Stefan's Fantastic Farm

Stefan Meyer is one guy we could all learn a lot from.  As the driving force behind Minneapolis’ most ingenious new food production business, Growing Lots Urban Farm, Stefan is demonstrating for all of us the potential power held in the ground beneath our vacant urban lots. 

For the last few years, the city of Minneapolis has begun to take the importance of locally grown food seriously.  Through encouraging the growth of farmers markets, and official initiatives such as Homegrown Minneapolis, the city has sprouted seeds of change that should improve our health, habitat, and happiness as they grow.  As politicians congratulate themselves for being so wise and Earth-friendly, green thumbs around town welcome this emerging atmosphere of tolerance toward nature in a city where inspectors routinely cite homeowners for “Overhanging Vegetation”, and until recently bees and chickens were illegal creatures. 

Now that the officials have decided we can go ahead and grow, smart folks like Stefan aren’t waiting around for them to change their minds.  Late last year Stefan got together with Redesign Inc. a local community development corporation that encourages all kinds of good green growth throughout Minneapolis.  With a little help from these folks, and a whole lot of hard work Stefan has pushed the way forward for the development of Minneapolis’ first parking lot-covering urban farm.  
Where once was blacktop now tomatoes are growing!  This is just the type of change welcome in a city hungry for homegrown health.  Click Here to find out more about Stefan’s fantastic farm and the amazing power each of us has to grow our city!

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The Seed Volume 40, Butterfly Gardening

Why do we love butterflies so much?  

 

Is it the beauty and freedom that define their days?  Is it the transformative potential of the chrysalis that attracts us?  After all, butterflies are just bugs too, right?  How is it that we save so much room in our hearts for one bug and have entire industries devoted to the extermination of other bugs?  

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Whatever butterflies are doing that strikes our imaginations and warms our hearts, they seem to be doing it better then any other insect around.  While the dragonfly can impresses us with speed, agility, and grace, the butterflies’ lackadaisical charm flutters ever deeper into our hearts.  While the honey bees work day and night to serve our human purposes, so many people react to their little striped suits with sheer panic, but come the lazy butterfly hopping around on the breeze and people everywhere stop to smile.  I think if I was an ant or a spider I might be a little jealous of those gaudy butterflies.

 

Whatever the reason, folks love butterflies, and that’s good enough for me.  When we make a home for butterflies, we make a home for all nature.  Whatever jealousy the other bugs might feel for butterflies surely would abate if they had any notion that in honor of these little winged wonders, wantonly destructive humans take a momentary pause from laying waste to the land to build butterfly sanctuaries and gardens where all sorts of creepy crawlies can make a cozy home.

As a naturalist, I think it’s high time we humans started devoting more space to the other creatures we share this planet with, and if butterflies can guide the way towards a healthy habitat, so be it!

I’ve heard it said that love is like a butterfly; it goes wherever it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes. I suppose then that just as we need to prepare our hearts if they are to receive love, we need to prepare our yards if they are to receive butterflies.  This month’s volume of The Seed is dedicated to preparing the hearts, minds, and yards of Minnesota gardeners to receive the whimsical love that only butterflies can give.

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

~Carl Sagan

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."

~Hans Christian Anderson

The Butterfly Effect

Tiny actions can have huge effects on complex systems.  The butterfly effect is a theory used by scientists and storytellers alike to explain the notion that even seemingly insignificant actions can have a huge impact over time. With this in mind I like to ask myself a seemingly tiny question.  

What is the effect of my life on the Earth’s living systems?  The size of this question however should not be judged by the number of words it takes to ask, but by the millennia it takes to answer.

Our daily decisions have impacts far beyond our capacity to understand. 

Monarchs below and Western Tiger Swallowtail above feast on the nectar of summer blooming native perennial plants.  Butterfly gardening grows beauty and environmental health. I like to plant a few deeply rooted butterfly attracting native plants in amongst my vegetable gardens.  Not only are my vegetable crops helped when the perennial roots draw moisture from deep in the ground durring the heat of the summer, but the butteflies are happy to see the free food I've grown them, and I'm happy to see the butterflies! 
 

I like to think of myself as a snowflake falling on the side of a mountain, helping to build an avalanche.  I may be one of countless billions of tiny, seemingly unimportant, unique forms, but without my weight on the mountainside would the avalanche take longer to fall?  Does my positioning help other snowflakes land and hold fast?

Now let’s take this frozen metaphor to the next level because it’s time for an avalanche of change when it comes to human behavior within the living planetary system, and I’m one little snowflake who’s ready to throw his weight around. 

Whenever I improve local habitat by building butterfly gardens, I feel like a hero of global proportions.  I know that my work is creating a vital space not just for lovely little butterflies, but for many nations of creatures who have been run out and threatened by industrial living.  I’m not alone, and many people of all walks of life are working with the same goals of growing habitat, improving ecosystem health, and ensuring a safe place for us to live.  Someday soon an avalanche of change must descend on our way of life.

Since an avalanche can be a bumpy ride, we’d better go ahead and get those butterfly gardens started so at least we’ll have something pretty to distract us along the way. 

Butterfly Gardening 101

 
Simply put, if you want to see butterflies, plant native flowers.  The most inviting homes for butterflies will have different types of native flowers that bloom and provide nectar all through the growing season.  To ensure your yard has more butterflies then the Jones’s next door, also plant some caterpillar host plants.  One classic example of a caterpillar host plant is common milkweed, which hosts monarch butterflies and seems to grow as freely as the butterfly it hosts.  If monarchs are your goal, make sure you also plant meadow blazingstar, no other nectar-bearing bloomer can make the monarchs line up like this form of Liatris.  Monarchs are also strongly attracted to other forms of milkweed, black eyed susans, coneflowers, and ironweed. 

Why stop at monarchs though when there’s so many wonderful little butterflies out there to see.  Variety is the spice of life, and the more types of native plants you have in your yard, the more likely you’ll see rare forms of butterfly.  Caterpillar host plants include: Artemisia, which is preferred by Painted Lady caterpillars, Hackberry trees which host many creatures including the American Snout and Tawny Emperor caterpillars while Violets, Purslane, and Sedum which will host the lovely Variegated Fritillary.   

Many butterflies will have widely varying food sources.  Much more then nectar passes the pointed proboscis of our protagonist.  Various butterflies will eat everything from leaves and rotting fruit to dead animals and dung.  The greater the variety of native plants you grow including trees, shrubs, blooming perennials and ground covers, the more diverse will be your yards selections of foods, and the more the butterflies will flutter by.  

  
 A butterflies' beauty is bold and obvious. While other garden bugs may appear to human sensibilities as creepy or scary, they are no less important then the butterflies.

   We like the butterflies, are all connected to, and reliant on a living planetary system stocked full of a huge variety of bugs.  In order to protect one type of insect like the butterfly, we must protect all of the other insects, plants, and animals that live in the butterflies ecosystem.

Hints for Butterfly Beginners:

1. Good plants from good sources.
 

Locally, the best butterfly plant selections are sold at 3 garden stores. Visit all three, they each have different selections and really cool gardeners on staff.  Landscape Alternatives, and Outback Nursery are my top stops for butterfly garden plants.  Roy at Landscape Alternatives is especially knowledgeable about local butterfly plant selections. 

2.  Good dirt makes good gardens.

Ignore the silly rumors that native plants like “starved” soil.  I don’t have any idea where or how this rumor got started, but it’s a downright lie.  The meadow, prairie, and woodland soils from this region, are some of the richest soils I’ve ever encountered and I’ve checked out dirt around the world.  If you want success with your new butterfly garden, before you plant, remove any sod, wood mulch, landscaping fabric, or other impediment to growth, and lay down at least 6 inches of fresh compost (not bagged, never trust a dirt bag), after laying down the compost turn it into the soil with a shovel leaving large chunks of the soil undisturbed.  After the compost has been incorporated into the soil, simply cover with more compost till the surface of the garden is smooth and then plant away till your garden is full and your heart is content. 

3.  Cover the ground in green.

I call this notion “living mulch”.  Not only will this practice keep more moisture in your soil, but by shading the ground, it will help ensure that you are packing your space with plenty of plant diversity.  Lawn grass doesn’t count.  Sod grass lawns provide habitat for neither butterfly, nor bird, nor beast.  When designing your yard, plan for as little lawn, and as much garden as possible.  If you make the flowers happy, you’ll make the butterflies ecstatic!

4.   Grow many layers of canopy.

When we build habitat, it’s good to let nature be our guide.  Before the Twin Cities existed in this area, there was forest.  When we wish to heal the land locally, we need only help recreate the forest.  Native trees and shrubs should be included in the plan for any well landscaped twin cities yard.  I like to plant meadow plants around and underneath newly establishing trees.  Meadows are what the forest uses to recreate itself and fill in the gaps after windfalls and forest fires.  Think of our city building and farming practices as being as destructive to the local forests as a fire or tornado, then you can begin to see the amazing amount of repair we need to create in our environment before it will be healthy again.   

5.   Never EVER use pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Butterflies are delicate, and we aren’t all that much tougher then them. It doesn’t take much to upset the balance of health in any ecosystem. We’ve already discussed how tiny decisions have big impacts, and this is certainly the case here.  Think of butterflies as the canary to your back yard coal mine.  If there’s so much poison that delicate butterflies are getting sick, then wake up dummy, so are you.  Nature did just fine thank you before we meddling humans came along with our chemical solutions and sprays.  The last thing anyone wishing to grow butterflies should want to do is poison their yard with pesticides or chemical fertilizers.     

The gentle breeze blown by a butterflies beating wing in your back yard could just be the catalyst for the creation of a current of cultural change in America.  Life is funny like that.  Little actions in one place can have huge impacts in seemingly unrelated, far away places. A friend of mine once said to me of butterflies “they should be called flutter-byes, that’s what they do”.  I couldn’t agree more.  Now is the best time to plan a butterfly garden, before the growing season flutters by.

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The Seed Volume 39, Eat A Weed

Eeyore said it best,

“A weed is a flower too, once you get to know it.”

I never cease to be amazed at the fear that passes over folk’s faces when I suggest to them that dandelions or creeping charlie are valuable in the landscape. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a rebel, or maybe it’s because of my respect for plants, but I’ve always loved weeds, in fact I can safely say weeds are my heroes.  Take the dandelion for instance.  How many of us are completely unaware of the power of this plant? 

Dandelion is only the Diana Prince like moniker through which the super hero also known as Taraxacum hides her secret Wonder Woman identity.  Providing free nourishing food, and medicine for the masses, offering soil fertility, and perfect plant companionship for tomatoes and other shallow rooted crops, and all of this in a form that is simple, ruggedly beautiful, and completely unstoppable.  Sounds like your average garden super-hero job description to me.

I for one think weeds are terrific.  I think it’s silly to be terrified of flowers. 

Gardening is a co-creative process, the gardener and the garden both creating away night and day, each with their own ideas and intentions.  As a landscape designer I like to remind myself that humans are far from alone in their desire to alter the world around them to better suit their own needs.  Every time a bird in the woods eats a seed and poops it out that little bird increases the population of its favorite foods in the forest.  This very humbling notion means that all the high-browed landscape design schools, students, and practitioners are essentially performing the same function that a bird performs when it shits.  So while we landscape designers have our notions and practices, the birds, animals, plants, soils, and landscapes have their own notions and practices, which brings me back to weeds. 

Nature uses weeds to perform functions that are often beyond our capacity to easily grasp or even understand at all.  I like to point out to folks that in a lawn made of sod grass for instance, our hero the dandelion will drive roots into the earth allowing minerals and nutrients from deep in the ground to be accessed by the shallow rooted turf grass.  The channels made in the ground by dandelions roots also help drive water and air downward increasing the overall capacity for root depth and allowing water to enter the water table instead of rushing off to damage local creeks, rivers, or lakes.

If the garden is like our mother in how it knows us, nurtures us, punishes us when we deserve it, but loves us unconditionally, then the Earth is like our grandmother.  The Earth let’s us do what we wish, and she gives us everything we can need or want, but she knows so much more then we can imagine that we are silly to question her ways. 

When you go back far enough in time, it’s plain to see that the “gardens” of this Earth created the very bloodlines of those who call themselves “gardeners”.  From this humble perspective we can rethink what it means to be a weed, and if indeed it may be that the worst, most pernicious weed seeds sprout in our own imaginations. 

Let us yank from the root the damaging notion that some plants are evil.  Let us instead see beauty, life, and nourishment wherever we can, and let’s all celebrate the fact that nature cared enough to give us each other and the rest of the creatures on this lonely planet to keep us happy and healthy.

Click Here to learn about some of the terrific edible and medicinal weeds that grace the presence of our Minneapolis yards and gardens.

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The Seed Volume 38, Evolutionary Gardening

Evolutionary Gardening

It has been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one footstep.  I suppose that’s true.  I also figure that if I’m gonna be traveling a thousand miles, that first footstep should be pretty well aimed. The evolution of both the garden and the gardener represent a journey that takes place not in distance, but in time, and as a garden and landscape educator I understand that I’m responsible for giving out the best information and resources to guide folks along the path toward a healthier environment.  So, if I were standing along the trail you travel and you happened to ask me which direction you should aim your energies to find a healthy thriving landscape, I’d gladly point the way.  If however you asked me to map the evolution of your garden, my response might be a little more mysterious.  The map I’d hand you would have nothing but the following question written on it:

 

“How do you honor your environment?” 

Evolution is the process of adapting to change, and work that honors our environment is the best tool we have to help our planet adapt it in these changing times.  Truth be told, I can’t tell you how to honor your environment.  I’m happy to show you some of my favorite ways to give admiration for Grandmother Earth, but your answers to this tiny question of global proportion will be both as common as our human experience and as unique as our varied personalities. I have been blessed to visit so many great landscapes and gardens in my time, each a unique reflection of the gardeners who created them and the environments where they are growing.  In these gardens I’ve seen hundreds of methods and means of achieving healthy harmony in earthen environments.  So, while the bad news is that I have no one right way to show you, the good news is that I have seen many right ways that I can share with you, and I can tell you that allowing yourself to change your garden habits in any way that will create healthy habitat for yourself and the local wildlife is an evolutionary concept worthy of praise.

This months newsletter is dedicated to a very old notion with a fancy new name…

Evolutionary Gardening!

"The poison and pollution in our environment affects how clearly we see things. We need to use our intelligence and organize our consciousness and our perceptions of reality. This is hard work, but it must be done. We are in an evolutionary reality. We are never given something we can't handle. It's about activating the thinking process, about the real value of our ability to think. I say don't believe anything the corporations hand us, whether it is TV, ads or the news as they tell us it is. I am a human, a member of a tribe, not a subject for corporate mining and exploitation. I don't trust their corporate "democracy". We humans must think for ourselves. That's what we need to give to the next generation."

~John Trudell

"We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off."

~ John Trudell

“It's about our D and A. Descendants and ancestors. We are the descendants and we are the ancestors. D and A, our DNA, our blood, our flesh and our bone, is made up of the metals and the minerals and the liquids of the earth. We are the earth. We truly, literally and figuratively are the earth. Any relationship we will ever have in this world to real power -- the real power, not energy systems and other artificial means of authority -- but any relationship we will ever have to real power is our relationship to the earth.” 

~ John Trudell

Evolutionary Landscaping

Charles Darwin tells us that “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”

 Well folks, change seems to be knocking at the door to humanity demanding it’s way in.  Between changing economies, climate change, and changing social values, our species is facing a paradigm shift so drastic in scope that every living human culture has begun preparing for a different tomorrow. 

Maybe you’ll agree that within only a few hundred years of industrialization, we’ve done an incredible amount of devastation to our delicate home.  Our warring cultures demands for efficiency has lead to an attempted homogenization of natural human processes throughout the planet.  Here in America industry gives us food and water, and industry carries away our waste.  Industry helps us birth our babies, raise our children, store our wealth, wed our lovers, occupy our adults, hospice our elders, and burry our dead.  All of these interactions have been designed by the industries offering them to take wealth and power away from the folks who purchase their products and services and put that power into the hands of industrial leaders in the form of money and brand devotion.  All of these interactions also represent a sort of degeneration instead of the evolution we’re gonna need to undergo to keep our species kickin’ around on this planet we call home. 

Now it might strike some readers that here, the owner of a company offering landscaping services is essentially telling folks to stop shopping.  I suppose I have a slightly different view of landscaping then most others in the trade.  Giving Tree Gardens seeks at all turns to empower community, clients, and anyone that will listen with the knowledge, resources, and methods that will help them engage with and honor their world a little bit more.  We offer services to those without the time or ability to do the work themselves, while encouraging a do-it-yourself mentality through our various forms of consultation, our community classes, as well as our newsletter, blog, and website.

Inspiration is among our most precious resources. 

Rain Barrels are a highly evolved idea!  Click here to find out more about rain barrels!

John Trudell is one abundant source evolutionary inspiration.  Mr. Trudell is a brilliant author and public speaker.  Perhaps the most striking thing I heard him say while he gave a speech in Minneapolis a couple years back touched on the concept of revolution vs. evolution.  John shared the notion that revolution based on the word “revolve” will only get us back where we started just as the Earth finds itself back in the same spot every new year.  He said that we should become evolutionary instead of revolutionary.  He helped me understand that if we are to move on beyond our problems, we must do the changing because our problems won’t just change for us.  So what kind of changes should we make in our landscaping habits?  Sure I’ve got some ideas for you, but I wanna hear your ideas too.  

Worms are fun, gross, and good for the earth!  Click here to find out more!

 The full answer to the question of how do we all honor our environment together will only be found when we all explore together a few more basic questions.

Who am I?, Where am I?, and What am I doing here?

Who Am I?

This question is important because who you are informs your needs, and your environment should be able to provide your needs.  The answers to this question include things like your ancestry, community, tastes, family, point of view, relationships, age, personality and more.  To take a step further into the landscape we begin asking questions such as: What plants are culturally relevant to you?  How have your ancestors traditionally raised or gathered food?  What are your favorite flowers?  These questions and many more will begin to show us what we need from our environments, and the next question will begin to show us how those needs may be met.

Where Am I?

I love this question.  My answer to this question begins with one well-annunciated word.  America!  I see such a heavy European influence in the local landscape from sod grass lawns to man made ponds to parking lots and freeways, that I find myself often needing to remind folks that indeed we are in America, and that if we are to honor this place so that it may support us, we should recognize the needs of the land beneath our feet. 

Every place has plants that are native to it.  Here in America, native plants fed wildlife and people for millennia before the conquistadors, pioneers, and settlers (some my ancestors) invaded this land and started causing widespread damage here.  If these American plants fed folks for such a long time, why shouldn’t we who call ourselves Americans eat them again?  What are the native plants in your region?  What are the uses of these plants for you and the native wildlife?  To honor your space you must know, respect, and support the life that was there before you arrived.

What Am I Doing Here?

Just what are you doing here?  This is a pretty big question.  We spend our days and nights eating, working, traveling, visiting, sleeping, purchasing, communicating, any number of normal and abnormal human activities fill our time.  Just what are these activities?  Are they good for this space?  Do our actions honor our environment?   

Every one of our actions impacts our environment.  Some of our actions have a positive impact in our environs, some much less so.  What are the local, regional, and global environmental impacts of some of your landscaping decisions?  Are the plants that are culturally relevant to you able to live here without damaging this space?  Are you able to live here without damaging this space?  How can you do what you need to do and still live in harmony with the land around you?

A rain garden can filter rainwater to recharge aquifers that we all drink from, growing even just tomatoes at home can reduce the amount of petroleum it takes to make your meals, and native tree plantings can support migrating wildlife from around the globe, these are all small, locally made decisions that have profound positive impacts in the larger ecosystem.  So what are you doing here?, and what are the impacts of the actions you make?  Are you acting with honor towards this place that supports you?  

Inspirational sources abound in this world.  A friend and former neighbor Bob Milner is yet another inspiring mentor in my life.  Bob is a marketing wizard and a community activist since….., well he may have invented marketing and community activism, but Bob and I were sitting and chatting marketing strategies one afternoon when he turns to me and says,

“Russ I want to give you something, ……Evolutionary Gardening, that’s what you’re doing, that’s what you should call it, you should trademark this idea, it’s yours, I’m giving it to you”. 

In honor of Bob, and his really good idea, I’m happy to go ahead then and tell the world what I think it means to be an “Evolutionary Gardener” as he so eloquently put it.  I’m probably not going to go for the trademark though, I just can’t find it in me take any credit for a process as old as time. 

If you click on any of the pictures on the side of the page, you’ll be shown some of my favorite do-it-yourself methods for evolving your own yard and landscape.  I love these particular methods because of their simplicity.  I suppose simplicity is important because evolution is the process of tiny, simple changes one after another working together to create harmony.  

With so much change in the forecast, I’m ready to do my part to make allies, share ideas, and develop the bonds of community that will help this land that I love so much, thrive in the face of change.  By honoring our environments we honor ourselves, so my question to you now is, How do you honor your environment? 

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