I’ve been looking into our options for helping with moss conservation and, honestly, the list is about as long as moss is tall, which suggests that moss conservation really isn’t on many people’s radars at this point. Here’s what I did find- the Irish Peatland Conservation Council recommends gardening without using peat moss the Lancashire […]
Archive for the ‘plants’ Tag
Growing a moss conservation conversation
An emerald carpet
I recently read a book telling the fictional story of a woman from the 1800s who studied mosses, and it occurred to me that I have really no clue about moss conservation or even moss ecology. I know that mosses tend to grow in moist locations, they don’t get very tall, and, like all plants, […]
Sharing the night with moths
As I’ve mentioned before, some of the biggest issues facing moths are habitat loss and becoming the unintended target of biocontrol efforts- while we may only be able to influence the latter policy-wise, we have a lot of options when looking at moth habitat and population concerns. When I started looking for groups that work […]
A sustainable rose would smell as sweet
Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned that there are a number of environmental and social concerns around the farming of cut-flowers- there are questions about pesticide and water use, about the impacts on families and communities, about poaching and introduced pests. But there are also quite a few organizations working to improve the conditions […]
Natural born flowers
In my last post I talked about some of the environmental concerns surrounding the cut flower industry, namely pesticides, water use, and the movement of parasites and diseases. While there are many other facets to growing flowers for bouquets, I want to highlight two other issues, both of which I think we can influence: wildflower […]
Hoping to say it with flowers
When I started thinking about a blog topic for this month, I looked back through the posts from the last few months and noticed that my last four topics have centered on animals. Probably a good idea to show plants a bit more appreciation, and it is February after all- pictures of flowers are pretty […]
A wild-managed yard of one’s own
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been looking at research on how we manage our yards and how those decisions impact the ecosystems around us. Certainly when we mow or fertilize or add ornamental species to our lawns we are altering the space, but there are other ways that we interact with our yards and […]
Where the grass is greener
Some of the more recent research into lawn science has focused on the people-yard relationship and how different management practices influence the lawns we see. Starting with the first of those, why do we put so much effort into lawns? Some researchers have suggested that our yards are a statement about how we want to […]
Monocultures in miniature?
In my last post I mentioned that I was pretty impressed with the amount of land currently devoted to our lawns- after looking through some research into lawn management and diversity starting in the late 1960s, I realized that this area had almost doubled in about 35 years. In 1969 almost 68,000 square kilometers of […]
Getting our hands dirty
Although some plant species are doing very well around the world (sometimes to the point of becoming invasive), other species are losing ground. In some cases there are focused recovery plans, but oftentimes the issue of habitat loss trumps our best efforts to sustain these populations. So how can we contribute to both habitat availability […]