I am not a purist and I don't expect many other people will be either. I think taking the hard line and insisting on all natives will go a long way toward killing the movement.—Doug Tallamy, Garden Rant interview, 12/12/07 Mild-mannered Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, is still smiling but he’s also a [...]
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy
While reading the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens, I stumbled upon a new (to me) trend in outdoor living: Outdoor Televisions! Phew! It’s. […]
Body: Posted by Bert CreggLast week I posted about some horticultural disasters I witnessed in the Czech Republic. This week the chamber of horrors. […]
Biodiverse Lawn by Coalition Member Thomas Christopher Like other members of this group, I believe that the contemporary model of lawn has got to go.. […]
The importance of eliminating invasive plants, which has long been considered settled dogma, is unsettling itself before our very eyes. Harvard's Peter del Tredici is making waves among scientists and designers, though maybe not yet with ecologists, with his book Wild Urban Plants, briefly reviewed here. He breaks the...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyThey might not be a good choice for street containers like this one. Black is the new petunia I saw the black and green ones everywhere last summer, but now Black Velvet is the big buzz. Black plants are tough. You want to like them, but a plant is...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyAmy's "Dear eHow: Please Go Away" last week got a bit of attention, including comments from some writers for About.com. They took exception to it being lumped in with eHow and the other "content mills" and claimed that About.com's writers "are carefully vetted and truly domain experts." And this...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyStandard-issue "lawn care" information is OUT. Lawn reform information is not only IN, it's important, dammit. So 15 months ago the Lawn Reform Coalition launched a website filled with alternatives to the conventional, overly perfect and supersized American lawn. Next came our Facebook page, which quickly grew to over...
Read more in: Lawn ReformTurf without management I hate to be shockable at 50–it's unseemly–but I was doing some research yesterday and was shocked to learn that Colorado State University has an entire degree program devoted to "turf management." This program is taught by actual Ph.D.s. It leads to glorious management careers, the...
Read more in: Gardening on the Planet, Lawn Reform, Ministry of ControversyComments are not the only indication of a good post. Sometimes a great post will have no comments at all. But we do like to see readers get fired up about issues and discuss them with each other (not just agree or disagree with the post itself). Here are...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyA new study of artificial turf made from recycled rubber tires shows that it does not, as far as anyone can tell, harbor dangerous bacteria or emit harmful fumes. It does, however, cause more skin abrasions. It also does not smell like fresh-cut grass, ever, and it does not...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyHere’s my favorite provision of S-510, otherwise known as the Food Safety Modernization Act, and just approved unanimously by the Senate Sunday: it allows the FDA to recall foods linked to illness. We would no longer have to depend on the kindness of corporations to do the right thing...
Read more in: Eat This, Ministry of ControversyJust go over to our friend Jeff Gillman's post at The Garden Professors. He and other scientists seem skeptical that clothianidin is the culprit behind colony collapse disorder, but that doesn't make the EPA's role in allowing this chemical to be widely used without sufficient testing any less reprehensible....
Read more in: Ministry of ControversySo this is interesting. Scientific Certification Systems has a "pesticide residue free" certification program that either organic or non-organic growers can participate in. The idea is that no matter how you grow your food, as long as it's free of residues when it goes to market, it will be...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyWe’ve all been hearing about a leaked EPA memo that appeared a few days ago, linking colony collapse disorder to Bayer CropScience and the pesticide clothianidin, which the company wants to use on mustard seed and cotton. This pesticide attacks the nervous system of insects; it is used to...
Read more in: Ministry of Controversy, Taking Your Gardening DollarWriter Joel Lerner has added another twist to the mystery of the Plan to Kill Beloved Azaleas at the National Arboretum (the gardening world around DC has talked about nothing else for days now). Click here to read Joel's passionate defense of the Arboretum's azaleas and boxwoods, at the...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyBefore my local cultural funding controversy—which included money for our historic botanical gardens—dies away (big fuss made, funding restored, end of story one hopes), I am sharing some further thoughts on this recurring phenomenon. Because it's been happening since I began to notice—sometime in the late 80s—and will continue...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyJust in case you haven't heard the news, here's the sordid story on the SafeLawns blog. Short version? Members of Landscape Ontario, the province’s trade association representing the lawn industry, were pretty unhappy when they heard that A Chemical Reaction – the stirring documentary about the first town...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyIt's been a while since we last tackled the contentious issue of leaf blowers, but action on that front is nicely rounded up in this week's New Yorker Magazine. (Here's an abstract - the full article isn't online). In case you don't get hold of the print version, my...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyNever having taken a White House Garden tour before, I was expecting long lines and lots of hassles, but instead was greeted with the sound of this military band, and NO line at all (thanks to early arrival). Other symptoms of a very happy experience included welcoming staff and...
Read more in: Green the GroundsHeadlines across the gardening world and elsewhere are telling us that Roundup is "linked to human birth defects". Well, that's alarming, but I've signed on to Jon Stewart's sanity campaign, not the "Keep Fear Alive" movement led by Stephen Colbert's character, so I thought I'd at least read the...
Read more in: Ministry of ControversyA guest rant by Mary Gray. Observe, if you will, your local public school. Not the inside. No, take a look at what’s going on outside — on the school grounds. Pretty much nothing, right? Oh, there are the large expanses of patchy grass serving no purpose whatsoever —...
Read more in: Green the Grounds, Guest RantsA guest rant by Tom Alexander A good friend and best selling author on marijuana cultivation recently submitted his books to the Garden Writers Association for their annual Quill & Trowel awards. At first he was told his works wouldn’t be considered for the awards because the judges...
Read more in: Guest Rants, Ministry of Controversy
Commented on OG Mag on Wildlife-Friendly Gardens: What's Wrong with this Picture? { Hello There. I discovered your blog using msn. This is a very well written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and come back... } – May 23, 1:31 AM
Commented on Got Gnomes? { It is very funny, and also a bit of an inside joke. There is a very funny book "Yew and Non-Yew" by James Bartholomew that... } – May 22, 11:44 PM
Commented on In Defense of Plant Critics { It's not worth going back to quote it exactly, but the crack in the article about the man who loved his impatiens, but didn't know... } – May 22, 11:03 PM
Commented on OG Mag on Wildlife-Friendly Gardens: What's Wrong with this Picture? { Wait - you think a domestic cat is not "part of the ecosystem"? I suppose we humans aren't "part of the ecosystem" either? How exactly... } – May 22, 8:58 PM Commented on OG Mag on Wildlife-Friendly Gardens: What's Wrong with this Picture? { Oh I TOTALLY agree with you! And thank goodness they didn't publish that photo that had a CHILD in the wildlife-friendly garden! Imagine the destruction... } – May 22, 8:54 PMWe are:
perfect
magazine
gardens.
Gardening
our
asses
off.
Having a
hell of a lot
of fun.
