Garden Rant

What's Happening

Sustainable Gardening Newsletter June 2009

GardenRant version.  The whole newsletter is available here.

In the News 

• A garden is reborn – and a gardener born – in the New York Times.
  

• The popularity of tree-climbing is growing within eco-tourism circles, and according to this article, it’s considered "slow travel".  Well, sure, but not if you’re flying off to Brazil to do it.

• Have you heard about the new water footprint for food? There’s no footprint yet for ornamental plants, but it may come next.

• In the Chicago Tribune, how community gardens pull neighborhoods together.

• Found – good article by the folks at The Natural Gardener in Austin: How to teach sustainable gardening to your customers.

• Food
  writer Eric Schlosser says he’d rather eat a conventionally grown
  tomato harvested by well treated workers than an heirloom picked by
  oppressed workers.  Boy, that’s stirring the pot!  And this article calls the "organic" label  merely "quaint packaging"!

On the Sustainable Gardening Blog

• Topics ranged from Michelle O's Veg Garden to sustainability and somehow got us laughing, as described here in Fun with Ken Druse. 

• Pollinator Heaven and Hell contrasts a "perfect" American lawn, and my ex-lawn that's abuzz.

• New Website Design – Feedback Appreciated.

Coming Up

I’m off to Los Angeles!  I get to see family – it’s wedding bells for my nephew – AND such gardening buddies as Shirley Bovshow and (I hope) Debra Prinzing.  Also Huntington Garden.  I damn well better  pack my camera battery charger this time (mistake made in Chicago.)

Photo of iconic Adirondack chair at Swarthmore College by Becky Roberts.

Posted by Susan Harris on June 18, 2009 at 4:30 am, in the category What's Happening.