Tag: environment

Earthwork: Habitat Gardening at Home and Away

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It’s spring, and I’ve been on the road giving talks and workshops about gardening as a way to restore the earth and our connection to this glorious blue planet.

Spreading phlox, not native, but an excellent food source for early-flying pollinators, blooming in my rock garden. Spreading phlox, not native, but an excellent food source for early-flying pollinators, blooming in my rock garden.

Last week’s talk was in Fort Collins, Colorado, with passionate plantswoman and naturalistic garden designer Lauren Springer Ogden. We spoke to an audience of over 200 people as part of a City of Fort Collins Utilities series, me on designing for habitat and a healthy home landscape, and Lauren on her favorite plants for pollinators and wildlife.

It was the third talk I’ve given this spring on restoration gardening, and each time, the crowd has been larger than I expected and eager for knowledge about how to garden in ways that can heal this battered earth, and restore our relationship with nature.

I think we hunger for reconnection, for something positive we can do that gives back to the planet that gives us so much–air, water, food, the basic materials of our lives, plus beauty, awe and wonder. Habitat gardening is one powerful way to give back, providing homes and food for the “little guys” who help preserve healthy ecosystems–pollinators and songbirds–and also providing us with the delight of seeing those lives on a daily basis.

Sphinx moth, a key summer pollinator here and a fascinating diurnal insect, aiming for a Rocky Mountain penstemon for a meal of nectar, its hollow straw of a tongue already hanging out and ready. One of those “little guys”: a white-lined sphinx moth aiming for a Rocky Mountain penstemon, its hollow straw of a tongue ready to sip nectar!

Which is why I spend the time and energy to travel and teach, even when I’d rather stay home and work on my own landscape.

I made it home Thursday evening, and then spent Friday getting started on the next presentation–my keynote at the Chaffee County Home & Garden Show next Saturday. This weekend I finally had time for my own earth work, nurturing my reclaimed former industrial yard and the adjacent block of urban creek.

Ditch Creek this afternoon, flowing just enough to murmur--and to revive the mayfly larvae. Ditch Creek this afternoon, flowing just enough to revive the mayfly larvae.

Which, by the way, is running again. I hear its murmuring voice from my front deck, a lovely sound after four weeks of unusually hot and dry weather.

Yesterday I wore myself out laying the first part of my future outdoor dining patio in a flat spot on the slope between my two buildings where the two-story garage/studio casts shade on spring and summer evenings.

I had already spent time loosening the construction-compacted ground with a mattock, hauling out rocks and sifting the gravel-sized fragments from the sand, and leveling the area. My friends Tony and Maggie had helped me carry and roughly set the first flagstone.

The dining patio in progress, about a third completed.... The dining patio in progress, about a third completed….

As I worked yesterday, I heard Richard’s voice in my mind. He taught me how to design and build a flagstone patio; a project that was his final sculpture, his last chance to get his hands on the rocks he so loved.

Today I was too sore to pick up either mattock or flagstone, so I planted the heirloom tomato seedlings I grew indoors (thanks to Renee’s Seeds), nestling them carefully in the soil of the big stock tank on my side deck. I’m sure it’s a bit of a shock to be outside in the bright sun and moving air after a comfy childhood indoors, but they’ll adapt, and their walls-o-water will keep them cozy as they do.

Each red "teepee" insulates a different kind of heirloom tomato plant. Each red “teepee” insulates a different kind of heirloom tomato plant.

I also spent time hand-watering my rock garden to compensate for the spring snows that didn’t come, and admiring the spots of color from the spreading phlox, species tulips, daffodils, and native golden-smoke, all of which little sweat bees and other native pollinators are eagerly attending to.

*****

I purely love this life, drought or no, and I am honored to be part of the movement to restore nature in our yards and gardens. It’s a powerful way for us to express our gratitude to this amazing planet–our nurturing orb and the only home our species has ever known.

Tiny species tulips attract tiny native bees to the rock garden. Tiny species tulips attract tiny native bees to the rock garden.

The Radical Act of Hope

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In the final Saturday panel at the Geography of Hope conference last weekend in Point Reyes Station, California, one speaker said something to the effect that “hope” was worthless in the face of the catastrophe of global climate change. That we couldn’t sit around and simply hope things would get better, we needed to act in bold ways, to make radical changes, and we needed to act now. I agree that we need to act in bold ways and now.

River of Hope created at the end of the conference. Graphics by Laurie Durnell & Kathy Evans of The Grove Consultants, Intl.; Sirima Sataman of Ink.Paper.Plate Studio River of Hope Declaration. Graphics by Laurie Durnell & Kathy Evans of The Grove Consultants, Intl.; Sirima Sataman of Ink.Paper.Plate Studio

Global climate change is happening faster than we figured, and it urgently asks us to re-imagine our relationship to each other and to this earth. It asks, as did the “River of Hope” declaration created from words and phrases supplied by attendees, what/who we love too much to lose (a feeling), and what we will do to defend what/who we love (an action).

I do not agree that “hope” is necessarily a worthless concept, one that gives us permission to be complacent in the midst of the need for action. I couldn’t articulate why at that point though.

I thought about hope and why I believe it is relevant to our response to global climate change on my long trek home from western Marin County, first back to San Francisco to spend time with Molly and Mark, who are part of the family I love too much to lose, even as I am vividly aware from personal experience that their lives could end at any moment.

Louella, chalking ephemeral words….

I continued thinking about that rejection of hope as a useful response to global climate change as I drove south to meet my friend Louella at a park on the shores of an estuary near Redwood City.

Louella brought a box of sidewalk chalk with her so we could write haiku. We picked a prominent stretch of walking/biking path, composed our haiku, and proceeded to “write large.”

We ran the words of one haiku down a hill the way a stream of water would run.

winter that was not
rain comes late–dissolving
ephemeral words

Dissolving.... Haiku writ large….

Our scribing a haiku on the path in a public park was an expression of desire, an incantation for rain in the face of California’s catastrophic drought. On the surface, it’s hopeful in the sense the speakers at the Geography of Hope conference vocally disdained.

But if that haiku becomes a way to interpret the urgency of the drought and climate change, the urgency of our making changes in our individual and collective lives, then the haiku is a beginning, a catalyst. It becomes “hope” in the active sense.

I believe in hope as an active practice. A practice that allows us to create positive change in our lives through our actions, small and large. I believe in the enduring power of the kind of hope Emily Dickinson wrote about in “Hope is the Thing With Feathers (314)“:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

Mojave Desert annual wildflower, another 'ki I love to much to lose. Mojave Desert annual wildflower, another ‘ki I love to much to lose.

I believe in that never stopping, that persistence. That through the active practice of continuing to love this world and ‘ki community of lives, human and so many more, we can make the kinds of difficult shifts we need to respond to global climate change and other crises.

Love, as I wrote in The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes & Sandhill Cranes, my little book with photographer Glenn Oakley, is our species’ best gift:

What we do best comes not from our heads but our hearts, from an ineffable impulse that resists logic and definitions and calculation: love. Love is what connects us to the rest of the living world, the divine urging from within that guides our best steps in the dance of life.

The new moon and Venus tonight--and I love this world too much to lose any of these kin.... The new moon and Venus tonight–and I love this world too much to lose any of these kin….

If acting in a hopeful way unleashes the fierce and radical power of that deep, never-stopping terraphilic love for this battered planet and the lives we share ‘ki with, let’s make use of it. Hope as a spur for action–bring it on!

Gardening (and living) As If We Belong

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For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.

–Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Mt. Ouray, white with fresh snow and almost 14,000 feet elevation, rising in the distance beyond Salida. Mt. Ouray, white with fresh snow and almost 14,000 feet elevation, rising in the distance beyond Salida.

As the weather turns from winter storms to balmy days and frosty nights, I’ve been thinking about spring and the habitat-gardening workshops I’ll be teaching in a few weeks.

Teaching is a great opportunity to stop to reflect about why I’m passionate about my subject. Not just about plants, which I love with an absorption and sense of kinship I don’t always have for my own species, or about the communities our green and rooted kin weave across the surface of this extraordinary living earth. I also think seriously about why I engage in the sometimes-misunderstood, physically hard, and often-lengthy work of restoring nature in urban places.

The answer is always the same. Because I love the work. Because nothing else is as satisfying as seeing the meanders and the baby trout return to a formerly channelized urban creek, or scarlet indian paintbrush freckling a lively native mountain grassland seeded where before was a sterile turfgrass lawn, or the monarchs flutter in to a patch of newly established native milkweed, or the kids standing in awe, mouths open, as the first hummingbird they have ever seen hovers to drink nectar from the wildflower patch planted next to their city edible garden….

Adult monarch drinking nectar from a native common milkweed along "my" block of urban creek. Adult monarch drinking nectar from a native common milkweed along “my” block of urban creek.

Because nature restored is a glorious, confounding, exuberant community of interrelated lives who together express the unique story of each place. Because watching life weave a healthy existence is a source of continuing inspiration, education and flat-out wonder.

Because this earth is my home. Because, while my people may have arrived on this continent a mere century or two ago, I belong here in this high-desert valley in the shadow of the highest ranges of the Rocky Mountains.

I eat food my hands have grown in this gritty soil; its minerals structure my cells. Airborne molecules of the volatile organic compounds our native big sagebrush wafts onto the air bubble through my blood with each breath I inhale; the sight of aspen clones painting whole mountainsides in brilliant gold and the resonant calls sandhill cranes winging high overhead infuse my soul.

L'il Bites tomato cotyledons sprouting on my living room windowsill for the summer garden. (Thank you, Renee's Garden Seeds!) L’il Bites tomato cotyledons sprouting on my living room windowsill for the summer garden. (Thank you, Renee’s Garden Seeds!)

Because, as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Biology and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, writes, I work at living here as if our children’s future mattered–the harvester ant children, the infant whitestem evening primrose, the young greenback cutthroat trout and larval mayflies, the monarch caterpillars, the baby sagebrush, the downy sandhill cranes all gangly legs and beaks, and the children of my human community.

I garden to restore habitat and healthy nature because all our children matter, because they are all part of our future.

Because it is my way of taking care of this land. I teach habitat gardening and restoration of nature to others because our lives, material, emotional, intellectual and spiritual do depend on it.

Dryland native meadow yard Richard and I restored at my old house. Dryland native meadow yard Richard and I restored at my old house.

And because I want others to feel the joy and awe, and the deep sense of satisfaction and belonging that I do when I see the earth restored. Because it is an antidote for the paralysis and despair that come when we’re faced with seemingly overwhelming environmental problems. Because my hope for and faith in the future rests on all of us on this glorious, animate blue planet, the only home our species has ever known.

Because when we garden as if we and the generations to come belong, we live as if we do, too. And we all benefit.

(Revised version of a piece first published in Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens, a national blog-zine I contribute a column to each month.)

Clean Energy: Rooftop Photovoltaic Power Plant

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I own a power plant: my roof sprouts an array of photovoltaic panels that convert solar energy into electricity for my house and garage/studio. What I don’t use (which turns out to be a bit under half of what I produce each month), feeds into the electric grid.

My power plant, producing electricity even in a summer hailstorm. My power plant, producing electricity even in a summer hailstorm.

Unlike conventional coal and gas-fired power plants, my small photovoltaic “plant” doesn’t produce unhealthy emissions or add CO2 or other more destructive greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. (Manufacturing the panels does create a “carbon cost,” however.)

The panels work quietly and simply: Sunlight hitting a layer of silicon crystals causes them to shed electrons. Those electrons flow into wires connected to each panel, and voilá, it’s power.

Of course, as I wrote several years ago in an article for Audubon Magazine, “This lovely green power is direct current. Therefore it can’t make your Cuisinart hum until an inverter… makes it into alternating current.” Each of my panels sports a mini-inverter right on the rooftop.

My power plant is clean and efficient and my two small buildings were designed to sip energy instead of gulping it, drawing on the sun’s heat in winter instead of a furnace and down-valley breezes in summer instead of air conditioning.

My twin power meters--the one on the left measures what I produce, the other what I consume. My twin power meters–the one on the left measures what I produce, the other what I consume.

Which is why my electric bills total in the negative numbers, and the power company pays me for the excess I generate instead of me paying them.

Solar panels only produce electricity when the sun is above the horizon (though they do generate even when it is cloudy or snow blankets the panels). So I draw on the power grid at night; but peak power consumption is in the daytime anyway.

There’s plenty of solar energy for the harvesting: According to the U.S. Department of Energy, enough solar energy reaches the earth’s surface every minute to meet the world’s energy demands for a year.

In the fifteen months that my power plant has been up and running, I’ve produced enough spare clean electricity to power an average American household for four months. (When I looked up those data, I was shocked to realize that my use is about a tenth that of the average household. More of us need to conserve, it seems.)

Creek House, my small house, on a clear evening. Those reflective dark panels on the roof are a 3.0 kw photovoltaic array. My 3.0 kw photovoltaic array, still generating a trickle of power even after sunset.

The best part about the power plant on my rooftop? Knowing I’m helping to combat global climate change by generating clean electricity. My system has offset 3 tons of carbon in 15 months, which is equivalent to planting about 75 trees.

I’m no saint, environmental or otherwise. But it truly does feel good to do good.

What’s Ahead in 2015: Earth Work

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Sphinx moth pollinating native penstemon flowers in a park reclaimed from an abandoned industrial site. Sphinx moth pollinating native penstemon flowers in a park reclaimed from an abandoned industrial site.

What’s ahead for me in 2015? More earth work, more loving the world as best I can. Living my belief that we humans can make a positive contribution to this battered planet. Spreading that message through word and intellect, as well as sweat and singing muscles: writing, teaching, and landscape restoration work.

As I envision the year’s work, I hold my four resolutions close: live generously, write more, laugh often and love much. My intention, my heart’s aim is for all of my work to express each resolution.

Writing, I often say, is my way of loving the world. I think of the memoir I’m revising now, Bless the Birds, as a gift of love. It’s a story about how any of us can become the sort of people able to walk life’s most difficult passages with grace. Not perfectly, mind you, but with as much love and generosity as we humans are capable of–and we are capable of a lot of both if we make the effort.

The book I imagine writing after Bless the Birds is even more directly related to my belief that healing the earth heals we humans in the doing. Pieces of the story have lived in my head in various forms for decades. I think I finally see a way to weave the disparate threads into a coherent narrative, and I even have a title: Earth Work: Lessons From Restoring the Land No One Wanted.

The land no one wanted, restored and blooming. The land no one wanted, restored and blooming.

Writing is not the only way I live generously and express my love for this planet and all of the lives on it, human, domestic, and wild. I think of my teaching as another way of sharing the wisdom I’ve gathered from the community of the land (nature) and from doing my best to live with heart outstretched as if it were my hand.

In the year ahead, I’ll be teaching more workshops on habitat gardening, a way to heal the earth right at home, mitigate global climate change, and re-connect ourselves to the balm and joy of nature. I’m also re-starting my Write & Retreat workshops with a week in the incredible landscapes of northwest Wyoming, the home of my heart and my fieldwork as a plant scientist.

Earth work: teaching in Durango last spring Earth work: teaching in Durango last spring

And I’ve got some exciting plans for habitat restoration work ahead too.

All of which come under the heading of earth work: living generously with love for this world, and following my heart’s belief that healing earth is healing for we people too.

Earth work. It’s my way honoring the gift that is this life, our daily existence on an extraordinary blue planet, a community of species that makes up the only home we humans have ever known.

*****

For those who are not on my email list, take a look at my latest eNewsletter. Click here for the Write & Retreat: Yellowstone Country brochure. (If want to join the list, send your name and email to my assistant, Sienna Bryant. I promise not to be annoying. Thanks!)

Sacred datura, one of the flowers Georgia O'Keeffe painted, recolonizing its native land. Sacred datura, one of the wildflowers Georgia O’Keeffe painted, re-colonizing its home.

Living Generously: Pollinator Hotel for the “Little Guys”

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One of my New Year resolutions is to “live generously.” Which to me means not just being generous with other humans, but doing my best to live in a way that is generous to “all my relations,” as my Indian friends say, the multitudes of other beings with whom we share this glorious blue planet.

My front yard prairie-in-development under new snow.... My front yard prairie-in-development under new snow….

One way to be generous is to provide welcoming habitat right around home. Hence my work to restoring the native bunchgrass prairie on the former industrial site where I live, instead of planting a lawn and rose bushes. (Lawns require too much water, chemicals, and grooming; rose bushes are simply deer candy.)

Pollinator "hotel" or nest box. Each of those holes accommodates a different size of native bee, beneficial wasp, or other pollinator. Pollinator “hotel” or nest box. Each of those holes accommodates a different size of native bee, beneficial wasp, or other pollinator.

So when my friends Maggie and Tony Niemann gave me a handmade pollinator hotel for Christmas, I was thrilled. I’ve always wanted to try one of these artistic ways to provide nest-burrows for the little critters that pollinate my flowers, eat pest insects, and generally make my yard a healthier place.

What is a pollinator hotel? This one is a box about the size and shape of a bluebird box, but instead of a front with a hole appropriately sized for a bluebird and a cavity inside, it has no front, and the cavity is filled with tubes of various sizes, made of various different materials.

A close-up of nest tubes of different diameters in different materials: drilled into dowels and pieces of scrap wood--nothing toxic, plus naturally hollow stems of sunflowers, reeds and bamboo; and that lovely galvanized star! A close-up of nest tubes of different diameters in different materials: drilled into dowels and pieces of scrap wood–nothing toxic, plus naturally hollow stems of sunflowers, reeds and bamboo; and that lovely galvanized star!

(Since Tony and Maggie are artistic, it also has cool tin star decorations, both on the front and on the sides. And even its own tin roof up top.)

So there you have it: one way to live generously and welcome some of the littlest of our relations here on earth is to build them a hotel. This one will get hung up on the east wall of the garage, near the restored willow thicket along the creek, where it’ll get morning sun, but not hot afternoon sun. (Thanks, Maggie and Tony.)

Happy New Year to the little guys, and to us all!

Native bee collecting pollen from a blanketflower Native bee collecting pollen from a blanketflower. (By pollinating the flower, it ensures seeds that will feed the goldfinches, juncos and other seed-eating songbirds. So housing pollinators also feeds songbirds, an example of natural generosity.)

The High Plains west of Pueblo with Pikes Peak under storm clouds in the background (that's true shortgrass prairie, buffalograss with a cholla "overstory").

Spring Signs

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The High Plains west of Pueblo with Pikes Peak under storm clouds in the background (that's true shortgrass prairie, buffalograss with a cholla "overstory"). The High Plains west of Pueblo with Pikes Peak under storm clouds in the background (that’s true shortgrass prairie, buffalograss with a sparse cholla “overstory”).

I drove home last night into a howling winter wind, tacking upwind over the edge of the high plains from Pueblo, and then winding into the wind through Bighorn Sheep Canyon, “swimming” upstream through the waves of air to my home valley.

I had spent the day at the Western Landscape Symposium, absorbing talks on all things gardening in our beautiful but challenging high-desert/plains steppe region.

Panayoti Kelaidis, Curator of Plants for the Denver Botanic Gardens and one of our region’s “plant gods,” opened the symposium with a look at the diverse forms and environments we in southern Colorado have to draw on, and stressed the importance of evoking nature and wildness as inspiration.

That's Gluttonous in the photo, a newly emerged eastern Black Swallowtail who starred in an essay I wrote for Thoreau's Legacy, an anthology responding to global warming. That’s Gluttonous, an eastern Black Swallowtail, who grew up in my former kitchen garden.

Which was a wonderful segue to my talk (thanks, Panayoti!), Learning Community in the Garden, on the ways plants experience the world and the relationships they form with microbes in the soil, pollinators and grazers around them, and how gardeners can build on that web plants weave to grow and design beautiful and restorative landscapes.

Inspiration and lessons from my own formerly blighted industrial property. Inspiration and lessons from my own place.

I mentioned the Habitat Hero project and our vision of growing a network of habitat to sustain songbirds and pollinators in yards, gardens, parks and working lands throughout the Rocky Mountain region and beyond.

The audience was enthusiastic and full of questions. People stopped me afterwards to say how inspired they were. Sweet!

I also got to hang out with two of the region’s stellar native plant growers, Bill Adams of Sunscapes Rare Plant Nursery, and Jeff Otterberg of Wild Things.

A tour of Jeff’s greenhouses had me itching to take plants home—those rows of tiny penstemons, desert four o’clocks, desert zinnia, and other wildflowers, and the round and spiny cacti of all sorts were all tempting. I was so busy ogling his 30,000 baby plants, I forgot to shoot any photos.

Van Clothier, New Mexico’s guru of stream restoration and water harvesting, showed great photos of projects to restore natural wetlands and capture storm water runoff, solving erosion and sedimentation issues while recharging groundwater. (The slide show on his site is worth a look.)

We also heard from garden photographer and journalist Charles Mann, fruit tree and shrub propagator Scott Skogerboe of Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery, and edibles enthusiast and horticultural entomologist Carol O’Meara.

Heading up the canyon in the wind last night.... Heading up the canyon in the wind last night….

After the symposium, I left Pueblo eager for spring, despite the weather.

Which is why I spent time today searching for spring signs in my bare, brown and wind-blasted landscape. The gusts that scoured the remaining snow from my side yard also scoured away the protective mulch, and I’m afraid, the native grass and wildflower seeds I spread last fall.

Wildflower seedlings! Wildflower seedlings!

In the courtyard on the west side of the house though, the mulch is still intact. I poked under the tangle, and was thrilled to see tiny wildflower cotyledons poking up. I can’t identify them yet, but I know they’re not tumbleweed or kochia, the invasive annual weeds that colonized the site before.

Flower buds--a bit frost-nipped--on the Indian plum Flower buds–a bit frost-nipped–on the Indian plum

Along the creek (dry right now due to our late-winter drought), buds are swelling on the skunkbrush sumac (Rhus trilobata) and Indian plum (Prunus americana).

The reddish pigment on these new golden currant (Ribes aureum) leaves probably protects them from UV damage. The reddish pigment on these new golden currant leaves probably protects them from UV damage.

And the golden currant (Ribes aureum) is putting out tiny reddish leaves.

Those signs of spring are heartening, reminding me that the plants that have known this landscape for millennia are tough and resilient. Their buds and tiny leaves lift my spirits, a sign that life thrives through hard times as well as good ones.

And brings with it beauty and joy—ours if we take the time to look.

From my Rocky Mountain Garden Survival Guide Remembering why we garden….

Creek House from the south (the side facing the creek) in the evening sun.

Planting Seeds

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Creek House from the south (the side facing the creek) in the evening sun. Creek House from the south (the side facing the creek) in the evening sun. (The street is to the right.)

Creek House, my new place, faces south to take advantage of the winter sun for heat. That puts it sideways to the street, a fact that challenged my designer, Tom Pokorny, and me in making the street-side “friendly” to passers-by.

Physical constraints of the lot, especially the location of the city sewer line, added considerably to that challenge.

Instead of being under the street on the downhill side of the lot, the closest sewer line is in the alley at the opposite end, 120 feet from the house–and uphill. Which meant the floor of the house (it’s slab on grade construction) had to be raised more than five feet above the lowest edge of the lot.

The street side of Creek House--definitely not pretty. Yet. The street side of Creek House–definitely not pretty. Yet.

That makes for steep street-side bank, and a tall, if small house.

Tom contributed details like windows and a small porch roof to break up what would otherwise have been blank walls.

Designing the landscaping is my area. I’ve had a couple of months to think about how to create an inviting, sustainable and useful street frontage.

My plan involves boulders (on the lower left in the photo are glacially rounded local boulders left from Richard’s overflow rockyard), terracing, paths, a small sitting area under the overhanging porch roof, and plants that will provide color in all seasons and habitat for songbirds and pollinators (without requiring much water or being attractive to Salida’s over-large population of mule deer).

The side yard from the back door stoop. The side yard from the back door stoop.

Before I can start on those plans, the front and side deck has to go in, and before that can happen, Treehouse, the garage with second-floor studio, has to be finished. While I wait (patiently, of course), I decided to get started on healing another part of my all-roadbase, all-disturbed-by-construction yard.

Just out my back door (which is currently my front door since I have no front entry deck, not that I’m impatient…) is a wedge-shaped piece of side yard with the widest end toward the street .

It slopes gently toward the street-side bank and is sheltered by the long north wall of the house. Unlike the creek side of the house, it has the potential to be relatively private. I envision a swath of dryland native meadow where I can sit among grasses and wildflowers to think and dream. As evinced by the photo above, it’s not that now.

The real Roadbase seed mix. Roadbase seed mix

On Saturday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours raking the roadbase to remove the larger rock fragments. (Roadbase is crushed native rock with some soil particles, and essentially no organic matter. Its name reflects what it’s used for, a stable base for roads and house foundations. It’s a good thing our native grassland plants are used to rooting in rocky, well-drained, nutrient poor soil.)

Then I scattered the seed mix I bought from my friends Alex and Suzanne of Western Native Seed, and hauled mulch from the pile on the street-side slope to cover the seeds. The mix is a custom blend of native bunchgrasses, wildflowers and a few shrubs that Alex developed for the original meadow restoration at Terraphilia, where the yard had been covered with four inches of roadbase and then compacted. At the time, none of us were sure native plants would grow there at all–hence the half-joking name of the seed mix–but I was determined.

Spreading mulch over the seeds. (The large windows are my office.) Spreading mulch over the seeds. (The large windows are my office.)

So were the wildflowers and grasses, apparently, because that meadow restoration project succeeded far beyond even my dreams.

That’s my hope for the side yard here at Creek House. I can imagine stepping out the back door and sitting amidst my wildflowers and native grasses with their hovering and fluttering pollinators. Just the thought makes me smile.

It feels good to get started on my new yard, the last piece of this formerly unloved industrial property to be restored. As I broadcast seed on Saturday, covered it with mulch, and then gave all those embryonic lives a good soaking drink, it occurred to me that I was seeding my new life too.

Roadbase Mix meadow at Terraphilia in summer Roadbase Mix meadow at Terraphilia in summer

Eastern black swallowtail emerges from its chrysalis on a fennel pant from my garden

Habitat Heroes: making a positive change in the garden

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Eastern black swallowtail emerges from its chrysalis on a fennel pant from my garden Eastern black swallowtail emerges from its chrysalis on a fennel plant.

Last week, I headed to Denver to speak at Plant Select Day at Denver Botanic Gardens. My talk, “Design By Nature,” explored gardens as natural communities that can provide crucial habitat for beleaguered species of pollinators–birds, butterflies, native bees and others–and in the doing, bring us the joy of experiencing nature in our daily lives.

Biologists say that pollinators’ partnerships with plants play a part in providing one in three mouthfuls that we eat and drink. Yet many pollinators are in trouble: Colony Collapse Disorder is decimating European honeybee colonies, whole species of native bees like bumblebees are vanishing, monarch butterfly populations are in peril, hummingbird populations are experiencing drastic fluctuations.

What can we do to ensure a healthy food supply and the future of the birds, butterflies, and other species that brighten our lives and weave the global community that sustains this planet? Two of the biggest factors affecting pollinator populations are habitat loss and pesticide use.

Who needs a lawn when you can have a wildflower-studded prairie? Who needs a lawn when you can have a wildflower-studded prairie?

We have the habitat–right at home in our yards, pubic parks and golf courses, farms, orchards and other managed landscapes. Lawns occupy some 40 million acres of the United States and are some of the unhealthiest habitat around.

If we devote a portion of our lawn area to wildscapes, gardens that use native and regionally adapted plant species in designs that mimic natural habitat, imagine the difference we’d make for birds, butterflies, bees and other pollinators. (And the water, money and energy we’d save.)

Biologists who study native bee populations say that an 8-foot- by 10-foot patch planted with bee-friendly plants without pesticides is enough to make a significant difference for these inoffensive and hard-working pollinators.

White-lined sphinx moth nectaring at Rocky Mountain penstemon in a local park. White-lined sphinx moth nectaring at Rocky Mountain penstemon in a local park.

The two keys to providing effective habitat are design and health. Habitat design involves using plants pollinators will recognize and be able to use, and mimicking the “architecture”–the structure and scale of natural habitat. If the natural habitat is woodland, design a woodland garden, using shade and layers of plants similar to a natural woodland. If it’s prairie, design a prairie garden; if it’s desert, a desert garden and so on.

A healthy garden relies on the relationships between plants and their various partners to control “pest” populations, not on harmful synthetic chemicals.

In my high-desert garden, for instance, grasshopper outbreaks are an issue. I don’t reach for poisons: I provide a bluebird nest box. When the mountain bluebirds are in residence, they chow down on grasshopper nymphs to feed their hungry young. Urban house sparrows make a pretty good substitute for bluebirds; they’re not as graceful or beautiful, but they do eat grasshoppers. (Grasshopper nymphs are very nutritious, and in the mornings at my elevation, they’re apparently cold, slow and easy to catch!)

Habitat Hero logo with rufous hummingbird Habitat Hero logo with rufous hummingbird

My “Design By Nature” talk was part of the launch of the Habitat Hero project I’m working on for Audubon Rockies and the Terra Foundation. (For now, the project is focused on Colorado and Wyoming. The principles work anywhere though: design by nature, creating habitat that mimics what is natural in your area, use native and regionally adapted plants and eschew synthetic chemicals.)

The wildscape at Cherookee Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant in industrial northwest Denver. The wildscape at Cherokee Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant in industrial northwest Denver.

Habitat Heroes are, in the words of the project’s founder, Terra Board Member and passionate gardener Connie Holsinger, “Optimists–people who believe that the things they do can have positive impacts on the world around them.”

Habitat Heroes garden in a way that nurtures pollinators and other wildlife and restores healthy garden communities–along with our connection with nature right at home. The project sprouted late last winter and taking off much more quickly than we imagined.

We all want to leave our patch of ground in better shape than we found it. We can do that, garden by garden. All it takes is soil, plants, and a willingness to learn from nature as we go.

That’s what the Habitat Hero project is about. Join us to make a positive change in the garden–and the world.

Under the right-hand row cover are the tomatoes in their insulating teepees. Under the left are greens.

May Day in the Rockies

Posted on | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment on May Day in the Rockies
Under the right-hand row cover are the tomatoes in their insulating teepees. Under the left are greens. Under the right-hand row cover are tomato plants in insulating teepees. Greens shelter under the left-hand cover.

I fell asleep last night to waves of wind washing over the house in rolling currents of air, as if April and its contradictory weather was flowing out of the valley.

I woke at a few minutes after midnight when wind changed direction from westerly to easterly and came crashing back up the valley in walloping gusts. I lay awake as wind slammed the house, banged the corrugated metal fence, clanged the temple bell, and thrashed through the yard. A blustery beginning to May, indeed.

I listened for unusual noises and reviewed the house, guest cottage, yard and Richard’s historic shop building in my memory: Had I checked to make sure the heavy wood shop doors were shut? Were the row covers clamped tightly over the tomatoes and the greens bed? Had I latched the side door to the garage when I took the recycling out?

A strawberry flower "drinking" snowflake-melt droplets in my May Day garden. A strawberry flower “drinking” snowflake-melt droplets.

When my worries switched from the merely unlikely to the totally improbable, I sighed, rose, put on my bathrobe and waded into the roaring waves. The garage door was firmly latched. The row cover clamps were holding. Both shop doors were shut tight; inside, all was still and curiously peaceful, save for a slight creaking as the roof beams and decking flexed with the gusts.

It’s survived Salida’s weather for 111 years. It’s not going to fail now. I heard Richard’s voice clearly in my head. Reassured, I walked back to the house, crawled under the covers and fell asleep.

Morning did not dawn balmy and springlike. At least, not the way we imagine spring. The wind still howled from the east, and the temperature, 42 degrees at dawn, dropped steadily as the day crept in.

Daffodil blossom collecting snow instead of pollinators.... Daffodil blossom collecting snow instead of pollinators….

The storm that dumped up to a foot of snow on northern Colorado barely touched my part of the state. (We just got the howling wind off its southern edge.)

Still, it’s been snowing lightly all day, enough to make me glad the tomatoes are snug in their insulating, water-filled teepees, the blooming daffodils and strawberries are tough, and the arugula, spinach, and lettuces are under cover.

Starting like this, May could bring more moisture than winter did. Stranger weather has happened here in spring. Like the May weekend ten or so years ago when a storm stalled over the valley, dropping 50 inches–yes, that was fifty inches–of wet snow in just over 48 hours. That was a record.

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Pouring "dirty" roadbase--the kind with lots of fines so it compacts well--under what will be the slab floor of my tiny house. (Not the sewer pipe going through the foundation in the foreground and the orange water pipe in the background where the kitchen will be.) Moving the tamper inside the foundation to compact the “dirty” roadbase–the kind with lots of fines so it compacts well–under what will be the slab floor. (Note the sewer pipe going through the foundation in the foreground and the orange water pipe in the background.)

As you can imagine, the wild weather hasn’t made things easy for house construction. Still, my excavator, Tommy Meyers, has worked steadily  at filling inside the six-foot-tall stem walls that form the base of my house. (The lot slopes downhill from the sewer pipe in the alley, 128 feet away. We had to go up with the foundation so that my sewer line would go downhill.)

Tomorrow the plumbers will lay the under-slab pipes for water and sewer, and once those pass inspection, the slab will be poured. Then the house can finally rise “out of the ground.”

All is quiet, and the temperature outside is dropping. I hope the asparagus sprouts in my garden don’t freeze tonight….

Happy May Day!