Play the Forest School Way

[Play the Forest School Way] cover

Time in the woods refreshes your spirit and opens your mind. It cultivates appreciation, discovery, and possibilities.

In a woodland setting, Play the Forest School Way: Woodland Games, Crafts and Skills for Adventurous Kids offers hands-on learning experiences for a wide range of children from preschool to about 11 years of age. The Forest School philosophy strengthens confidence and builds self-esteem and social skills through connecting with nature. The movement developed in the 1990s was initially inspired by the play-based, nature-centered teaching of Scandinavia, known in Denmark as friluftsliv (‘free open-air life’). In addition, it draws on the learning theories of Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori, as well as British Scouting and Woodcraft Folk in the United Kingdom.

Chapters include Nature Explorers, Forest Arts, Survival Skills, and Wildlife Team Games. Inventive and fun activities include making a journey stick, traditionally made by Aboriginal people in Australia to record their travels and help retell their stories. Headdresses can be transformative. Creating natural headdresses from leaves, twigs, acorns, feathers and other finds relate to ceremonial headdresses such as those worn by ancient kings and queens or those worn at carnivals or other celebrations. Survival skills include essential knots, a prehistoric skill that is certainly still important today – even for tying one’s shoelaces, for example. Wildlife team games can be ice breakers, helping to build relationships, confidence, and a sense of belonging. The historical references throughout the book give an ancestral link to interacting with the environment.

Peter Houghton and Jane Worroll in the UK are particularly well qualified as authors of Play the Forest School Way. Peter is an artist in woodwork and other media as well as a leader of Forest School sessions. Jane has degrees in ecology and environmental conservation, and as a Countryside Ranger has managed habitat, monitored protected species, and led volunteers.

Play the Forest School Way helps to keep holistic learning in nature alive, reminding us anew about life experiences that are rooted in the real world.

Published in the May 2018 Leaflet Volume 5, Issue 5.

What’s Wrong with My Marijuana Plant?

What's wrong with my marijuana plant book cover I reviewed “What’s Wrong with My Plant” in the Winter 2017 issue of the Bulletin, but I didn’t realize that this 2009 publication was just the beginning for the writing team of David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth of Port Townsend, Washington. They have published four more “What’s Wrong with My…” books, including “Vegetable Garden” (2011), “Fruit Garden” (2013), “Houseplant” (2016) and “Marijuana Plant” (2017). The structure of each is similar to the original with chapters to identify the symptoms and causes of the problems, and separate chapters laying out organic solutions or preferred cultural practices.

“Marijuana Plant” was likely the most challenging to write, as there is limited research on its production using organic principles. Deardorff and Wadsworth celebrate the work that has been done: “We also want to acknowledge a lot of people we don’t even know. We are grateful for the many marijuana breeders and growers who have labored for years in the shadows.”

Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Peony: The Best Varieties for Your Garden

Peony the best varieties book cover Carol Adelman and her husband own a peony nursery in Salem, Oregon. She has teamed up with David Michener of the University of Michigan to write “Peony: The Best Varieties for Your Garden.” Much of this book is a beautiful photo album of the most highly regarded peony hybrids, including tree and intersectional (or Itoh) peonies. While it is easy to thumb quickly through these images, you will miss a lot of information in the notes, including comments on the foliage quality or awards that designate the selection as good for landscapes.

This latter point is important, as in their introduction, the authors ask some important questions of the reader. What is the purpose of your peonies? Do you want a big but short burst of bloom, perhaps to coincide with a special event? Or do you hope to stretch the bloom period out as long as possible, realizing that at best, this will be just over a month? Answering these questions will help you decide the role of peonies in your overall landscape. They are green through the summer and into the fall, often with attractive foliage. What companions will you match with them?

I appreciated that the authors also discuss the early spring, emerging foliage, which can be quite stunning. You are encouraged to choose early spring ephemerals that are a good match, being mindful they don’t die an ugly death just when the peonies are blooming. There’s a lot to consider!

Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Our Native Bees

[Our Native Bees] cover

Paige Embry is an engaging and humorous writer exploring the topic of bees. And not just any bees. She is passionate about “Our Native Bees”, which is also the title of her new book. She gives honey bees their due, but laments they “get all the press – the books, the movie deals – and they aren’t even from around here.”

While I haven’t seen many movies on honey bees, the author makes her point. We have native bees that are far better pollinators, do equal work with fewer numbers, fly in nastier weather, and often use better technique. An example of the latter is buzz pollination, or shaking the pollen from the flower. Honey bees haven’t learned this trick, but bumble bees and others have and their work facilitates some of our favorite foods, including tomatoes.

This is not a field guide. While the author lives in Seattle, her scope for natives includes most of North America. There are some excellent, close-up photographs, but their purpose is to supplement the text, not help with ID. Instead, this is an investigative study of many apian topics and to recognize that bees are diverse and have the power to fascinate people, even when we mislabel or misunderstand them.

One of the author’s major themes is agriculture. For example, she studies the production of lowbush blueberries in Maine and neighboring New Brunswick, an interwoven history of wild plants, wild bees, managed plants, managed bees, and the impact of various attempts at pest management. Recounting this could be deadly dull, but in Emery’s hands, it is most engaging.

Throughout all the stories, there are questions asking what is possible. Can native bees provide better solutions for our pollinating needs? Can we provide better solutions for the needs of native bees? The author provides some answers to these questions, but I think her underlying goal is that we join her on a journey to a better understanding and appreciation of the diversity of bees, especially native bees.

Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Love Letters to my Garden

Love letters to my garden book cover It is no secret that Barbara Blossom Ashmun is an avid gardener. Besides having a floriferous name, there are the intimate titles of her memoirs: “Married to My Garden” (2003) and “Love Letters to My Garden” (2017). This Portland garden designer and writer did not grow up as a gardener, but instead found her calling well into adulthood. A divorce and the desire to leave the world of a social worker helped this process.

This may be why she writes with the conviction of a convert. “No one ever died from having too many plants. And never allow partners, spouses, friends, or curmudgeons discourage you from experimenting with new plants. If anyone grills you about how many plants you bought, don’t take the bait. Give them a Mona Lisa smile and change the subject.”

The author has a knack for writing for both the experienced and novice gardener. She uses a light hand with Latin names, relying on her non-gardening husband’s feedback to keep these in check. But that doesn’t mean she resists the latest new cultivar from cutting edge nurseries. She understands plant lust very well, but she also found an antidote to that in the Kleingarten movement in Germany. Gardeners whose faces “shone with happiness” cultivate these small spaces with the most common of flowers and vegetables.

Ashmun concludes “Love Letters” with a poignant story (also found in the Winter 2013 issue of “Pacific Horticulture”) about the loss of a giant sweet gum that dominated her back yard. Over the short period of time it took to cut down the failing tree, her yard went from shady to sunny. It was a shock. However, this gardener, now in her seventies, had the necessary resilience to create a new patio in the space the sweet gum had occupied, with more space for – yes! – more plants.

Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

The Northwest Garden Manifesto

Northwest garden manifesto book cover “The Northwest Garden Manifesto” by John Albers is a new book for our region. While the title may conjure up images of gardeners marching rake-to-rake for their causes, this instead is a very solid and comprehensive gardening book that keeps closely in mind the bigger ecosystem surrounding any private garden. Divided into three broad sections, the book asks you to assess what you have, then make changes that are sustainable (for your garden) and healthful (for you), and finally – for all your actions – think outside the property line.

The author is very good at presenting new approaches to regular garden chores. While these may seem mundane, they fit very well into the overarching structure and message of the book. A handy summary checklist at the end of each chapter helps you track this bigger picture. Many of the examples are from his own four-acre garden on the edge of Bremerton, well-captured by the photography of David Perry.

The selection of recommended plants includes native and non-natives as Albers emphasizes that in developed sites, many of the conditions that help natives thrive have been destroyed. Other recommendations include many food-producing plants, everything from annual vegetables to fruit trees. He also advises engineering your lawn – if you must have one – to be either a green space with low demands on resources, or a self-sustaining meadow.

This book’s primary audience is urban dwellers, but that is most of us. “With more than half of humankind living in cities, our first steps must be developing sustainably and restoring urban biodiversity.” So perhaps manifesto is an accurate description of Albers’ goals. I recommend you read his book and make your own decisions.

Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Gardening in the Pacific Northwest

I always look forward to new books intended for Pacific Northwest gardeners. Paul Bonine and Amy Campion’s “Gardening in the Pacific Northwest” has been long anticipated, and it doesn’t disappoint. As explained in the introduction, this book is mostly from Bonine’s perspective, as he grew up here and has gardened in this region for many years. Campion did most of the excellent photography.

I found myself reading this book out of order, starting with the final chapter titled “Design: Northwest Garden Style.” Intended as an introduction to design styles, this essay is also an excellent, local history of ornamental gardening and why our gardens look the way they do.

Keeping this in mind, I returned to the introductory chapters on climate, soils, and garden culture with a better understanding. Here, I found the authors’ selection of climatic sub-regions especially interesting. As expected, Seattle is part of the Puget Sound sub-region, but Portland and its immediate suburbs have a sub-region of their very own, totally surrounded by the Willamette Valley sub-region. While I was at first surprised by this, after reading the distinguishing factors, I decided these divisions make a lot of sense, and will help gardeners make better plant selections.

The plant encyclopedia is especially good for woody plants. While most species are represented by a single cultivar, these are excellent selections. After admiring Albizia julibrissin ‘Summer Chocolate’ at a couple of Portland gardens last summer, I appreciated learning why it is rarely seen around Seattle. Our immediate sub-region “normally doesn’t receive enough summer heat for its wood to harden off properly in preparation for winter’s cold, leaving it vulnerable to even mild freezes.” Tips like these, make this selection of plant varieties especially valuable.

Excerpted from the Spring 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

RHS Genealogy for Gardeners

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Confused by plant families? Having trouble keeping track of recent changes based on DNA and other molecular research? RHS Genealogy for Gardeners can help with these questions. Ross Bayton (a long-time volunteer in the Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium and at the Rhododendron Glen of the Washington Park Arboretum) is co-author with Simon Maughan of this Royal Horticultural Society (“RHS”) publication.

Don’t be put off by “for Gardeners” in the title. This is an excellent book for field botanists, or anyone interested in understanding the relationships between plants in any setting. The book is published in the United States under the title Plant Families: A Guide for Gardeners and Botanists.

Bayton has his PhD in taxonomy, while Maughan has an extensive background in writing, editing, and publishing both botanical and horticultural works. The combination means this book has scientific accuracy and is very readable for those with all levels of botanical knowledge. Family descriptions include basic characteristics, the genetic history, best-known genera, and the important uses of the members, including as ornamentals and for food crops or other plant-based products.

The introduction section also coaches good techniques in observation and teasing out the family connections of the plants you’re considering, with the following words of both warning and encouragement: “The intricacies and subtleties of plant identification are unfortunately beyond the reaches of a simple Internet search engine. The best we currently have to rely on are our own observational skills.”

Published in the April 2018 Leaflet for Scholars Volume 5, Issue 4.

Saving Tarboo Creek

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Saving Tarboo Creek is a local book – by local authors about a local place. Tarboo Creek empties indirectly into the Hood Canal. Scott Freeman teaches biology at the University of Washington. His wife Susan, an artist, is also the granddaughter of Aldo Leopold, whose Sand County Almanac is a bible for ecologists. The book is partly a narrative – a description of how the Freemans have labored over a number of years to restore a patch of land along the creek to its natural state – the one before the pioneers straightened the creek and harvested most of the trees to create farm land. The book is also a call to arms to those who can act to save and restore natural landscapes.

One of my favorite chapters, one that exemplifies the Freemans’ approach, deals with beavers. Of course beavers can be disastrous to any tree planting effort, and the Freemans have planted thousands of young trees. The chapter describes clearly, and with some sympathy for the beavers, how the animals live and build and move into new territory like that around Tarboo Creek. Killing them wouldn’t help, even if one thought it a good idea, because more beavers would soon show up. Furthermore, beaver dams help make the creek an ideal place for young salmon, a positive effect for the Freemans. So the Freemans (and friends) have painstakingly wrapped trees near the creek with protective wire, and each year they wrap more and more. They expect “an intense beaver chew-down” each March or April, and do the hard labor of saving their young trees.

Each chapter places an aspect of restoration work, such as tree planting, in its historical and ecological context. In the final chapter, directed especially at young people, the Freemans call for a return to a “natural life,” giving four criteria: be engaged, be simple, be real, be present. The book conveys an urgent sense of hope.

Published in the April 2018 Leaflet Volume 5, Issue 4.

Companions in Wonder : Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together

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Sharing is a multiplier. The most ordinary things can become extraordinary when shared. Julie Dunlap and Stephen Kellert, in Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together, gather lively examples of how adults and children experience the outdoors together, restoring nature to its rightful place in people’s lives.

Personal experiences described by the essayists guide the reader to more deeply understand and appreciate a closer relationship with nature and with people across generations. Voices are from wide-ranging geographic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Building on the legacy of Rachel Carson’s essay “Help Your Child to Wonder”, contributors include journalist and author Richard Louv (“Fathers and Sons”), Native American writers, educators, and storytellers James and Joseph Bruchac (“Tracking Our Way”), educator and earth historian Lauret Savoy (“Colored Memory”), among many others. The editors conclude with general recommendations for adults as well as particular recommendations for teachers.

Companions in Wonder inspires happy, healthy ways to engage and bond children and adults in the great outdoors. The primal power of regular, positive outdoor experiences is paramount in reversing the trend of “nature deficit disorder” at all levels. Sharing experiences in the natural environment multiplies both discovery and renewal of relationships in considering the past, the present, and the future of life on earth.

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