Botany Buddy

The Christian Science Monitor had a good article on the state of the nursery industry this week titled, “The nursery industry is facing tough times.”  It paints a pretty bleak picture for the last year and predicts the same for next year.  It is actually an extension of an article posted by the Oregon Nurseryman’s Association.  I would link them both at the bottom but ONA still doesn’t post on line so CSM you get it.  The just of it is that last year commercial growers showed a 17% decline and they are predicting the same again next year.  The growers they interview hold their chins up and say the industry will rebound, but that they will be the last ones, because the plants are the last thing to go in when construction comes back.  For an industry that rarely operates on a profit margin over ten percent things will have to change.  They say that the industry is completely dependent on the housing industry, but that isn’t the complete truth.

I have been in this industry my entire life.  I am a Missouri Certified Nurseryman, and worked in some sort of retail or wholesale nursery my entire career until 2004 When I moved to North Carolina.  My growing design career had led me to a company that was entirely landscape and maintenance focused with no retail or wholesale operation.  The company I came to work for was the biggest in the area, the work was supposed to endless, every house I saw upon arrival seemed to be north of 1 million dollars.  Beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, and golf courses (if you think they are beautiful) where everywhere I turned.  Being right outside of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, this is also on of the most biodiverse areas in the world.  For a designer and gardener, this was and still is paradise.  I toured about twenty jobs in three states during my interviews and coming from the inner city I saw how I could be creatively reborn, and I was.

When we decided to take the position and move here it wasn’t about work though.  We already had roots in the area from my wifes past, and we had a two year old daughter at the time.  We had reached the point where we had to leave our beloved Hyde Park, but couldn’t stand the thought of becoming suburbanites, or crossing the state line to Kansas.  This was about being the kind of people we wanted to be and raising our daughter in that light.  We made sacrifices and I contend they were worth it.  However, I have to admit some sacrifices I did not see coming.  I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Mountain Laurels, Rhododendrons, and Azaleas at every turn.  I was probably intoxicated form the smell of the Galax as well.   I still am and always will be.

What I did not see was the storm that was coming.  In the Midwest you can see a storm coming from hours not miles away.  It’s flat there, so when you first see that front coming it is still in Nebraska.  You have time to secure your site and get out of the way.  Here things pop up from behind a mountain and your stuck.  Luckily I have never been one to look to the horizon.  I am always one to explore inside before I look out.  I am a bit introspective if you can’t tell.   As a designer I take after Frank Lloyd Wright.  I seek out the box and break it down creating as many different views inside until I lead the eye outside to the horizon and nature so we understand our role in it and reveal the greatness of it all.

Once here I had to do the same thing with my new work environment.  One of the first things that struck me was that with one of the largest landscape markets in the country there were relatively few nurseries.  Where did all these local earth loving gardeners shop?  Asheville is way too crunchy for them to shop at WalMart.  The next thing that struck me was that we didn’t do any work in town.  All of our clients were an hour, county, or state away?  I was a mid-towner.  I was used to driving by all my work on the way to and from the nursery.  I could schedule an appointment on every hour because all my customers were neighbors and new each other, not an hour apart.  It was an event for the entire block when I came around.

Finally after a few months it struck me that I had tons of work, but I had no customers.  I would meet these people get to “know” them and their space, but when it came time to see the plan they may not even show up.  We would send the plan to them or give it to the builder, and a signed contract and deposit would show-up for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Then it struck me that all of these beautiful houses, furnished to the hilt, were empty.  There was no one home…EVER.  Not only were the homes we were working on empty, but in someways our work had become empty too.  After knowing all of my clients closely suddenly I was lucky if I knew ten percent of them.

One of the reasons I always liked working in a nursery was that my customers could find me, but now I couldn’t find them.  I knew my customers and as part of their home I became part of their family.  Suddenly I had tons of work, but had no customers, and even the greatest of designs somehow lacked soul.  I have done a lot of market research this year and from 2002 to 2007 the amount of landscape services performed in this country jumped from 24.5-44.7 Billion dollars.  It almost doubled.  The number of people didn’t double, and we know that what everyone spent didn’t double because the nation saw wages shrink.  What did double (in some cases more than double) was property values.  The over inflation in the real estate market that fueled new construction was what was fueling this growth.  Almost the entire landscape industry shifted it’s focus to service this new market with deep pockets, and best of all (in some people’s minds) there were no customers to deal with.  It was supposed to be easy money, and all you had to do was grow your company to do the work.

It’s confession time now.  A little over two years into my new position here, I went to work for the other side.  I started a consulting company that designed and managed properties for a few of the most elite resort developments in the Southeast.  I got a unique inside look at what was feeding the growth on the other side.  One of my roles was to create management and financial plans to manage these properties down the road.  It was part of the collateral needed to get  the construction loans.  A big change coincided with this growth at the beginning of the decade that greatly effected how this all worked.

For the first time in our nations history, the banks that made the loans that drove this country ceased to hold them and the responsibility to guarantee them.  As a result a fundamental change in underwriting occurred.  Property values were no longer calculated for what they were worth, but for what they could be worth.  If you had the land, a landscape architect, and a good marketing package you could set the price, get the appraisal and get the loan.  The banks didn’t care, because they were only writing a five year balloon that they were going to collect the fees on and sell the loan in six months.  Even worse the government was giving out HUD agreements protecting the developers from the buyers if for some reason they didn’t deliver what they were selling.  Even at the lot buyer level, the eventual homeowner could get their lot home package for no money down and no payments for two years if they had the personal credit the developers could use to build a house.

When it came to building the developments it worked the same way.  It was on the backs of the contractors to go out and buy the equipment for these multi year-commitments, and if it meant they could get part of the windfall and not have to deal with all those pesky customers they were all for it.  In the end, everyone involved was living off the over inflated land, and as long as the cash kept coming to feed the machine they were all fine with it.  Something happened on the way to the bank though.  Suddenly there were way more million dollars houses than there were people that could afford them, and all those little investors who financed those home to make a fortune on in two years suddenly couldn’t pay the bank when there was no one to buy the house.  When the banks came to collect, they realized there was still no asphalt on the roads to get to the house, the pool the developer promised wasn’t there yet, and that golf course was still five years out.   There line of credit would expire and be dry before the golf course it was for was even built.  Foreclosures on the spec homes started to mount, the banks couldn’t sell the loans and property values plummeted.

Suddenly the same was true for the developers and bankers.  All of these over inflated construction loans were due on a five year turn around, and before the construction could be completed the properties were already worth less than the loans.  The lines of credit came to a halt, property sales stopped completely and developers that sold hundreds of lots the year before were lucky to sell three.  With the banks cutting off the credit, and the buyers nowhere to be found, it was over.

The house of cards was collapsing, but to make that house of cards look strong people kept spending.  The contractors kept going even thought the developers couldn’t pay.  As payables mounted to 90, 120 days or more, the companies would finance them to service the debt on that equipment.  If they could just keep going and make the developers look strong someone would finance it,  or they could slap liens on teh properties and when the bank sorted it out they would get paid.   The problem was, the banks held the first mortgage, and since the properties weren’t worth the note, the liens didn’t get paid because the banks were in line first.

In all of this,  the only one left holding the bill is the contractors and the few homeowners that didn’t buy their homes in an LLC.  so they could walk away.  Oddly enough the ones stuck with the bill are the only ones that could have walked away, but chose to stay.  In the next three years 1.5 Trillion dollars in commercial loans are coming due on properties that aren’t worth what those notes are for, and this isn’t over yet.

Our industry sold it’s soul, or so it seems.  The thing is, our soul never left us, we just left it and we have to find it again.  There are those that didn’t get sucked in.  They stayed craftsman before contractor and realized to be a craftsman you have to have someone to craft a piece of art for.  We have seen down turns before in the 80’s and early 90’s, again after September 11, and this industry grew out of the great depression.  In those times though, the industry didn’t invest in what collapsed.  We didn’t finance the stock market, the dot com boom, or Osama Bin Laden. The difference this time is we bought in and got left holding the tab.   In times like this people find their homes and gardeners are born.  The jobs will be smaller, but there will be more of them.  The customers will not have as much money, but they will value our work more.  This industry was built on relationships, and going back to that is the only way it will come back.  We have to find what made us who we are in our souls.

Landscape companies will have to change, some will go, and many new ones will emerge.  The work is still there and is not going away.  The yards need mowed, the trees need trimmed, the house needs shade, and in more and more cases landscapes have become a structural part of construction.  Most importantly, more people are finding their homes and garden as something more than where they park at night.  In some way the industry got what they wanted which was less customers.  However I have to think that everyone is really like me and what they love about what they do is the customer.  If this is true the industry will be fine, but we have to be honest with ourselves that we are not victims of the housing industry, because we are in the home industry.  We just forgot where our home was.

More from the CSM:  http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening/2010/0219/The-nursery-industry-is-facing-tough-times

As yesterday would have been the 201st birthday of Charles Darwin I found it overly ironic that all I saw on the news was a barrage of people declaring that global warming was a farce because it had snowed outside. I have to admit that I am starting to find the snows I have missed from my youth a bit annoying now. However it hasn’t effected me enough to start denying reality and the evidence of real science.  I may be delirious from cabin fever and the total loss of routine from an ad-hoc school schedule, but it is not about to lead to the closing of this American mind.

Had it not been for the steady drumbeat of an old friend’s facebook status, Chuck-D Day might have slipped by me completely.  This friend is someone I new well in my youth.  For many years as children we spent every daylight hour walking up an down our town’s railroad tracks and creeks collecting turtles, snakes, frogs, salamanders and any other little critter we could get to ride home in our pockets.  Of course we evolved over time, and got smart enough to carry buckets and boxes.  At one point we even moved up to traps and converted a neighbor’s walk in aviary into an all out zoo.  This particular friend is now a Herpetologist and was leading a read-a-thon in which they finished the Origin of Species in approximately 18 hours.  (I can only assume this was faster than the last time.) As I watched the devolution of our politicians minds on TV his constant updates assured me that somewhere someone was actually evolving.

As for my own celebration, it was going on in my head all day.  As I spent all day listening to the talking heads knowing full well they were incapable of thinking,  I was thinking about how I became most aware of global warming through the spread of invasive species.   Over the years I wasn’t always aware of either problem, it took a move to a different climate to make me see how differently things react under the slightest change.  It became even more evident when I began working across the 3 distinct zones from North Georgia to Virgina that I could see how differently species adapt and react to different ecosystems.  Hybrid Burning Bush and Barberry that for years no one would have imagined spreading are not only growing from seed, but they are adapting and moving into climates that normally would have been to cold for their seed to survive.

When I hear people talk of climate chance, I always hear about it’s effect on water, and people.  How the oceans will flood the cities, rivers will run dry, and other factors that we see directly related to our needs as humans is all that seems to matter.  The only time I hear plants discussed is in how trees can offset carbon so we can create more.  Unfortunately I hear more talk about whether the change exists in the first place, than what we can to do prevent it.  However, more than fighting of global warming plants can help us see and understand it.

In some respects plants are the antithesis of humans.  Plants adapt and get stronger every year and can live several of our lifetimes, but they create a new generation and pass on those traits every year.  When winters were consistent invasive species were easier to keep in check.  The annual minimum temperatures used to keep the non-native seeds in check year after year.  As winters have gradually warmed, those seeds have have adapted and become more cold tolerant as those few extra degrees have allowed them to survive.  Now they can handle the extreme conditions that now occur once every five years instead of annually.  We on the other hand have not adapted.  Burning Bush that used to be contained to areas near it’s cousins in Georgia are now making their way up the coast to New York.  Princess Trees, Barberry, Butterfly Bush, English Ivy, and many more are making that same journey.  In less than a generation of our lifetime, these species have adapted to the climate change and produced dozens more generations while we are still arguing over whether it even exists.

As humans we are different from plants.  We may live for decades but usually only reproduce during a short window of that time and in small numbers.   While we do physically evolve generationally, we usually reproduce at a peak moment and then actually become weaker for the next two thirds of our life.  Plants and trees that can live hundreds of years get stronger and reproduce every year until that last year of their life when they actually produce the most seed.  Where we differ is in that we have minds that can evolve way beyond our physical bodies.  However, unlike a tree whose wood gets harder with age and ease, we have to work and use our minds to keep them growing even as it gets harder.  If we don’t do this, collectively as a society we can actually get weaker and devolve.  The more we separate into individual pockets of though and deny the science that exists in nature around us the weaker we actually become as a species.  Too often because of our self awareness we lose the awareness of the world around us and slow the evolution of our collective conscience.

In the United States we track plant hardiness and nativity with the USDA system for for classifying plant hardiness known as the USDA Zones.  The system is based on a ranges of temperatures, recorded temperatures by areas, and the minimum temperatures those plants can supposedly take.  The system isn’t based on where these plants should grow, but where they could grow.  It also only covers minimum temperatures and not maximums.  Even more odd, this “could” focus is based on how we can use plants to alter the environment through a commercial view not how to protect and preserve it.  This is from the Department of AGRICULTURE though, not the Environmental Protection Agency.  Throughout the world these systems vary, but an emerging and evolving trend throughout the world does not start with temperatures, it start with plants.  Aerial photography is used to map where the species that form the canopy are, and the undergrowth can be determined by combining that and other data; yet another Copernican shift in the right direction.  People are actually using plants to gain perspective rather than trying to fit them into their own perspectives and learning more about themselves and the world in the end.

Unlike trees, if our minds continue to grow after reproduction we cannot continue to pass it on year after year through our seed.  Even what we do pass on isn’t the content of thought, only the ability.  We can only continue our evolution as a species through education.   The strongest ideas aren’t the ones that are said the most often, screamed the loudest or that have the most money to advertise them.  They are the ones that come from listening, hearing, and collectively evolving with the world around us.  Our evolution as a species is dependent the recognition of our role in the community of species, listening to each other within our species, and admitting that trying to be the strongest being isn’t necessarily in our nature as a species, and doesn’t make us the fittest species.   As a species we can learn a lot from the trees around us, but the message we should learn isn’t to reproduce like the Duggars.  It is that the world is changing, and for us to become the fittest species possible we have to continue to evolve mentally every year, even after our body ceases to evolve.  The lesson is that our seeds are seeds of thought, and without them our minds cannot grow and neither can our species as a whole.

It is funny how we all develop.  I probably could have guessed that my friend leading the read-a-thon would grow up to be a turtle hugger.  As for me, while I was in horticulture at a young age, the technology I work in now was still in the form of a punch card and we couldn’t have seen this coming.  There was a third member of or 9-10 year old research team, and I don’t think I wouldn’t have guessed the future for  him either.  He is writing his dissertation on the effects of invasive species on soil fertility in the upper Midwest.  However, as kids nature planted seeds in our minds, and as we moved to different climates those seeds evolved with the world around us.  I guess our evolution is proof that passion can evolve into thought and doesn’t have to lead to the death or denial of it.  When I look at how we’ve grown, it is reassurance to me that for us to remain the “fittest” species we must continue to evolve our minds and realize that we are part of a community of species.  Likewise, by denying evolution, including climate change, we deny our role in the community of species, weaken our collective mind and species as a whole, and  jeopardize the species Earth as we know it.  How this all came about isn’t what is important, but acknowledgement that it exists and our role in it is vital to our development as a species and to the survival of the world as we know it.

I am still having a hard time taking off running with the blog since Christmas, but with the ground wet and nothing but ice and snow for a month, I couldn’t run if I wanted to.  Normally at this time I would be out prepping beds, putting up trellises for my peas, and digging trenches for my potatoes.  Instead I have been trapped inside by the weather and the year I hoped to be a quick return to the garden after the rains of last summer is anything but.  Instead, I am in the  midst of  a writing binge on the new app similar to the one I was on last summer when I started writing our 1st app.  For a gardener with a philosophy degree this is about as challenging to your sense of reality as your first introduction to Kant’s Epistemology.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Kant, the basic principle is that the meaning or reality of the things you encounter is not found in the things themselves, but is determined by the filters through which you perceive them.  Put simply, the meaning of an object is relative to the person assigning the meaning; not intrinsically embedded in the object being perceived.  In Philosophy circles this principle is commonly known as “The Copernican Revolution”.  To self-centered beings who perceive the world in how it relates to themselves, it only seems logical that other beings meaning would be centered in the being itself.  In Kant’s day this was as big of a change to most people as Copernicus’ claim that the world was round.

Many people don’t realize that Copernicus’ shift to viewing the world as round was Earth shaking enough to cause the start of the crusades and a complete reversal in the interpretation of the view of the Bible to being the “word” as in story to “Word” as in literal.  Hundreds years later, Kant’s view has unknowingly been adopted in countless ways, and  is viewed as the ethical foundation for capitalism, partisan politics, some religions and even some science.  This is actualized in the view that there is no man made global warming because man is nature.  In some cases it is even taken to the level that our self-centric role in the world is even divinely destined so anything done against another must be justified or forgiven.

Every spring I reach this point of reflection and introspection, and it seems to be directly related to the impending rush to make that first planting deadline of the pea.  The pea of course has similar significance in that it is the first plant ever scientifically bred and led to the proof and eventual discovery of the gene.  Little did Mendel know that his discovery and notion of genetic adaptation would lead to the concept of evolution generations later.  Hundreds of years later, those first discoveries made by a monk and his peas have led to an entire industry and way of life in which nature is now viewed by more people thorough an agricultural or horticultural lens than one seeking nature itself.  Nature is viewed by many as a means to an end for personal need and it’s meaning is derived more in how it relates to them, than the meaning it might have in itself.  Somehow, through the evolution of our thought, we have managed to take the nature out of nature.

I love Kant.   Maybe because in college Father Brady used to insist we called him CAN’T, and my love was out of spite.  Brady’s insistence was not because his shift of reality was away from an intrinsic selves to one self, but because if he was going to make a shift he should have made it toward God.  You could say father Brady was an “Old School” Jesuit…from the days when they carried swords instead of pens.  Regardless of my love for Kant, it doesn’t mean he was entirely right.  In fact my love is from where he made me realize that something was wrong.  He was right in seeing the relativeness, but wrong for denying the other selves, and in turn relationships between them.  I don’t think any of us are always right, because as beings with conscience and free will we have to be capable of wrong.  That is why we have to give up our righteousness and strive for good.  After all, the meaning of Philosophy is the love of knowledge,  not Knowledge by itself.

The thing with Kant’s Copernican Revolutions is that in determining which side of reality holds the meaning, we by default recognize meaning is intrinsic to both sides.  As I watch the world turn in my mind, and I plant my peas one seed at a time, I will undoubtedly be thinking of all the Copernican Revolutions happening right now.  The shift to organic gardening, the hopeful return to more localized markets, the return of our economy to making real goods instead of fake money, our roles as citizens in our country and as citizens of the world are all shifts as big as those caused by four little peas planted by a monk hundreds of years ago.  Our view back to nature having nature may even be as big as realizing the world isn’t flat.  Not to ramble, but these are the musings that made an old friend coin the lyric “In the garden growing different kind of mind”.

Regardless of what you see as important, the one thing these transformations all have in common is the recognition that our view of reality is changing once again.  As the forces of nature respond to our treatment of it, and people respond the polarizing views of each other, we are starting to realize that everything and everyone does have an  intrinsic meaning and they responding to each others’ self-centered views of them.  As I watch the bloggers here, people in the gardening industry and in the social networks on line,  I see the same things.  I see people trying to find their way in thought as well as their careers.  I see my friends in print finding the same uncertainty as those in real estate, and I see a widening gap between the masses of those struggling to choose the “right” side to follow even though both sides are lost and suffering.

Through all this I still see those finding a new way, like that next generation of pea sprouting from a seed.  I see those using technology to enhance the use of their writing instead of to compete with their writing.  I see people using both to bring people together to educate and solve problems.  Amongst all those struggling to use these new tools to shout the loudest and most often, as though there is something to win, I am starting to see new species emerge with a steady sturdy growth.   These people aren’t trying to win a battle of the fittest.  They are growing and creating their own Copernican Revolution in which the meaning isn’t in who or which, but in how:  how we move forward together, how we effect each other, and how we can bring out the meaning in each other to embrace the meaning of us all.

This is a new generation not founded in who’s reality is right, but what is the best way forward.  The new reality requires finding the meaning in each other, embracing the symbiotic relationships intrinsic to our nature, throwing away the notion of right, and trying to do what is good.  That little pea that seemingly sprouts out of nowhere in March and grows ever so slowly until it explodes with abundance and sweetness in June isn’t moving slowly because the lettuce is better.  It is taking it’s time and giving some nitrogen to the soil on it’s way.  It is letting the bees take as much pollen as they can.  In return the bees are pollinating even more, and if we don’t treat that mildew on the leaves the bees will pollinate a bumper crop because we didn’t kill them with chemicals.  If we look for the meaning in relationships with each other instead of in ourselves we will see that this revolution won’t require wars, because the great change will be ending the wars we create with one another and against the world we live in.  What is right will become seeking good, and that’s not so bad.

Now,  if you are not under ten inches of snow get our there and grow some mind.