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Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Sustainable horticulture

Tokachi Millennium Forest : Pioneering a New Way of Gardening with Nature

[Tokachi Millennium] cover

I have always wanted to travel to Japan to experience the bustling energy of Tokyo and the serenity of ancient Buddhist temples in Kyoto. Now after reading about Tokachi Millennium Forest I know I have to include the northern island of Hokkaido on my itinerary. Why did the owner of a private parcel comprised of second growth forest and former agricultural fields hire a British garden designer? Because the lofty goal of creating a carbon sequestering ecological park that would be sustainable for 1,000 years, while also charming urban Japanese visitors required cross-cultural collaboration. Designer and author Dan Pearson’s expertise is creating ecologically sensitive, naturalistic landscapes. He worked with Japanese landscape architect Fumiaki Takano to fulfill the vision of site owner and newspaper magnate Mitsushige Hayashi starting in 2000. In a nutshell, Hayashi’s vision is to rekindle the visitors’ connection to nature in order to instill an ethic of environmental responsibility and love for the mountains and forests. Head gardener and co-author Midori Shintani – profiled in Jennifer Jewell’s The Earth in Her Hands – joined the team in 2008.

The book is elegantly designed with beautiful color photographs. The opening chapters relay how Pearson first traveled to Japan and how he was introduced to the project. It includes a brief history of the island, mountains and forest, and the reason behind Tokachi Millennium Forest. Pearson writes the main body of text while Shintani contributes essays on Japanese culture and how the culture is manifest at Tokachi. Pearson conveys high level design concepts such as sense of place and ecology, purpose and mission. He also includes very specific horticultural details such as how the native, yet aggressive Sasa bamboo is cut back in the forest every spring in order to give other native plants a chance to regenerate.

The following chapters describe each of the park’s main regions, such as the Forest or the Earth Garden with its waves of grassy, sculpted landforms that relate to the looming mountains. The Productive Garden contains vegetables, herbs, and fruits for the café as well as roses to delight visitors. Native flowers mix with carefully selected cold hardy perennials from temperate regions of the world in the Meadow Garden. Pearson and Shintani continue to meet for a week every year to discuss and plan maintenance strategies and required edits. The editing process means perennials that are too dominant either get deadheaded so seeds don’t spread or potentially removed entirely, while less vigorous or short-lived plants are encouraged to reseed or are propagated and replanted the following spring. For example, Thermopsis lupinoides was edited out while Verbascum ‘Christo’s Yellow Lightning’ was added later. I question how the complex, perennial-filled Meadow Garden will be sustainable for 1,000 years given the work required to keep it looking presentable through the short growing season, but I am eager to see it in person. It must be magnificent to walk through the flower-filled Meadow with the mountains framing the scene. The book concludes with a complete list of plants used in the Meadow Garden with notes on which ones failed to thrive or were removed for being too dominant.

Published in The Leaflet, Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2021.

The Garden Jungle

[The Garden Jungle] cover

I have read many books on organic gardening over the years, but never one with a focus on invertebrates. With The Garden Jungle I credit author Dave Goulson for opening my heart to earwigs. Goulson is a British professor of biology, bumble bee expert, keen gardener and advocate for sustainable agriculture. I try to be tolerant of the herbivore insects such as aphids because they feed many species of birds and beneficial insects such as beetles and hover flies. However, I didn’t know earwigs were omnivores and would feast on aphids as well as on dahlia petals. According to Goulson, earwigs don’t seek out ears to sleep in, so we shouldn’t worry.

Each chapter starts delightfully with a short recipe for treats such as mulberry muffins or homesteading classics like sauerkraut, cider and goat cheese. The book maintains a positive tone as Goulson celebrates all the creatures we encounter in our gardens, while detailing highly destructive practices committed by the horticulture and agriculture industries. He makes the case that the most egregious practice to be avoided at all costs is spraying pesticides. Another destructive habit is including peat moss in potting soil both because it destroys peat bog habitat, and also because of the massive amount of sequestered carbon dioxide released upon harvest. For each decidedly Earth-unfriendly horticultural practice described Goulson instructs readers on alternatives to achieve the same outcomes.

Goulson weaves in insights from his research, background on natural history and stories of wildlife encounters in his Sussex garden to relate why we should cherish moths, worms, and even the parasitic cuckoo bee. All are members of the garden jungle ecosystem. Once gardeners tolerate or maybe even love the creatures in their gardens, Goulson is sure that the planet can be saved.

Published in the Leaflet, volume 8, issue 6, June 2021.

Sustainable Urban Landscape Information Series

“The goal of the SULIS is to provide sustainable landscape information to the public and to the horticulture/landscape industry. By utilizing SULIS concepts, homeowners, business owners and related industry personnel will be able to create outdoor spaces that are functional, maintainable, environmentally sound, cost effective and aesthetically pleasing.”

Cover crops for the Pacific Northwest

I have two raised garden beds (8 x 12 feet) in my back yard. Recently I read somewhere that having a cover crop during our wet winter months would help decrease the leaching of nutrients and would also help bind nitrogen in the soil.

Three suggested cover crops were crimson clover, Australian field peas (did they mean Austrian winter peas?), and vetch.

What would you suggest? Are these good recommendations? Which
might be the best?

Sustainable Horticulture: Today and Tomorrow (R. Poincelot, 2004, p.
372-377), says,

“Cover crops, when managed as green manures, can supply considerable nitrogen
for [vegetable] crops.”

Legumes, like the pea and vetch you mentioned are
good choices for increasing the nitrogen level in soils. (Hairy vetch, Vicia
villosa, and Austrian winter pea, Pisum arvense). Crimson clover (Trifolium
incarnatum) is almost as efficient at supplying nitrogen to the soil.

Hairy Vetch supplies 33-145 lb of nitrogen per acre/year to soil, Austrian
winter pea supplies 53-100 lb/acre/year, and Crimson clover supplies 19-114
lb/acre/year.

Another species you might consider as a cover crop is Fava bean (Vicia
faba), which supplies 25-105 lb/acre/year.

Additional information about growing cover crops in the Pacific Northwest
can be found on this information sheet from the Washington State University extension.

Territorial Seed Company, in Oregon, sells small quantities of cover
crop seed by mail order, including Hairy vetch, Crimson Clover, and Fava
Bean.

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A New Garden Ethic

[A New Garden Ethic] cover

I recently read and returned a new book to the Elisabeth C. Miller Library: A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future by Benjamin Vogt. As I told Laura Blumhagen, this is one of the most important books I have ever read. Bear in mind, I read about 100 nonfiction books a year and I’m not easily impressed. It reminds me of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, but I find it even better written. In just 163 pages, it contains a rich world that eloquently presents the complexity of our gardening landscapes and practices. Reading the book feels as if you are speaking with its author, and as if he were a lifelong friend. Part history, part memoir, part genealogy, this book conveys a deep sense of its author and of place. It is so absorbing that I bought a copy for my own collection, anticipating sharing and re-reading it.

The author begins with the exposition of a new garden ethic: moving beyond a preoccupation with beautiful trees and flowers to gardening as if other species and other ecosystems mattered. And, of course, they do, as we are coming to realize rather late in the age of global warming. Our gardens matter, and how we tend them matters. Vogt points out that the new garden ethic goes beyond just planting natives to include the preservation of spaces for birds and insects. His third chapter explains why we believe what we believe about gardening and landscape. The fourth chapter includes a brief but informative overview of historic landscape design and public gardens and parks, offering examples of places that he considers exemplars of a new garden ethic.

The book ends with the challenge and plea to learn new languages, for example, from insects and birds, and to change our gardening practices to move beyond beauty to the support of an entire world, inhabited by many other species. Don’t miss the delight of reading this thought-provoking book!

Published in the June 2018 Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 5, Issue 6.

Garden Revolution : How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change

[Garden Revolution] cover

The title Garden Revolution is hype. This new book by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher is instead a retreat, a going back to working with nature.

Yes, it does challenge many traditional horticultural practices. Primary author and long-time garden designer Weaner uses the term ecological gardening to describe his technique. He insists on working with the existing soil, exposure, and other elements of a site, choosing plants that thrive in the given conditions, instead of amending to the needs of plants you want. He also argues against most accepted weeding practices because they disturb the soil, encouraging more weed seeds to sprout.

Most of all, he wants the gardener and anyone who carefully observes a landscape to recognize that change is inevitable, but it can and should be embraced.

Why am I recommending this book to students and researchers in restoration? Because there is a lot of good horticulture that is very applicable to restoration sites. Weaner lives in the eastern United States, but his principles are quite adaptable and applicable.

He is blunt: “Ecological garden design is not a style of garden-making for the micro-manager. To be successful, this sort of design requires letting the landscape make many of the decisions.”

So perhaps this is a revolution. One that on a small scale has already proven successful.

Published in the March 2018 Leaflet for Scholars Volume 5, Issue 3.