Wildlife Value of our Plants
Always a
lively presentation of Issues and fresh perspectives during the service on
Sunday. Then a bodacious coffee hour
afterwards with the nicest people in Vero.
Earth Day is on the way, it's always on the way, right? And people at the UU like to say, let's make every day, Earth Day. OKAY, LET’S DO THAT!
Are UU properties around
the country filled with food for the many forms of wildlife? From the Common
Toad to the Nematode and the American Three-toed Woodpecker? Habitat useful for birds,
butterflies and pollinating insects, and a safe harbor for all life? Not just
another vanity project, but a home for nature. Rapid population declines
of many: Insects, Bats, Moths, Beetles, Birds and Bees, are jeopardizing the
pollination of EVERYONES fruits and vegetables.
I'm also
setting out to show you that the Green Industry has been all about making money
and quite dependent on gasoline by-products to make that money. It has never
been about creating habitats for wildlife in our yards and there
has been a callous disregard of nature for forty years throughout this fake Green
Industry. An illusion of green gardening, and this is why UU’s need
to lead into the future because the monied interests will not.
I remember when Flower Time ravaged the hometown nursery businesses all across New England in the 80's. Small business livelihoods were crushed as chain stores displaced corner markets. Many families closed their roadside stands and farm stores. Along with that, local lore and plant knowledge was lost as the corporatization of America swept over us like a Red Tide.
California "farmers" were allowed to take the water from the Colorado River and monopolize produce markets and the entire small business community was no longer able to function in the eastern half of the country as a result.
How did trees manage for millions of years without Joe's Landscaping, and big bags of fertilizer? Let's try and figure that out. Everyone wants to park in the shade, but no one wants to plant the trees.
The intention of the Atrium Garden was to bring the indoor Green Sanctuary idea, to the outdoors. There are at least ten plants blooming or fruiting in the Atrium, all year long. No 100 days, frost-free here, we have to keep things growing ALL YEAR. Goldenrod, Aster, Rouge Plant, Marlberry, White Indigoberry are all native plants that were prolifically flowering and/or fruiting this past year in the Atrium.
Our UU site has reversed direction and back towards the hackneyed design concepts and specious plant choices of 1985.The Atrium is not designed to be pretty and orderly like a gated community entrance, but wild and spontaneous with small blooming flowers and colorful leaf displays that change and evolve. The Yoga class enjoys it.
These gated community entrances are about
selling real estate, and never about recreating the local ecosphere. People
understand land values but not the value of the land, or the millions of
creatures in every town that depend on it. Doing for wildlife. Starting right
here. Right Now. Understanding that the web of life isn't out there somewhere
... but right here. It's the spiders and potato bugs. Gated community garden designs are platitudinous conglomerations of dead-to-wildlife exotics.
It's like burning an enemy's crops
so they starve to death when thousands of biotically useless plants are
installed. Place 1000 plants on your big estate and never ask if they
benefit the local flora. Looks neat and tidy. Benefit to wildlife? Meh. 1985
called and they want their chemical-filled, curb appeal back.
Thousands of living species fly or walk
or crawl past our properties in Florida. Nature is looking to eat, sleep,
migrate and multiply. The Simpson stopper fruit ripened in July and August, and
it was gone. The birds are in there at 4 in the morning when you can't see
them. Flying in and feeding. Hopping around looking for insect appetizers.
Mockingbirds
found the Marlberry berries and I viewed them two feet away from the window
indoors. Go to the Emerson Center Box Office. The Atrium Garden is in view from
there. Lots of Natives. A Hummingbird found its way into the Garden for several
weeks.
Reverence, gratitude and care, does
not plant a fruiting shrub. Ask yourself when you go home today ... what would
a Painted Bunting find to eat in my yard as it flies to its summer feeding
grounds up north or headed south for the winter. Earth Day, remember? Every day.
Nurseries don't want people filling
their yards with prolifically fruiting native shrubs such as Rouge Plant or
Wild Coffee or the ubiquitous Lyonias you see at the nearby, 7700-acre Sebastian Buffer
Preserve. Before you know it, your yard has filled in with them and you don't
need the nurseries anymore except for the occasional statuary.
I was able to add plants for no cost, culling from native plant babies at other sites and the Atrium. Probably 12 species of native plants were removed from the garden. As Weeds. You know. Unstructured. Wild. Spiders everywhere! Native plants regenerate, and so after 13 years there were virtually no costs to the congregation but for my pay. All the host plants I had planted were gone. Some people see weeds, but nature sees food. Now Nature is gone.
This WAS the outdoor Green Sanctuary idea in action. A nearly zero carbon footprint. No fertilizer, no plastic pots, and plants that our native creatures were using as food. Leaves breaking down to make a living soil in our sandy Florida soil profile. There it is. Biodiversity is a wide open field we can lead in.
Imagine,
a Sequoia growing 384 feet tall without help from Joe's Landscaping! Relying completely on dead leaves and plants.
Could that be the secret?
Reverend Scott Alexander knew what I was
talking about, and I planted a nice habitat in his yard for the ten years he was
here. The new owners tore it all out, as people tend to do because there is
virtually no education about building habitat. It’s all about looks and the
resale.
I was curious to visit the nearest UU in Melbourne and they have a large native plant stroll garden at their entrance, and they allow community groups to use their container gardens out back.
Colorful trendy plants from the other side of the world do nothing for the abundance of Florida's 365-day outdoor life. You bet the nurseries have their shelves stocked with fungus, weed, and insect killers for these unnatural aliens that are commonly planted. No pollen, no nectar no fruit. Just flowers for people that can't design past color and placement.
Where do they come up with this exotic folderol? It started with Colonialism and botanists bringing back plants for the Queen. “Doth pleaseth thee, your majesty?”
Two hundred bags of mulch within a 15 month period. That’s a half a dumpster of plastic that can’t be
recycled. Like, 2,000 Ziplocks. Not gardening in the green way and doing the opposite of what is needed in 2025-6.
"Gardening adds years to your life, and life to your years." Microplastics in mothers milk has been normalized.
Dahoon Holly are looking good. After seeing how well they were doing in Sebastians parks plan, I suggested them as replacement for the rapidly declining Oak population. American Elms were planted eight and twelve years ago respectively and are growing quite large with very minimal effort. A little watering when they were little and during a few dry spells, and now they are 16 and 24 feet, respectively. They started as $3, wholesale, 1-gallon trees.
As administrator spent $350 dollars for a really fine Live Oak that will be there a long time. It's value is well over $1000 currently.
This is Green. The
Garden Green. The lightest carbon footprint that can be found. To use as few
resources as possible, for the desired green effect. Right?
Flower
crazed northerners. It's not Michigan or Indiana or South Dakota. We don't have a 100 day growing
season where we plant annuals for pizazz after a LONG, GLOOMY, winter. We
have to keep things going all year.
The art of gardening has been totally lost in this area; $90 an hour landscape architects, who live far from here, can be held responsible. Nurseries and garden clubs need to be called out for the plastic waste and the hackneyed designs they encourage.
Eduaction. Billions of fruiting shrubs like Huckleberry,
Blueberry, Wild Coffee and Simpson Stopper were plowed into burn piles for development in central Florida. I mean literally, billions of fruiting plants. It was a
garden of 'eatin for birds on the Atlantic Flyway till developers ruined it. Then homeowners design like its indoor furniture and paintings with zero regard
Is there a balance between visual aesthetics, which everyone wants, and wildlife enhancement that people don't understand? Are people willing to tolerate a little wildness in their yards and gardens? Planting as if all the creatures mattered. Is your civic facility ready to shift to life-supporting plants because most yards do not resemble the wild lands in any way. Landscapes in this area are like flower arrangements at a dinner party to most people. It just has to look good and very few yards replicate our wild lands. 7th Principle: "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."
700 million plastic pots every year
for annuals in America? Where does all that plastic go? This is what we need to be talking about to our congregations. We can lead here. INSECT CONTROL. I did an experiment last
year with a Palm Tree in the Atrium. Completely covered
with Scale. Which poison should I use to kill them? Air circulation is compromised with the four walls surrounding the Atrium garden. Time goes by. No chemical
treatment at all, not even horticultural oil. Then, three or four months later I noticed the scale were gone. Kaputski! Most likely
lizards ate them all, because scale tastes like marshmallows to them.
Birds feed their helpless young, and this food consists of 95% live prey. The quicker they can find breakfast for the babies, the more time they can spend with their families. So are you anti-family? ASK YOURSELF --- How will these plants I'm going to purchase enhance wildlife and feed the starving birds who are dealing with an 80% habitat loss on Floridas east coast? Then people plant their new yards with plants that Florida wildlife does not recognize.
It’s easy to learn. Learn the plants you look at every day. How do they function in the ecosystem? You will learn that many of these plants do not.
A 4-ounce bird has just flown 250
miles hopping from one island to the next looking for food and shelter as it
migrates north. She sees the same old same old, non-native plants. Off to the
next house on the barrier island....no food there either. She flies over to the
mainland to a yard with White Indigo berry, Wild Coffee, Elderberry,
Fiddlewood, and Marlberry. A gang of Warblers were bouncing on the branches gorging on something.
Catbirds, Cardinals, Woodpeckers, Doves, Mockingbirds, Hawks and Blue Jays in this yard. A Birdgarden designed to feed and house them. On a tiny 80x120 lot with more bird visitors than an entire 4-acre facility. Stewardship. Stop burning the bird villages to the ground.
At the intersection of Action and
Education. European Honeybees are not our best pollinators. They retain as
little as 10% of their pollen in their travels, whereas a native bee is caked
thick with pollen and consequently has higher pollination rates. Even this one
little fact is not general knowledge. Most people treat plants like indoor
furniture, you know, like a prototype car with no
engine, it doesn’t work in nature.
Feed animals and insects or a beautiful world
devoid of all but human life? "Curb appeal," or "mother nature
appeal," a balancing of all life. A healthy cell in a sick world. I think
most people would.
Reverence, gratitude and care is what the Unitarian Universalist Green Sanctuary 2030 discusses. But how are UU's stewarding the properties they own? It's like people don't understand the first thing about soil. "It turns to mud when it's wet, right?"
"Curb appeal," or "mother nature appeal.”
A last
note on the piratical, profit-oriented nurseries and overpaid, college
edumacated landscape architects. Clueless property managers. Budget cutting
City Councils. And yeah. The Garden Clubs. Death panels, every last one of
them.
Ecosphere is described this way. "the biosphere of the earth, especially the interaction between the living and nonliving components.
*plat·i·tu·di·nous Hackneyed
overworked overused clichéd trite commonplace.
