What’s Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy about?

Background and History

Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy is about learning to understand the larger natural context of our urban and suburban environments and the relationships we have individually and collectively to a sense of place. Human settlements are inextricably interconnected with nature through material and energy flows which are taken for granted because they are hidden in plain sight. Nature communicates through its rhythms, cycles, and patterns but its language is unintelligible because of our current state of personal and collective disconnection. Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy workshops were developed as a grassroots response to address and heal this disconnection. Instructors Mr. Steve Hernandez and Ms. Wendy Talaro co-teach systems thinking through Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy while using landscaping and gardening as the vehicle for the concrete workshop material because that is often the most immediate interface individuals have with nature on a daily basis.

A big push for sustainability is under way and the Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy workshop is a means by which Earth-friendly skills and knowledge can be made accessible to many communities. Steve and Wendy teach workshops to transfer practical garden design / planning skills and knowledge to help people at all skill and knowledge levels who are interested in learning in earnest, whether or not they are homeowners.

In 1992, David Orr (member of the board of directors for the Center for Ecoliteracy and professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College) introduced the term “ecological literacy”. The phrase was later shortened to “ecoliteracy” and is defined by Fritjof Capra (physicist, systems theorist, and international bestselling author of four books) as “our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and live accordingly.”

Once you viscerally understand the language of place through nature’s rhythms, cycles, and patterns, you have the framework to integrate environmental sustainability into your life. As of 2008, a majority of the world’s population now lives in cities and in the United States, this percentage is even higher – over 81 percent. Regular contact with nature is mediated by concrete, glass, and steel while nature itself is relegated and constrained to rectilinear blocks cut around it by the urban grid. Every aspect of our lives is molded and influenced by nature as a wellspring of sustenance, yet nature and its “free” environmental services are taken completely for granted and given short shrift as the dumping grounds for every form of waste. Urban/suburban ecoliteracy is fundamental to greening your home and community while saving money, water, energy and time. Sustainability is impossible without ecological literacy.


Instructors’ Backgrounds

Wendy Talaro, M.A. is the mastermind behind Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy, the nation’s only place-based workshop and seminar series created to teach integrated environmental, social, and economic sustainability and applied systems thinking to the general public. Wendy is also the founder and lead designer behind Cornucopia Sustainable Designs, a sustainable garden and landscape design and consultation company in Southern California; she possesses expertise in sustainable gardens integrating CA natives and edibles. Wendy also successfully integrates her love of chocolate and animates the principles she teaches through her triple bottom line company, Truffle in Paradise. The company’s specialty is artisanal vegan chocolate truffles made with organic fairly traded chocolate. As a cutting edge expert on sustainability, Ms. Talaro strives to inspire even more positive momentum through an anthology of non-fictional stories about shifting to an eco-friendly lifestyle as lived and told by regular folks on the ground.

Steve Hernandez is President and CEO of NativeScape Development Inc., the only landscape firm educating and serving homeowners, business owners, and local governmental agencies on how to effectively achieve authentic, ecologically sustainable landscapes through results-oriented design, construction and maintenance in Southern California. In collaboration with Ms. Talaro, Mr. Hernandez co-developed an eco-curriculum that emphasizes interactive problem solving, resource relationships in daily living, real world case studies, community building and slow food. As creator of not only sustainable landscapes but also workshops for ecologically responsible global citizens, Steve Hernandez is one of the nation’s leading experts on the topic of sustainable landscaping and ecological pattern literacy.

Through academic studies enhanced by inherent inclination and natural talent, both Wendy Talaro and Steven Hernandez became astute observers of natural patterns, i.e. the “language” of nature otherwise known as ecological literacy. Within their professional careers, Ms. Talaro and Mr. Hernandez applied the principles of natural design to the creation of sustainable gardens and landscapes. The public service value of natural design became self-evident in the positive and attractive results that saved clients’ time, money, water, and energy while creating equity in their homes. Through Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy, adjunct workshops that delve into practical ecological design in greater detail, and sustainability teleseminars for professionals in the landscaping industry, Ms. Talaro and Mr. Hernandez advocate for the widespread integration of sustainability principles that are unnecessarily relegated to the fringes of society and viewed as burdensome economic costs in need of support via taxes and subsidies. Contrary to popular perception in the United States, authentic sustainability creates value, jobs, real wealth, and fosters the integral health and well-being of people and the ecosystems that support them.

Over twenty years of cumulative ecological experience, training, observation, and professional expertise are going into the workshop’s content. When relevant material created by others is incorporated into Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy, the instructors give credit where credit is due. Ms. Talaro and Mr. Hernandez are grateful to those who have collectively influenced their thinking, personal philosophies, and the development of their skills because without this legacy, the content of Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy would not have been developed.


Benefits of Becoming Ecoliterate

Do-it-yourself (DIY) gardeners sometimes hit a wall when they have had enough failures that they get frustrated with continuing with their solo efforts. Moreover, many of these DIY gardeners and landscapers want to convert from lawns and water-hungry plants to beautiful sustainable gardens. These homeowners still want to do some if not most of the work themselves but they need some strategic guidance and advice. After an Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy workshop, some will determine that it is in their own best interest to defer certain landscaping tasks to professionals, while other participants learn a more environmentally informed approach to DIY that protects their pocketbooks and prevents waste.

A household typically uses 30 to 50% of their water on lawns. In the midst of a drought in the Southwestern US with no end in sight and with water use restrictions in effect, there is growing discontent with increasingly unattractive lawns as they wither in longer, more frequent heat waves and struggle through the fall. Through climate appropriate and water wise landscaping choices, homeowners can save money while boosting their property values and their homes’ street appeal, all while doing the right thing for their neighborhoods and planet.

Business as usual no longer works, yet there are no clear-cut paths to sustainability. As desirable as it is to go green, the challenge is to go green affordably and authentically. The people who are attracted to Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy want to do better and they would if they only knew how; the instructors endeavor to fulfill that desire with honest, relevant information and by teaching their skills. There is no shortage of greenwashing and the challenge is to navigate through marketing hype and past artificially generated wants to do what is right and healthy for people, communities, and the planet.

It is possible to enjoy more beauty in our surroundings and more success in our gardens with less work and struggle, less water, fewer manufactured chemicals, and less maintenance by working with nature instead of inadvertently against her. For some attendees, the workshop will prevent them from making very common mistakes that cost so many people time, money, and wasted effort. Others will be empowered to correct their own gardening mistakes. Part of the solution to many gardening or landscaping issues is, more often than not, a matter of shifting perspective. To paraphrase Einstein, you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it in the first place.


Teaching Strategy

For people who are looking for ways to integrate sustainability into their lives and landscapes, this introductory workshop will help them reset their conceptual framework so that the content from classes and workshops in organic gardening, greener living, garden design with drought tolerant & CA native plants, and Permaculture are easier to integrate into their lives. In other words, this workshop lays a much needed foundation. If someone is creating a garden or landscape from scratch, seasonally revamping a garden, and/or is tentative about how or where to start, this workshop has a great deal to offer.

If you have ever worked on a rectangular jigsaw puzzle, you know it’s easier to complete the puzzle once you have finished the outer frame of edge pieces. The same principle applies with respect to understanding and applying other material after becoming ecoliterate.

To reinforce the practical material, Mr. Hernandez and Ms. Talaro will be leading follow-up hands-on practicums for workshop participants who are committed to developing and honing site observation and analysis skills within the context of the community. The instructors will also be taking participants to the next level of skill, awareness, and empowerment with Right Plants in the Right Places, From Stumped to Pumped: Great Garden Results Guaranteed, and Advanced Urban Ecoliteracy.

Since the instructors subscribe to the belief that a problem shared is a problem solved, the workshops are also a vehicle for sharing knowledge and information resources through networking. The workshops are structured to facilitate participant interaction and collaboration, which in turn builds and strengthens community. The instructors encourage participants to network to forge new associations, make new friends, and synergistically create unexpected, inspiring opportunities for positive local action.

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