highly efficient already.  However, reality is that agriculture requires vast areas of land, regular high quantities of waer, energy and chemicals to meet the demands for our escalating human and animal populatons.

The UN sponsored Millennium Ecosystem Assessment suggested that agriculture may be the "largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function of any single human activity."  OUCH!

"Today, most of humanity's food comes directly or indirectly (as animals feed) from cereal grains, legumes and oilseed crops.  These staples are appealing to producers and consumers because they are easy to transport and store, relatively imperishable, and fairly high in protein and calories.  As a result, such crops occupy about 80% of global agricultural land.  BUT, they are all annual plants, meaning that they must be grown anew from seeds every eyar, typically using resource-intensive cultivation methods. More troubling, the environmental degradation caused by agriculture will likely worsen as the hungry human population grows to eight billion or 10 billion in the coming decades."

Plant Breeders, Agronomists and Ecologists Strive for Solutions

Grain-cropping systems that functin much like natural ecosystems that have been displaced by agriculture is the holy grain for agriculture researchers.

Significant advances in plant breeding science are bringing this goal within sight at last!

Kansas plant geneticist Wes Jackson looked at the ecosystems that preceded agriculture to look for a solution. Mixtures of perennial plants once dominated nearly all the planet's landscapes and they still do in uncultivated areas today. 

More than 85% of North America's native plant species are PERENNIALS.

Because annuals have relatively shallow roots -- most less than 0.3 meters -- farming areas have problems with erosion, foil fertility depletion and water contamination...and lack of nature's natural farmers, wildlife.

Today the traits of perennials are becoming better appreciated for their root depths of more than two meters, plant communities that regulate ecosystem functions such as water management and carbon and nitrogen cycling.  They are also highly productive yet resilient in the face of environmental stresses.

Timothy grass, a perennial hay crop, is roughly 54 times more effective in maintaining topsoil than annual crops.  Scientists also find a fivefold reduction in water loss and a 35-fold reduction in nitrate loss from soil planted with alfalfa and mixed perennial grasses compared with soil under corn and soybeans.

Carbon sequestration by perennials is also boosted.  Carbon is the main ingredient of soil organic matter and can contain 50% more than annually cropped fields.   And perennial fields do not need to be worked every year, so less farm machinery cycles and less fertilizers and pestcides also reduce fossil fuel use.

Wildlife also benefits -- bird populations can be seven times more dense in perennial crop fields than annual crop fields. 

And perennials are far more capable of sustainable cultivation on marginal lands, which already have poor soil quality or would be quickly depleted by a few years of intensive annual cropping.

Perennial plant breeding research are focusing on wheat, sorghum, sunflower, intermediate wheatgrass and other species as perennial grain crops.

At The Land Institute, breeders are working both on domesticating perennial wheatgrass and on crossing assorted perennial wheatgrass species with annual wheats.  Although perennial crops such as alfalfa and sugarcane already exist around the world, none has seed yields comparable to those of annual grain crops...and  here is where creative plant breeding  works with  the growing environment, selective  breeding stock, and  judicious use of fertilizers to increase the yield of these perennial grains.

Deep roots mean resilience, and that trait might be more important than many short term plant attributes currently valued by agriculture.

Additional programs include the Climate and Energy Project (CEP)   See www.climateandenergy.org . The Land Institute formed this new project on climate and energy in February 2007. Because of the close connections between climate change, energy from coal, and agricultural vulnerabilities -- research is growing to explore the issues and find solutions to the issues that connect energy and farming.

The Land Institute
2440 E. Water Well Road,
Salina, KS 67401
785-823-5376
www.landinstitute.org

Nancy Jackson, Project Director
Climate and Energy Project
P.O. Box 442217
Lawrence, KS 66044
Ph: 785-331-8743
jackson@climateandenergy.org
www.climateandenergy.org

Kudzu is a ubiquitous Southern invasive vine that is migrating northward with global warming. And now research indicates that kudzu emits gases that contribute to air pollution.

Kudzu forms ground level ozone, or smog

Researchers Lerdau and Jonathan Hickman of the State University of New York at Stony Brook have determined that kudzu emits gases that contribute to the formation of ground level ozone, or smog. The major manmade sources of ground level ozone are cars and coal-fired power plants. While some growing plants also contribute to ozone pollution, kudzu appears to produce these gases faster and in larger quantities.

Read more at CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com

Small companies have to act smarter and more effectively -- not just to green themselves, but everyday. Their tight resources of time, talent and money require that every action have a realistic ROI and maximum impact.

Some small facilities' voluntary green and sustainable projects are quite significant. And when they are compounded by an industry-wide strategy to make their shared industry more sustainable -- Katie bar the door!

Golf course greening opportunities include restoring natural habitat acreage for native populations of plants and wildlife that can also contribute to the conservation of water -- which can be a substantial green contribution!

Saving energy on lighting and clubhouse mounts up, too, and waste reduced through greenwaste composting and kitchen procedures can be accomplished on a scale proportionately greater than most multinationals who undertake green operational strategies.

Sustainable landscapes reflect a high level of self-sufficiency that once established, mature and flourish virtually on their own as part of their natural ecosystem. The resulting benefits can include added aesthetics, lower maintenance costs, more effective use of water and chemicals, enhanced open space and more effective wildlife habitat value.

Site inventory is a critical step in designing any landscape, including a golf course. By minimizing earthmoving, the natural ecosystem is preserved, along with water flow through the watershed -- which extends far beyond the golf course's boundaries.

Even Mother Nature is armed with earthly tools to survive in drought conditions. The trick is learning how to use them.

Hawaii is using earthworms and vermiculture to reduce water used for food disposal, and  drought-tolerant landscaping.

By growing drought-resistant plants in the right places, Shin say you can cut up to 80% of your water use.

Another tip: use worms instead of your garbage disposal to get rid of food scraps.

Earthworms eat up the food waste, and their poop is essentially compost . It's nutrient rich, it's organic you use it to fertilize your plants and it saves water both ways