Posts tagged sustainability

Regrouping

June 24, 2010 · Filed under Social Sustainability · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Sometimes an idea has to be cooked back down to its origins so that it may be reborn with new vitality and strength.

Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy has reached one of these choicepoints. It is unlikely that the workshop will continue to be offered monthly in Southern CA, but not because the content of the workshop is irrelevant and superfluous. A friend recently commented that this workshop may be ahead of its time. It may be. Then again, because the workshop exists and because Divine timing is always spot on, Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy may just be right where it needs to be right now. The workshop just needs to exist in a different format.

I had hopes that the workshop would be gaining positive momentum while facilitating new social connections between workshop attendees as they learn the mindset that allows sustainability to take root. In other words, teaching people systems thinking is the ostensible goal of Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy but one of the key intentions of the workshop was to rebuild sorely needed social capital.

Here’s a quick test to see how much social capital you have in your neighborhood. How many of your neighbors do you know? Of the neighbors you have met and liked, how well do you know them and how well do they know you? How many would you trust to watch your kids? How many could you depend on to have your back if the crap hit the proverbial fan? How many of your neighbors can count on you to have their backs? Most of us don’t know our neighbors, let alone trust them. Trust is a measure of the presence or absence of social capital. The psychological, emotional, and physical safety and well-being of children (and other vulnerable members of society) in their own neighborhoods and in their families is another measure of social capital.

It was also part of the inherent design of the workshop format that that material would be tailored for its locale. Each and every community would, in effect, be hosting a unique workshop that was intended to create or enhance a sense of place. Considering the disparate communities that the workshop participants have come from, creating a sense of community connected to and grounded within a place wasn’t going to happen through the workshops. Metropolitan Los Angeles sprawls too far. It’s a place without a true center, which may be said to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. Although interpersonal affinities may be felt among workshop participants, authentic community is hard to foster without face time in real time. That may offend all you Twitter and Facebook users, but the need for face time is our collective social reality. It’s just how we’re wired as social beings.

As a recently soured relationship with a former client has reminded me, we are collectively a long way off from where we need to be and where we yearn to be. Regardless of political stripe, I know of no person of reasonably good character who does not want to be safe and for that safety to be extended to beloved friends and family. We yearn to trust and yet we’re surrounded my messages that pelt us day in and day out that 1) we’re not safe, 2) we’re never good enough, 3) we can never have enough, 4) we’re surrounded by crazy people and predators, and 5) the world is rife with scarcity, fierce competition, incessant threats, and ever-present danger. You have to get “them” before “they” get you, whomever “they” might be.

Is this honestly the world that you want for your children and grandchildren? Is this the world that you want for yourself?

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The long view vs. shortsightedness, pt. 1

February 16, 2010 · Filed under Landscaping · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Clients can sometimes be a complete pain, especially when there is a mismatch between what a client expressly claims he wants versus what he actually wants. It may be instead that the true mismatch is between what the client was willing to be forthcoming about versus what he really wanted and silently expected.

If you pay for a garden design, that’s exactly what you’ll get: a design. That implies no warranty on the ultimate expression of the design as manifested in real-life. When the rubber hits the road, rendered garden designs have to be modified to reflect changes that are dictated by actual site conditions as they are uncovered when garden creation begins. A good designer expects the unexpected and can adapt a design appropriately.

Think of it this way: when you pay an architect for a building design, do you then expect to pick his or her brain ad infinitum for all the details and specifications in addition to expecting him or her to build out the design…for cheap or for free?

If what you want is a complete build-it-yourself “kit” complete with step-by-step instructions, but you don’t ask for that kit forthrightly yet expect it anyway and you don’t intend to pay for it (knowing fool well that you’re infringing on the livelihood of your service provider), then you’re just being a slimy, dishonest git steeped in entitlement mentality.

Straight up, few things destroy trust and social capital faster than entitlement mentality.

In this case, the client was expecting and feeling entitled to much more than he had paid for. He wanted the 70′ x 90′ edible landscape design that I created for him AND expected full build out specifications too at no extra charge. Mind you, at no point did the client say that build out specs were what he wanted from the start. Had he asked for it and paid for it, that’s what he would have received. Now this client is less likely than ever to get what he wants because what he wants is at my expense and at the expense of my landscape contractor colleague.

I’m not in the habit of giving clients complete and full instructions on how to do my job so that I’m rendered obsolete as a service provider, especially when the dissatisfaction with the design is expressed after the fact as an insult delivered backhandedly. This is particularly true when a client seems to think that my work can be brainlessly duplicated, as if no skill, experience, perspective, knowledge, planning, practical thought, or reflection goes into a design. Think about it: if someone was picking your brain, would you freely give away every last detail on how to do your work so that someone else can appropriate it in order to avoid paying you for your expertise, experience, and perspective?

That said, I have no problem teaching someone how to do what I do if they appropriately pay for the service and if they respect what I have to offer. That respect makes all the difference. When someone picks my brain, disregards my advice or applies it poorly only to later passive aggressively blame me for their failure, that’s where my patience, goodwill, and tolerance end.

A well-considered design is ultimately a balancing act – a sustainable landscape design has to match what a client wants, what a client needs, and what the garden can actually provide for the plants. Soil type, solar exposure, companion planting, the client’s visual aesthetics, the client’s lifestyle, and more all receive consideration in tandem. Good working relationships are also a balancing act, but when someone plays the entitlement card, all bets are off for seeing eye to eye.

Entitlement mentality demands that someone else caters to you. A profound lack of respect is made evident through the demand.

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Minimize tillage, part 3

February 5, 2010 · Filed under Gardens, Landscaping · Tagged , , , ,

Tillage and soil disturbance brings one other thing to light – weed seeds. I can’t help but think about weeds at this time of the year since I’ve casually observed plenty of patches of weedy hell just traveling through residential neighborhoods.

Weeds will get away from you if you don’t stay on top of them. That’s just what weeds are consummately equipped to do thanks to their genetic heritage and reproductive strategy – live fast, die young, and crank out seeds in vast numbers. The seeds then bide their time near the soil surface until the conditions are right to replicate the growth cycle all over again.

The plant species we call “weeds” are really nothing more than plants we have judged as unwanted because they’re the wrong plants in the wrong places. For one thing, they tend to be non-native to the places that are being colonized. For another, weedy species tend to not encounter built-in biological controls that keeps their population growth in check in their native ecosystems. That means that nothing in their new host environments has learned to exploit the weeds as a food resource…yet.

For lack of natural controls to keep weed populations in check, it’s on us to impose that constraint in our gardens and landscapes. It’s late April now in Southern CA and the majority of weeds have set seed. The best time to set the weeds back is just after the first winter rains. Let the weeds grow up a bit but and then pull (deep tap rooted species like dandelion, wild radish, or cheeseweed) while the soil is still moist or mow them (grasses only) when they’ve set flower (inconspicuous on grass species) but don’t wait until the weeds set seed. Like many things in life, timing is everything. If you’re wondering why it’s not helpful to wait until the plants set seed, it’s because the seeds of some species are viable plant embryos long before they’re separated from the parent plant. When you wait, you inadvertently add to the weed seed “bank” in the soil.

Tillage makes things worse. Some weed seeds no doubt are killed in the process but the majority are just “warehoused” by tillage. It’s like putting them in the equivalent of a bank security deposit box. Without tillage, most seeds will remain at the soil surface. Ants carry some seeds away, earthworms consume other seeds and redeposit them in castings, and gophers and other animals move seeds through burrowing. Broad scale tillage helps foster an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. Sure, the weeds for that season or that year may be gone but the seeds of their ancestors lie in wait to return with a vengeance.

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Minimize tillage, part 2

February 2, 2010 · Filed under Gardens, Landscaping · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Did you know that the top foot of soil has more 7 to 50 times more life than the next 3 1/2 feet? (Source: Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik, Metamorphic Press 1986). When soil is tilled or plowed, too much air is introduced all at once.

Life thrives in a zone of ‘enoughness’. Now I realize this is a foreign concept to most people, who as a rule want more, more, more of everything and then some. (This proclivity has led to such pop culture aphorisms like, “Too much of a good thing is just about right.”) Think about it though: more consumerism leads to more waste and more waste leads to more plastic waste as a proportion of that overall waste stream. More plastic waste leads to larger oceanic garbage patch gyres, of which there are currently five. But, I digress. More oxygen in the soil introduced like a shot of steroids does not lead to more life but to less. You may think you’re taking care of one problem – say for instance a pest outbreak – but you’re unintentionally creating a lot of new problems for yourself. You’re also destroying the soil’s structure, especially if you are tilling over and over from year to year. (There are techniques to aerate the soil less violently, but those may be introduced in later posts.)

Imagine taking a whole block of any given urban development – New York, Paris, London, Scottdale, Tokyo, Los Angeles – and upending that entire block, buildings, streets, and all. What used to be the tops of buildings are now underground and beneath everything else that used to be above them. Don’t you think that would be quite disruptive, to say the least?

Turning the soil is no less deadly. Soil flora and fauna tend to live in specific strata in the soil and tillage disrupts this order. For instance, there are some native California earthworms (yes, they exist! – check out this paper) that tend to tunnel deeply and other species that live closer to the surface. If you’re smart and letting nature do the heavy lifting for you, the only creatures that are turning the soil the vast majority of the time are earthworms and other ground dwelling animals that tend to tunnel. You may not like the affect these creatures have on the visual appearance of your landscape or your plants, but the truth of the matter is that tunneling mammals have their roles to play in nature. They introduce all-important organic matter, for one thing.

For those of you who grow edibles, especially produce that commonly graces our tables, you have a sense of humus. This is organic matter that has been consumed and altered by soil fungi and bacteria into large amorphous molecules that tend to resist further decomposition. Humus does break down but it does so very slowly. The introduction of too much oxygen through tillage burns up organic matter quickly and most of the nutrient value is lost. If you’re a gardener, why would you want to engage in a practice that is counterproductive and against your own interests?

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