Sustainable Gardening Newsletter June ‘09

Blog version. The whole newsletter is available here.

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"!

Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies by Owen Dell is part review, part questioning of the author, with everyone chiming in and Owen responding. Hottest topic? Soil amendments – bad, good, needed?
Good Gubernatorial Gardening in Harrisburg, and the cry for Lawn Reform Now!
True Confession; I gave up on worm composting. No point in pretending I’m a vermiphile when I’m not.
New Quarterly Round-up of Hort Research that Gardeners can Use by Jeff Gillman.
The Truth about Jeff Gillman is a video tour of the products in garden centers by our favorite hort professor.
Learning to Live without Grass in Buffalo.
Hire some goats and give up the Toro. Sounds good, but who are we kidding?
Front Lawn Police – in Berkeley? Just proves it can happen anywhere.
Governors Climbing on board the veg-growing bandwagon. Is that all? Wherein I rant about the lack of interest in the unfun issues like stormwater management and pollution.
Spireas just want to be free is a rant about really, really bad pruning.

In Chicago, didn’t want to leave their Botanic Garden (photo above). Or the Lurie.
Plugging Lawn Reform at the American Horticultural Society.
I visited Chanticleer Garden – wow. The Scott Arboretum and Morris Arboretum? Ditto. All in two awesome days I spent in and around Philly.

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.)

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Layanee June 18, 2009 at 9:33 am: How did you get up in that chair? LOL Have fun at the wedding and visiting family and bring some sun back here will ya?
2 TC June 19, 2009 at 8:21 pm: I wanted to be sure and stop in and say thanks for leaving a comment on my latest post about the high cost of GWA’s symposium and dues. To be fair, they do offer their regional meetings for a reasonable fee, but the expense of their annual symposium seems extravagant. A very dear friend of mine left a comment in praise of GWA. He’s been around a long time and is well-established in the business, plus he’s one of the regional directors so he has to defend GWA I guess.

I’ll try to stop back in sometime and check out all the good info you have on your blog Ms. Susan. Again, thanks for voicing your support of my point of view. I appreciate it, especially coming from someone of your caliber.
3 Jean June 21, 2009 at 4:40 pm: Yes, pack that camera battery! I look forward to seeing your post about Huntington Garden, one of those places on my must-see list. I made it to Chanticleer last week and have just posted about it. It was truly remarkable!